How did Cisco lose its way? I'll be here 16 years this week and reflecting back I hardly recognize this once great great and proud company. I care deeply about Cisco but wonder how we got to this current state of dysfunction. I am beyond devastated. How can we reclaim the glory and greatness?
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The beginning of the end for Cisco was Chambers’ implementation of boards and councils. At that point, it was clear there was no vision and complete risk aversion at the top of the company.
It was clear then that the cash cow of routing and switching was maturing and that there was no ability to find the company’s next growth market.
When the Board replaced Chambers with another sales guy, they signaled that the corporate strategy was going to be managed decline. Since then, everything done by the ELT has simply been performative hand-waving.
Strong technical leaders that left Cisco many years ago went on to build competing companies, because leadership didn't listen (it's hard to do when gorging in excess self-adulation). Kodak did something similar, but apparently our leadership didn't study the history of other failed technology companies that were once dominant.
Interesting read about Kodak: https://startuptalky.com/kodak-bankruptcy-case-study/
This is where CSCO is headed.
I think downfall of Cisco started when they started not respecting talent and to try retaining them, they were too arrogant to think that talent can be replaced with just cheaper folks by outsourcing or just use red badges. Constant layoffs every 6 months unprecedented for any tech company probably ranked #1 right at the top in terms of layoffs is not helping in any way shape or form. There is a lot of corruption, nepotism, favorism , gender bias on both sides, not promoting people who deserve. The ELT team has no sense of direction top talent has already jumped ship, their only strategy at this point seems to be constant layoffs. To aquire splunk for 28 billion is simply atrocious not sure who approved it. Sad to say we are taking intel route and probably will seize to exist soon. This was once a great company decades ago but not anymore.
We started trading very strong technical talent for weaker employees for pennies on the dollar by pushing so much of the organization to India. It looked good on paper, but created a giant set of other problems that, ironically, ki-led the sacred cow. DEI protected and accelerated this process.
I have no desire to “save” Cisco. This company has done nothing for me besides a regular paycheck with little to no professional growth.
You've been here 16 years -- this should come as no surprise. The move to a political agenda vs. a customer-centered technology company was like a light switch. In this case, everything just went dark.
We miss all of the big tech boats. The ships are sailing without us, whilst in the harbor we still speak , like we discovered America first without setting a foot in the water.
Perhaps we should embark on a partnership with Wipro or HCL for AI.. as it did work out so well for cloud....
DEI and ESG ruined this company. Along with missing the jump to Cloud and also with AI, soon.
Lack of diversity in the engineering team. Too too too many software engineers from the same country with a strong nepotism
Putting JC in charge isn’t going to help - he’s part of the reason we are in this mess. Re: CLOUD! His big ideas were paying $billionS for a cable box company(among other stupid M&A nonesense) that we later resold for pennies on the dollar. No thanks
The employee base is very old for a tech company. They will need to cut 80% of anyone 45 and older and backfill with young, hungry talent. 1000% reality.
First step is fire Chuck and his crew
Someone (consulting/law firm) needs to identify the political cor-upt managers and hold dem accountable. They are collecting paychecks and abusing layoff waves to get ridd of folks who recognized those practices.