25 years ago genuinely a great place to work with innovation
25 years ago the stock was still climbing (well, for another week or so) which is the only reason it was "good" back then. A lot of Cisco's "innovation" was tens of billions in acquisitions filling every niche, starving out competitors. Acquisitions that move the needle on $54B in revenue are now longer low hanging fruit and the engineering staff that was never up to the current task remains ineffective.