During Chambers' time, there was a very clear strategy and vision: to be number one or two in every product line that Cisco sells, combined with a vision to change the way we live, learn, and play. Today, there is no vision or strategy at Cisco. What is important is to maintain profit margins only. Over the past decade, Cisco has lost significant market share in every product line it sells, and in some of them it has long since ceased to be number one or two.
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@h8 No one has the guts to ask half of these questions on the beat!
“Hey Fran, instead of ranting about how good Cisco is, why don’t you and the ELT team come clean and tell all of us about your planned BS LR’s! Who is taking the hit for y’all this time because.” Love to see that happen!
the company's stock is the product and strategy. Cisco's primary product is CSCO.
Wrong place to ask, should ask this in Cisco Beat!
Corporates' answer: There is no plan, other than to Manage the Decline.
@f0 you may have borrow JC's flip camera. i am pretty sure he is the only person who had one. wonder if he ever finally figured out how to use it.
I think we should bring back the flip camera
They want to sell platforms, not services. To add, they want little part in the actual sale. That group can go if they use partners as a force multiplier for sales and the services part with the hope that somehow AI agents can provide the level of services that were csco direct. Looks good on paper. Hopefully they get rid of the entire ELT and whomever dreams this up. One thing has been tried many times and failed, the second may be fine for small/mid sized customers with a high risk tolerance but this will get the big customers a little concerned I would think.
@bh NGL this is a strategy we can all rally behind
Yes, during Chambers' time we had an additional badge to wear behind our name badge w/ the company's Mission Statement which included "to change the way we live, learn, work & play" and I, for one, wore it with pride. Company morale was very high in the mid-late 90s; we couldn't hire fast enough and every single employee got stock options, even the mail room clerk.
Can someone explain to me what Cisco's strategy is?!
That's a perfect question for your manager at your next 1:1!
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, If no one else can help and if you can find them. Maybe you can hire, The A-Team.
@bd oh look, someone in the "yes sir!" Leadership chain joined the chat. Lol
The “vision” is to throw as much poor quality, overly priced, complex sh-t at a customer, tack on “AI” on to every discussion and hope something sticks. That “strategy” is wearing very thin.
The stock price is down to share buy back and nothing to do with market perceived success at what Cisco is doing.
@b5 Well said. People are negative Nancies on this forum. They only like negative news! That is why you got a bunch of dislikes clearly.
Cisco has become a company run by financiers. Nothing good will come of this. For all those fools who only look at the stock price, the one who laughs last laughs. Only this time it will end in big tears and a sharp axe to thousands of employees.
During Chambers' time, there was a very clear strategy and vision:
- To acquire instead of develop
- Go from one broken routing/switching OS to four
- Quarterly layoffs
- Rank-n-yank
- Wage freezes
- Dry promotions
- Forced vacation time where developers who never had on call duties were expected to respond in 15 minutes with no on call pay
- Bizarre products on which Cisco could never execute
- A stock that was stuck flapping around $25 after going from $82 to $8
- Title inflation like I've never seen at any other company
- Budgets overrunning by factors of dozens which would bankrupt other companies
- His "don't fall into the trap of helping other people" was translated by management as "we don't know what you do and don't want to know. We judge people by how we feel about them and if you help someone and we feel better about them you're the one we're going to fire." If you can't grow the people around you you can't lead.
Some of this and the being "number one or two in every product line" were cut and pasted from Chamber's idol "Neutron" Jack Welch of General Electric, another company that had a major collapse after Welch drove them into financial services which didn't do so well in 2008. They also had been the world's most valuable company.
During Chambers' time, there was a very clear strategy and vision:
- To acquire instead of develop
- Go from one broken routing/switching OS to four
- Quarterly layoffs
- Rank-n-yank
- Wage freezes
- Dry promotions
- Forced vacation time where developers who never had on call duties were expected to respond in 15 minutes with no on call pay
- Bizarre products on which Cisco could never execute
- A stock that was stuck flapping around $25 after going from $82 to $8
- Title inflation like I've never seen at any other company
- Budgets overrunning by factors of dozens which would bankrupt other companies
- His "don't fall into the trap of helping other people" was translated by management as "we don't know what you do and don't want to know. We judge people by how we feel about them and if you help someone and we feel better about them you're the one we're going to fire." If you can't grow the people around you you can't lead.
Some of this and the being "number one or two in every product line" were cut and pasted from Chamber's idol "Neutron" Jack Welch of General Electric, another company that had a major collapse after Welch drove them into financial services which didn't do so well in 2008. They also had been the world's most valuable company.
@an there was a "complaint" in that person's post? You're hostility suggests you need to go take some meds and get some mental stability help. These are really tough times, no shame in asking for help.
@aa that happens when you cut labors costs by laying off thousands of red badges.
“Number go up” - Cisco
@ac You get a grip you negative fu-k! Better yet, quit! We’re better off without people like you who fu--ing complain all the time. Piece of sh-t
@aa Stocks are up as the market is in a rally atm. They were trending back down no more than a few days/weeks ago. Furthermore the market was not happy about our last earnings call. good grief get a grip. "hype" will fade and csco will be left behind.
@OP Look at Ciscos’s stocks. They don’t look down to me. In fact it looks pretty good to me
you answered your own question.