I was amused by someone who said there is no innovative spirit at Cisco. How could it be?
Innovative spirit implies positive mindset, critical questioning... and is that possible here? No. Unfortunately, the old days when this was possible are not coming back.
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The unfortunate reality for Cisco is that, in the late 90s, the demand for connecting to the Internet was so high that Cisco actually had a supply problem versus a demand problem. That's why Chambers bought any networking company he could get his hands on and then figured out what they were worth once he had them inside Cisco.
Of course, when you get lucky enough to ride the wave of a phenomena like the Internet, you forget how to do anything else because, initially, you don't have to. Unfortunately, once it became obvious that Cisco couldn't just sell routers and switches forever and still achieve that kind of growth, it was too late for the company to change the culture it had optimized for delivering network connectivity products. There were literally dozens of attempts to create new growth areas, but Cisco had forgotten how to listen to customers, and all but a few of the attempts failed.
To other companies. The smart ones have left already to companies that are growing and not stagnating. Companies that don't lay people off every few months is where top talent wants to go. I am 100% certain those at Cisco, Lenovo, Red Hat, and others in the RTP area with the skills Apple is looking for will be heavily looking to jump ship.
AWS isn’t ex-Cisco.
Cisco hasn't been organically innovative since the 90s. The innovation culture had been dead for decades. Go elsewhere if you are looking for innovation.
How is it that all cisco competitors are ex-cisco?
- Arista
- AWS
- zoom
All Ex-cisco employees. What's wrong? These MBA/sales/director/VP/SVP f**ks taking up all the decisions. Just looking at numbers and stocks and on and on. Downsize so we save money, well
1) Lose loyal/old employees
2) Remaining employees are burnt/outworked
3) No replacements
You cannot be innovating when you got your a-s in war room 6 days a week.
When a new idea comes, the vultures are there to take it apart piece by piece so one can put their name/stamp on it.
All these VP/SVP are here for 2-3 years... bulk up their resume, managed x cross-geographical employees and all and move to the next position within cisco, with no repercussions. Whereas the potential innovator is either gone or drowned in war rooms/escalations.