Dave Barry, vice president at AlterPoint, in his blog, paints a pretty negative picture about Cisco, likening the company to a religion whose popularity is waning.
He says that Cisco did well to recruit and indoctrinate disciples, in the shape of CCIEs, but they are no longer commanding the hike in salary they once could. He also panned Cisco for offering its partners its "castaways" - qualified job candidates that Cisco can't place at the company.
Barry says he sees three trends developing in the Cisco market:
1) Cisco is losing “members” because people don’t “believe” and are losing faith in exhange for reason…that Cisco is not the only path to networking nirvana. That they’ve topped out in terms of market share.
2) That Cisco’s products are becoming commoditized and there isn’t enough value for partners to pay competitive salaries to recruit smart people to install, manage and maintain Cisco equipment.
3) TCO is becoming a real issue and Cisco’s products really are increasingly difficult to manage and require far more headcount per device than they should. All the best jobs are at the “Vatican” in San Jose. The next best (read highest paying) are at the large enterprises and service providers who will pay up for technical talent because they have to make sure that the Cisco equipment stays up (and avoid problems like NTT in Japan just faced). . . And any talent that’s left is fought over by channel partners.
Has Barry correctly summed up Cisco's lot?
The Cisco Subnet blog is written by Network World managing editor Jim Duffy and is the official blog of Network World's Cisco Subnet community. The Cisco Subnet site is managed by Online Community Editor Julie Bort. Cisco Subnet is the independent voice of Cisco customers and is your gateway to daily Cisco news, blogs, opinion, books, prize giveaways and more. Visit the Cisco Subnet home page daily and while you are there, subscribe to the Cisco Alert e-mail newsletter, which includes news and views generated by the Cisco Subnet community as well as Cisco-related stories on Network World and elsewhere on the Web.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Tell me something new Barry
Barry,
The best jobs have always been with "the vatican."
And the second best jobs have always been with the customers and partners who are implementing the latest-and-greatest. (and yes, that's gotten more difficult lately as they are now solutions, not mere boxes)
And the "leftovers" if there is such a thing, well.. . they could be working at McDonalds.
Oh, and by the way. "The Vatican" is really all over the globe, as Cisco is doing core work in many many locations...
Losing momentum
Lets be real clear about Cisco, they are/were a great company but there are lots of great companies. They were in the right place at the right time and took advantage of it. For the record The Best Jobs at Cisco have always been in San Jose not the "mini Vaticans" all over the globe. The worst Jobs at Cisco have to be the District Managers that every Friday and Monday have to do their "Blood Commit" what would compel anyone to take that flogging week in week out? Life is way to short for the couple extra dollars it pays. The other worst Job at Cisco has to be the Cisco Channel guys who get nasty calls from Cisco Partners every day saying that their Cisco Account Manager flipped an account to their other most favorite partner because they would not Pre-Book an order. LOL..In the end Cisco is losing more today than ever because of the 3x premium and the horrible attitude's
If we're going to be clear we need to be accurate
Cisco is a global company and has great jobs all over the country and the world. Product development and Cisco business units are not all in San Jose.Not sure exactly what quantifies "the best jobs" but whatever.
Next there's no such title as a "District Manager". You're most likely referring to a regional manager. Finacial fiduciary requires accurate reporting. Cisco rolls week into months and months into quarters. Being a publicaly traded company accurate finacial reporting is required and mandated. Futhermore the term pre-booking implies illegal behavior is directly counter to the revenue recognition guidance.
Cisco is loosing more today then ever because ......???? That surely wasn't reflected in this months 3r Quarter conference call. But they're probably lying about that too.
Yes I know it is difficult for some but please don't deny
So are you saying that Pre-Booking orders does not exsist at Cisco? The Executive team will never admit it and they probably will show people the door if they catch them but when you get down to the Regional Manager level they are flogged weekly to produce or face the consequence.
They will have the Partner issue the order to Cisco even though the End Customer has not issued the actual Purchase Order. You never send the Partner a "You can return this if the Customer PO does not show up letter" but the Partner orders it anyway so that they are not cut out of the deal.
Your Quote:
"Futhermore the term pre-booking implies illegal behavior is directly counter to the revenue recognition guidance".
I would say the same thing to the street if I were in your shoes...also known as CYA
Miss your commit a couple weeks in a row and get ready for the 15 Minute PIP. By the way that is a term used by a former Ops Manager at Cisco. Another phrase for it is: putting a rep on "PLAN"
You are accurate in that Cisco has small offices all over the globe as well as fairly large regional centers. So, I will give you that one, however the Best Jobs are still in San Jose.
Clearly written by someone
Clearly written by someone whohas absolutely NO knowledge of Cisco, it culture, it's people or it's winning record.....
Clearly written by former Cisco person
Please, there are lots of us out here in the real world that know exactly how it is done at Cisco. When the options lost their luster and you could not make more money than your peer at Cisco's competition we all left. Plain and simple. All you College grads that think it is all good at Cisco get ready to have your eyes opened.
Somehow I knew before I even
Somehow I knew before I even stated that all of the pro-Cisco comments would be about stock price/earnings and nothing at all mentioned about technology. Actually that is the same poo i get from the the Cisco sales guys. Market share this, market share that.....
I have yet to have and network issues with any of my equipment that I found the root cause to be market share. I simply do not have the time to deal with "Cisco Networking" when all I know is the networking everyone else uses.
MY Cisco Experiences summed up:
Marketing
One month AireSpace sucks and SWAN is the bomb. Next month SWAN is the suck and AireSpace is the bomb.
R&D
Hey we silly puttied IOS onto the -insert bought companies product here. Now all you have to do is log into this, then this, no flick back to this...
Sales
Sure put your order out to bid will have our Partner (Zombie that will come to a halt should any input not return the output of the CCxxxx training) install it. -What? You are going to put support for 3 years on the bid requirement *fading sound* - oh know I'm melting!!!!!!!
A very PC answer. Sounds
A very PC answer. Sounds like it's coming from a VP or OD:O) For those of us who were in the trenches and had to provide the numbers on a weekly and sometimes a daily bases to the RM's, I have to agree with the orignal poster. The company has changed and so has the culture. People eventually get tired of the abuse and leave for much, much greener pastures and get the same pay!
Cisco going EOL
Cisco is truly facing the challenge the past year. If you really look at what Cisco boxes could do, you wouldnt be impressed comparing them to Nortel. Channel managers are somekind lost when faced with direct competitive questions. They were at the right place at the right time. I think they will loose a lot of market share within the next years as other vendors are focusing on strategies to grab their share. No matter what they do, product is ok but pricing is over priced. Customers are not willing to pay 25% more theses days. Will they react????
Nortel?
Not sure what you're smoking, but Nortel still isn't out of the gutter. Give me a break! I was given a tour of one of Nortel's labs a year ago and they were trying to pitch NetFlow like it was some new technology. Nortel LOL.............
Now Foundry and Force10 have some nice products that I could see pulling some of Cisco's market share in the enterprise switching arena, maybe if Juniper can get it's act together they may have a chance of taking a few shares of the Enterprise routing market (I won't hold my breath on that one).
Nortel? You made me laugh so hard I fell out of my chair...........