Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

The reason security sales got big goals is because portfolio sellers got a dedicated bucket to go out and have security conversations. Will it work? Honestly - it might. Our security offerings aren’t great but when have an army of people asking and pushing about security that should drive pipeline and bookings to security related overlays. I do think they should have a lag like increase your goals in FY26 but I do agree with the logic.

This is really an enlightening thread! Confirms everything I’ve been thinking!

SBG is full of low quality leaders with terrible attitude, there is no value for merits in this org. Leader just take Gartner's buzz words to re-name the old legacy existing products. Cisco is struggling to catch up with existing / common features from PAN and FTN. Like HyperShield, Secure Access is another product, the team is the worst....hardly anyone works in that team. not much docs, details, or any development for last 2 years. if you have any technical questions they won' t reply. God know how to position Multi-Cloud Defense alone with Secure Workload and HS. And now most sales leaders are leaving....Wish TS leave Cisco and join back to PAN

Look at Cisco's competitors, most of which are in the $4B-$8B of annual revenue range, and look at what $4B of annual revenue from Splunk would do for them, then look at how it's covered up some but clearly not all of the massive revenue losses Cisco has generated since 2023. You have to ask "what can Cisco do to generate as much new revenue as an entire competitor every year?" The long pole in that tent will not be solved by beating sales harder.

Anything that has to be applied across all of Cisco's routing and switching portfolios from management to security where the existing behaviors are inconsistent from card to card in a single chassis which are inconsistent across branches which are inconsistent across whole chassis which are inconsistent across a bunch of broken operating systems with programs overrunning by years and not being fieldable a year after FCS is going to remain a pipe dream as it has for the past couple decades during which Cisco pretended they were finally going to take manageability and security seriously. Compare this to say Arista with one OS and one consistent programmatic interface. Cisco's technical debt is far more than endless bugs and will be the cost that keeps on taking.

Mencius Moldbug and Thiel are running everything.
do your own research

Cisco is in the security business? A jumble of dozens of none-interoperating products and software of poor quality with different licensing mechansims with no coherent theme running through them at all?

You should read today's article on crn.com about Cisco security

They are daring everyone to leave. Year end is going to see a crush of people leaving on their own. Then they LR the wrong people and keep the useless afterwards. LC will love her self after that one too because they will use AI to do it with.

Not in SBG but have heard about hypershield. Is there really no demo for it? WTF is Cisco spending money on?

Wait. I thought splunk was going to save us.

Customers don’t see us as a thought leader and we are becoming less and less relevant every quarter. I’m not sure if I can even be fixed unless there is a dramatic shift in leadership from RM to SS himself!

Have to agree with this. Many good people forced out

4% growth is not going to cut it when the competition is growing double digits. Chuck is already hinting that change is needed in security sales organization. He has continued the same disastrous path as EC with the same underperforming weak results.

SS got rid of all the Americas ODs and brought in his people. Same weak results of 4% growth.

Performance Management is SS’s only option left to blame someone else so that means Performance Improvement Plans and LRs for security RMs and security sellers.

Chuck is going to bring someone else in to run security sales. PM will be gone too.

Palo Alto has Cisco beat so badly Firepower just needs to be done way with.

Pan sales b team didn’t work out so will they go after fortinet’s b team?