The painful and sad truth is that Cisco has become a company run by financial managers and lawyers. Such a company has no chance of growing and being competitive at the crazy growth rate of the AI market. The facts are that there has been no innovation at Cisco for a very long time, the company has been operating conservatively and cautiously, resting on its laurels, there is no risk-taking, no innovation, but rather maintaining the status quo. This is the truth that all need to understand and know about Cisco. All the other talks of the ELT are worthless.
22 replies (most recent on top)
@g7
I completely agree with what you write. It's crazy that no one sees how the company is collapsing in on itself. Everyone is excited about the stock price, but the collapse will be rapid and painful. The ELT remind me a group of drunk people standing on the Titanic just before it hits an iceberg and sinks to the bottom.
Sales is no longer in control, finance is...deals are now only valid for a week or two, discounts being dictated by credit and finance 20 somethings with no sales experience...supply going to the major accounts only....if you dont see this as a death spiral then thats on you. The Cisco everyone revered and wanted to do business with is gone...its now just rotting from the inside
@ex - what's with the random speculation and random numbers over time ranges that make no sense? Cisc;o's peak market cap in 2000 was well over $500B not adjusting for inflation and the current value is over $304B.
@ct Don't you love all the negative dislikes from these negative people? People just want to see people lose their jobs! No one wants positive news. Piece of sh--s!
@ex have any examples that arent a quarter of a century old?
Here is what Cisco was doing while the others mentioned below failed
| Company | Peak Role | Why they fell | Cisco at that time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nokia | #1 mobile phones | Missed smartphones | Already pivoting to IP/software |
| BlackBerry | Enterprise mobile king | Missed consumer UX + apps | Dominating enterprise networking |
| Nortel | Carrier infrastructure giant | Accounting + tech shifts | Buying assets, expanding |
| Lucent | Bell Labs telecom giant | Bubble collapse + mismanagement | Survived dot-com, diversified |
| Company | Peak Revenue | Peak Market Share | Market Cap at Peak | Nature of Dominance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nokia (2007) | ~$74B | ~40% global phones | ~$150–200B | Consumer global monopoly-like |
| BlackBerry (2011) | ~$20B | ~20% global smartphones / enterprise | ~$80B | Enterprise + prosumer lock-in |
| Nortel (2000) | ~$30B | Major carrier share | ~$250B | Telecom infrastructure giant |
| Lucent (2000) | ~$38B | Massive telco footprint | ~$250B | Legacy telecom backbone |
| Cisco (Today) | ~$55–60B | ~40–50% enterprise networking | ~$200–250B | Enterprise infrastructure platform |
Who was “bigger” (by overall peak dominance + scale)
Ranking them by combined size (market cap) + dominance influence at peak:
Nortel (dot-com peak — massive valuation + central to telecom bo-m)
Lucent (similar scale + Bell Labs legacy + huge carrier footprint)
Nokia (less inflated valuation, but real-world dominance was enormous)
Cisco (today) (large, but not as dominant relative to its era)
BlackBerry (strong niche dominance, but smaller scale)
🧠 Key nuance
Nortel / Lucent → biggest financially (bubble inflated, but still huge)
Nokia → biggest in real-world control (arguably most dominant operationally)
Cisco today → big, but not peak-era dominant like the others were
So please don't be i.di.o.ts, that is what gets you fired
Spoke through your brain not through your rear
Instead of projecting your ideas of what Cisco should be, just accept what it is.
Cisco is not a core technology company, it is a technology sales company.
Cisco doesn't create innovation, it acquires other companies it believes have created something perceived as useful, and resells their work.
All public companies are run for the benefit of their shareholders by very definition. Employees are the largest expense item to deliver dividends and growth to those shareholders and if those are not meeting shareholder expectations then the largest expense item will be trimmed. That’s fundamental business economics. Cisco is no different. Where Cisco fu---d up is in the loss of its core markets.
@a2 Picture this, what you posted is word salad.
I had to put up with a manager that told me that if you want to be a manager you have to lie. Sad truth...
I had to pump up and fluff numbers to justify keeping one of our best because our VP came down from on high to try and reduce our team. Felt very off putting and unnecessary was about to talk him off the ledge and changes are thankfully being made elsewhere.. I was so worried about keeping pace and having to spray cooper.
@bc
It looks that CR doesn’t really care that finance and legal people will run the company. In fact it seems to me that the is quite comfortable in that zone while taking zero risks. Maybe this is the main part of this sad story of Cisco.
The painful and sad truth is that Cisco has become a company run by financial managers and lawyers.
Go back to 1988 when John Morgridge who had an MBA became CEO when Cisco had 34 employees who was then replaced in 1995 by John Chambers who had an MBA and a JD. At least Chuck has a degree in mathematics with a concentration in computer science.
It's not just that Cisco isn't ready for AI, it's not ready for Google.
I'm always amazed by folks convinced this or that company is "too big to fail". Not big corporate history buffs I guess.
It's been that way since the mid-to-late aughts.
@ay
You are absolutely right!
Cisco HW is old, complicated, loaded with heavy SW bugs and overall very expansive. Cisco arrogant attitude towards partners is the main self destruction tool. For those who think Cisco can not fail and collapse remember that the same were told about Rome.
@ad You are wrong in just about every way. Take a look through the last 50 years and see if you can find companies that were once thought “too big to fail”. Cisco’s time as being too big to fail is over. We are in a massive moment of shift in hardware. If Cisco can’t get the customers bought in to their hardware now, their software will be doomed.
@an There may be teams moving the needle, but at the end of the day the ELT and board are only worried about chasing a stock price.
The time for chasing a stock price has come and passed. They MUST enter I to a visionary phase in order to truly make a comeback. OP was correct. The company is being operated like it’s being run by a private equity firm. They are squeezing every penny of profit out of old products that they can. Once those products have been wrung dry, it will be game over if they don’t have a truly innovative or competitive product to push out.
I think you are in the wrong part of Cisco — There are parts that are moving the needle on innovation you’re just paying attention to the wrong parts
@ad
Big companies might fail and collapse, ie: Nokia, BlackBerry, Nortel, Lucent….
Hey OP wake up
You are not aware of two things:
- innovation is costly for large companies. It is cheaper to spinoff a new company let's the try its chances and buy it back or simply let's others take the risks and buy them
- a large company like Cisco is not going to have major issues no matter what the market does. They are simply too big to fail. Imagine Amazon, Google, Microsoft gone tomorrow. Then what ?
Unfortunately it is like a big tree, losing some dead branches will only strengthen the three.
If anybody could do anything there that would be the governments for the countries where Cisco conducts business. Not allowing them to use people like cattle could be a solution. Also requalifying people instead of just letting them go should be mandatory.
Imagine writing a sentence beginning with 'The facts are...' and then listing no facts, just unfalsifiable opinions. Presuming you're not a bot, it's sad that you might be an employee with such an inability to observe, think, and write.