Last time I looked, Cisco had more VPs than it has Principal Engineers.
Now, whether you think PEs are useful or not, that number is completely insane.
Oh, and we have over 4 times more directors than PEs.
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PE title needs to be earned.
Since when?
PE title needs to be earned. Assuming in the units of 10yrs . Job has been moving to india; then, how can they build engs up to the ladder?
Goes all the way to the bottom. An engg is surrounded by,PM, TPM, QA, lead, manager, sr mngr, dir, scrum master . Pity the sole dev
When was Cisco a technical company? Our last 3 CEOs have been salesmen with zero technical abilities... that's over a 30+ year span
Cisco "was" a technical company.
Cisco is not a technical company, it's a testical company. In my experience of working at Cisco UK SE team, the management always acted as if their pa----s were in a twist; the VP and the SED always appeared to have a ball ache on calls. There was always some doom and gloom emails going around about cost-cutting, asking for VP level permissions before we could meet customers, having to pay to attend the virtual SEVT even! I did not work there for too long, certainly not as long as most people I met there. I started few years back at the SE team in Cisco UK, sort of figured out the legacy mindset and tech they were peddling, got sick of the petty politics (even within my team, takes just one sour apple), koolaid culture and micromanaging chain of command , and left for a competitor. I have more work now but earn at least 2.5 times more too. I heard from some co-workers about the serial layoffs and came for a peekaboo for old times sake. Not much has changed I see. Well, for folks who still want to hang in there at the cost of their professional self-respect and be talked down and patronised by an SED who is grossly underqualified to hold the position: May the force be with you.
The CIOs jobs is to cut labor costs by sending jobs overseas... no technical background is needed for that
Let the grunt contract worker without a 401k or PTO have a technical background.
Or a PoliSci major for a CIO
Cisco is a Sales & Marketing company. Why would a technical company have a used car salesman as a CEO?
There are many non-technical yes men in engineering.
There used to be an innovation slide in many decks with a timeline of Cisco firsts that we brought to the market. It was packed full of stuff such as PoE and numerous standards. We don't see that slide any more. I wonder why? Coincidentally, it was about the time that CR became CEO when we stopped innovating. Coincidence?
At least hairdressers and telephone handset sanitizers do something useful. The same can’t be said for either Cisco’s managerial or technical leadership.
When you have SE/SA/TSA and engineers doing licensing and TAC entitlement checks and sorting out shxx then something is wrong. Company lost its way. BSA has much more kudos than tech people and that is not right. Pity it come to this.
Cisco hasn't delivered any industry-changing innovation since the 90s. They're simply living off of the massive networking installed base created by that innovation.
Given that most of the actual technical talent has run out of the door, there's little chance that Cisco will ever deliver another wave of industry-changing innovation of that magnitude.
Padma W is coming back as Cisco CEO. Double woke.
Been this top heavy for over a decade, and look where the company is heading now. Too many so called visionaries, self proclaimed Valley movers, all talks nothing getting done.
Chuck keeps all his sales buddies as VP's and could care less about keeping anyone with technical skills
Is it, though?