It's been a long time since I actually enjoyed doing my job here. Layoffs destroyed the culture here. It is questionable whether it is even possible to fix it anymore?
At this point, Cisco is a totally different company from the one where I started working.
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I would like to thank the OP for posting the same thing that has been posted here 1,000 times before. Your lack of awareness and originally exemplify the true core of Cisco culture as it has existed for at least three decades.
So what is this great time of which everyone speaks? The software quality was alway poor and likely beyond repair from nearly the beginning. The only difference between pre and post 2001 is how much you could get out of the stock and that change wasn’t driven by Cisco or it’s culture but by global economic events. Very small layoffs were essentially quarterly since then with a major rise in scale in response to the 2007 financial crisis. There were a lot of failed acquisitions along the way and the Cult of Chambers doesn’t seem to remember his responsibility for any of this.
Cisco needs a moral revamp of some kind for sure. A gathering to openly discuss on all levels where we are as a company. Some genuine and thoughtful ideas to fix the problems. A real strategic shift instead of the platitudes that are offered to the street.
More than that - we need honesty, integrity, and solid products that people want to buy if we are going to continue.
A strong culture requires a common set of values that gets your employees out of bed every morning. Cisco had that culture in the early days (pre-2000). It emanated from the fact that it was delivering world-changing innovation and was crushing the competition. Cisco took care of all employees with stock options so everyone benefitted from the company's success.
You just can't have that kind of culture when there's no innovation, customers no longer consider you strategic, and, ultimately, there's no growth. Today, everything is window dressing to do everything possible to prevent an acceleration of the descent of Cisco. It's really that simple.
Thank you John. Rock on Chuck.
Remember when we all used to wear our values and mission statement next to our badges? Gone for at least a decade.
Probably only 20-25% of the company are long-timers who've even been w/ the company for a decade or longer.
I know I threw away all of those badge cards back in 2016 when I was LR'd. I'd collected them from '06-'15 and only kept the most recent one on my lanyard just to "pretend" that I cared enough about changing the way we live, learn and work or whatever those culture cards said. I never understood why they produced new ones every year as the mission never change, but the vision or execution had to be re-worded to say the same thing, but with different words. Ooh, look, we have a new background on our shiny new mission badges! :-)
"Again, layoffs have nothing to do with its culture."
You sir are terribly wrong. I'm an old timer that made it to VP. I have witnessed layoffs destroy the morale and instilling fear and doubt in loyal employees. I have seen mandatory performance ratings pitting employees against other fellow employees. I have seen JC surfing on the internet wave pretending he had anything to do with it. You forget how we all wished he'd shut the h3ll up during earning calls as his clueless comments dragged the stock down.
Every company hires new talent. You can't blame newcomers for ruining the party. It's very much the lack of written culture guidelines that's got us where we are. Every manager makes their own rules, promotes arbitrarily, creating a very uneven employee experience across the company.
We're hosed if this ELT stays in place. It's game over 7-8 years from now.
Layoffs have nothing to do with its culture.
The culture in 2000 to 2001 was the best, and the company was run by JC. Throughout the offices worldwide, there was a vibrant, energetic, motivational, and very American culture with teamwork mindset. But those days are gone. Don't even hope that some day those days will return.
For the past two decades or so, the company started hiring more and more new grads with no professional experience or those in 20's and 30's with limited work experience who simply obey what they're told to do by their managers, and those young meek staff have been tamed to utter no word at any meeting or one-on-one's.
It's natural that professional career-minded people from outside the company get so shocked and disappointed by the fact, and soon realize there is no room for them to further develop their career here, not even to utilize their past experiences they had gained at previous companies. Just feel so unreasonable, and they leave the company.
The culture changes for the past 20 years, I believe, are ascribed to HR and post JC C-class people. Again, layoffs have nothing to do with its culture.
:@ttx+1ieMdshY is spot on. Pulse survey results keep showing global lack of trust in the company's future. That's across all teams, everywhere. Scores are at an all-time low with 3.4 average. There's actually no culture anymore. Remember when we all used to wear our values and mission statement next to our badges? Gone for at least a decade.
As a company, Cisco is in a managed decline. The opportunity for Cisco to create a new wave of growth passed when the Board hired another salesman to lead the company. There was simply no way Robbins was ever going to have the ability to deliver industry leading innovation for customers.
Within the company, there are many executives making millions of dollars managing the decline. They know what their role is. Their job is not to lead and motivate the employee base to lead the industry. Their job is to minimize the decline in revenue and remove as many costs as possible. Employees are an afterthought.
The layoff culture Cisco built created a looming cloud of darkness- it just sits over employee's heads, no matter how much "sunshine" the ELT tries to blow at us through distraction. (Oprah, etc.) Everyone knows that layoffs happen yearly... that high performers and genuinely good people are let go too. A lot of employees see that and think, "what's the point in working hard if I'm at risk no matter what I do?" Cisco is not backfilling those roles, which means the rest of us are saddled with picking up the extra work (at lower-than-industry pay.) It's a perfect storm for demotivation. Hard to muster up the drive or desire to give 90% let alone 100%. Some work as hard as they can just as a matter of personal pride. But Cisco has an extremely tough battle ahead if they want to turn this around.