He's one of the CEOs with the highest rating on Glassdoor (96%) but I was wondering what people here think about his performance?
42 replies (most recent on top)
@3wcb+1ccIbnzs I joined in 1996. Even as far back as that. JC lamented the fact that his managers in general were not pursuing the idea aggressively enough that the bottom 10% of the workforce be identified and terminated. (He got that idea from his hero J. Welch).
I gave my "Thank you John / Rock on Chuck!" t-shirt to the garbage collector man. He wears it while picking up trash in my city.
Yes except for all the stupid wokeness. Focus on the business Chuck.
I believe Chuck has the biggest, or one of the biggest, jobs in the whole of IT. He has to transform a behemoth on-prem business into a cloud/software one. He deserves credit for steering Cisco towards selling software rather than giving it away with hardware as Cisco were doing. Had Cisco continued down that road it would now be in trouble I think So whilst I think there needs to be ongoing improvements, I am sure he knows that too, I think he is doing well.
Chuck has a tough job ahead balancing so many priorities in a behemoth of a company with its fingers in so many pies. Maybe he needs to simplify things and get Cisco thinking like a technical software company. I hope he can do it but it will not be easy. Things are going to get a lot more competitive in networking I think.
I like the part where a bunch of nobody cry babies critique a CEO. A role they're clueless to comprehend beyond being able to spell it.
5-stars. Would read again.
"$50 billion revenue. Refute that performance."
- Inflation. Cisco revenue was $40 billion in 2008. At 4% inflation, the revenue should be over $62 billion to merely match inflation.
- Acquiring revenue. Cisco overpays to acquire companies with revenue growth. If a company has $50 million in annual revenue... Cisco might pay $3.2 billion to acquire the company for that revenue. Essentially taking on debt for "revenue growth"
$50 billion revenue. Refute that performance.
The #1 place to woke
I am not sure what qualifies any one above to answer this question. What basis above opinions are based? Are they familiar to all challenges? Comparing to random company does now help
Jeetu or Nightingale couldn't handle the channel partners or government relations. Cisco isn't Amazon or Tesla, we aren't a technology company.
Jeetu or Nightingale would be great leaders for top down product innovation. Not sure how they would appeal to the board, investors or Cramer.
Just look at what Jeetu was able to do in turning Webex around in 12-14 months. Too bad they recognized too late they needed a new leader in Collab.
“Rock on, Chuck!”
Cisco is using woke social justice warrior campaigns for two reasons
- To DISTRACT from our lack of Cloud & Software products
- To DIVIDE employees while laying off thousands
Honestly any CEO (and leadership team) that isn't woke and spends their energy running a business instead would be an improvement.
Ignorance and denial, are more deadly than underperformance
Chuck Robbins, the #1 CEO the world has ever seen in the past 1000 years. Record holder and nobody in the near future is gonna break it. Go Go Chuck, you rock!!!
- CR
I think Chuck instills the company's culture which differentiates Cisco from other companies. He carries a tremendous weight on his shoulders managing a behemoth like Cisco. Who here thinks they can do a better job?
After 7 years, should there not be an obvious list of accomplishments?
$50 billion in annual revenue. That’s a record.
"Apple is a SW company with restrictions to run only on their HW."
Apple is a consumer brand, sophisticated company that is tactile and in the face of everyone with their products and user interface. Cisco is not. What Apple can get away with Cisco will never be able to.
There were rumours in 2008-2009 that Cisco were bidding to buy Apple! They were roughly the same size then. Add they done their engineers would never have produced the innovative products that they have turned out since, strangled with Cisco bureaucracy.
Worst CEO anybody has ever seen. He's done nothing but run cisco into the ground, destroy the business, provide zero leadership or vision, destroy employee moral, drive away our most talented employees who are actual winners and show his colors as a totally useless limousine liberal with all his pathetic disgusting social justice trash pandering.
How on earth is Chuck and his toxic ELT not been removed by the board?!
Apple is a SW company with restrictions to run only on their HW.
Chuck is the best of the best. He is the #1 CEO in the World.
"Maybe someone with strong SW background is needed to do the CEO role at Cisco, to radically and dramatically shake up the entire business into a true SW first business with the software being white-box capable."
How many 36 year old companies have successfully transitioned into software companies? That's like saying Pepsi should transition into a software company.
Chuck's job with Cisco is to manage the steady glide scope down to commoditisation. Quite sad really. Give Chuck some credit though, he is desperately try to inflate the importance of Cisco software and networking with SDA / SD-WAN / SASE / ACI-Anywhere. However, in truth, these are very complex (and expensive) solutions looking for problems that largely don't exist outside of the Cisco sales talk and when they do exist can be solved to 90% of the same extent and more cheaply with other solutions. The likes of Microsoft, AWS, VMware and Google will soon start to be able to complete aggressively in this SASE/WAN space, bundling it in with their other offers leaving simple tin to connect Cat5E cables on-prem at rock bottom commodity cost. Think: if there is no box involved and the function can be performed in software (i.e. almost everything nowadays) then Google/AWS/MSoft/others can also do it. Increasingly, less boxes will be involved with the magic done on the endpoint and in the cloud. Packet shift on-prem will be commodity. This is Chuck's challenge . Is he the man for it though, a promoted Cisco internal that only knows Cisco and has been there 25 years? Maybe someone with strong SW background is needed to do the CEO role at Cisco, to radically and dramatically shake up the entire business into a true SW first business with the software being white-box capable. Cisco is either in or out; cannot be a premium HW and SW company and demand your SW run on your own HW exclusively. That is not how SW companies operate.
Very sad, but what Cisco do is not a C-level concern anymore, it is simple packet movement and this does not excite C-level people. Cloud, and critically, being amongst the first to cloud to set the rules was everything and missing that was the death sentence for Cisco. Cisco are followers in this space and the ship as set sail.
His job is to manage the decline of a legacy network equipment manufacturer. Personally, I don't think Robbins is worth $25 million/year. He's nothing but another suit.
I'm sure the glassdoor ratings are as legitimate as Cisco's annual #1 place to work
Be honest, please.