The disaster C2E is coming to all in FY23 and will be responsible for layoffs to SAs since there is not enough SAs leaving yet. EK continues to disregard the facts about this self-promoting initiative that has caused the “Cisco SE” to become irrelevant to customers. The competition is getting excellent SAs as they are leaving CIsco and the competition is leveraging the C2E process against Cisco in providing technical relationships that C2E does not allow for. C2E is salary and career limiting. The more that they get into C2E the less they pay the field and the more they pay EK and SEDs that continue to promote this disaster.
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They are moving more out of services to the field to cover the SA and SIA losses. Problem is most times the SA and SIA are overrated anyways. However, the field managers couldn't do their jobs to start with when they had them years ago. That's why most services people were taken into a regional support model. This failed before, it will fail again. Back to letting them sc--w things up by not being able to keep up the p&l, not being able to manage people, not being able to manage the customer. Add center PMs with the same expertise (zero experience in more than half of paid engagements). The ability to hide cost overruns, project costs moved to other project hours, you name it. The things that are not scrutinized by corp because it shows as "success" for the bumbling elt.
C2E rarely works in practice. In theory it sounds interesting but it is only a smoke and mirrors initiative that hides the fact that they are virtualizing SEs into a pool, laying some off or not backfilling, then paying the remaining SEs and new SEs less money. I watched what happen to data center and it was a complete disaster but our SEDs kept on telling their SSEMs and SEMs that we all need to embrace it cause it is the way of the future. The competition is winning more and more as they don’t focus on poor initiatives and self-serving and self-promoting initiatives like this. They focus on customers. And they pay their SEs more. Just like what Cisco used to do many years ago.
C2E works at times....if I need a resource because my goto TSAs are out. The issue is sometimes an "expert" really isn't an expert. Add to that I have to spend a large amount of time getting the TSA ready for the meeting. What C2E does expose is the fact I rarely need the PSS. Myself and the SE I work with would rather just be the interface for the customer to the TSA....and not the PSS which will likely change ever year or two.
C2E motto: Fake it till you make it.
We are strongly encouraged by our leadership to say certain things about C2E during our skip level reviews. We are told to say certain things like “we are meeting the customers where they are”, “we get the right resource at the right time”, etc. None of that is true cause it is a disaster and cost us deals. We have been strongly discouraged from sharing any any issues we have with it such as it requires much more prep work, customers are unhappy with it, the cleanup we have to do after to try to salvage the opportunity, etc.