Long time ago we used to hire only the best. I am not even sure how we attract anyone nowadays.
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Cisco is number 1 place to work for Millennials.
Yep, this isn’t a joke.
That's right. In recent years, Cisco J has been hiring new grads or people with just a few year career experience in 20's and 30's. Those people don't have any expertise.
Besides, those who have been staying for over 20 years have almost no expertise in anything, but they're the ones who are acting as managers and customer delivery leads. They have no experience outside Cisco J, hence know almost nothing.
What is sad, they don't even know how incompetent or incapable they themselves are. "The frog in the well knows nothing of the great ocean..."
Once Chambers went off the deep end with his Boards and Councils, it was obvious there weren't any senior leaders with viable, executable strategies to grow Cisco outside of networking.
After that, the only way top talent joined Cisco was through an acquisition. As soon as the golden handcuffs were off, that top talent ran away as fast as they could.
You're right, a long time ago Cisco preached about hiring only top talent. I think that mantra dwindled with each acquisition. Then much of top talent pool dwindled with each Early Retirement Package (3 total), subsequent (age related) LRs, constant re-orgs and low morale.
We are not here to be the best, we are here to keep shareholders happy and keep employees in their safe-place. Scared.