SA Pooling with C2E and Agile TSA

With the SAs going to a pool model, the SA as a competitive differentiation will start to fade away. The competitors know this and more importantly customers know this. The Cisco SE used to mean something to customers. EK has destroyed the Cisco SE organization with his C2E and Agile TSA direction. Lower pay for SAs are on the way. This is one of the primary reasons of C2E and Agile TSA is to pay the field less and to provide justification for LRs of SAs.

The Cisco SE organization is turning into a call center. EK is calling these “Circle of Excellence” centers. They are far from it. The Cisco SE will be measured by utilization within C2E. Keep in mind that C2E DOES NOT capture everything else that the Cisco SE does. EK does not care as the only thing he wants to know is your utilization. If you are not at 100% utilization then you will get more workload added to you which will diminish your other initiatives. Your other initiatives DO NOT matter to SE Leadership.

Ask your SEDs and SEMs about the utilization metric and why does it exist.

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I recently made the transition to a "Center of Excellence" and "C2E" model.

I have never been more underutilized and bored in my entire career. I feel like I am going nowhere and am given little opportunity to prove myself, build a resume, and, thus, progress my career.

My goal is to seek a new job opportunity at a new company in CY22.

Eric Knipp is a cancer to the SE/TSA organization. He has to be getting payoffs from competitors for all the destruction he's doing at cisco.

As a former Cisco SE in Commercial Select, I left some time ago. I never thought I would leave Cisco. After seeing how our SE leadership (SEM, SSEM, SED) treated us for way too long, it was very clear that they take SEs for granted. There is many SEs leaving Commercial due to the leadership. Once I realized that there is no career growth due to the pooling direction and arrogant leadership, I made the decision to look elsewhere. Some of my peers went to other segments to get out of Commercial while others went to competition. To be fair, Cisco prepared me well but unfortunately Cisco is no longer the gold standard. I went to a competitor and immediately got a 20% increase just on base pay and the commission is significantly more. In addition, the RSUs I received were significant.

My advice to all the SAs / SEs is to look at your options and entertain the competition. The culture at my new company is so much better. The leadership here has been very clear that there are things that Cisco did well that they have incorporated but they are also not making the same mistakes as Cisco also which is why Cisco is in the situation it is now after years of self-inflicted mistakes.

C2E and Agile TSA are a complete disaster.

You really need a new hobby. Anyway, you have it wrong - SEs haven’t been technical for years. Because good ones go where pay is higher, the portfolio is too large to be deep on, and management pushes them to be more fluffy/salesy.

LoL.

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SA Pooling with C2E and Agile TSA

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