I used to report directly to senior management. Then two layers were introduced. Intially was this director who soon hired his friend to be the manager. Both are useless overheads. The first line manager is not technical. Not only he refused to participate any technical discussions, he is also not able to comprehend technical issues. He constantly asks us to write down the technical issues so that he can read it out to VP in the weekly. Software quality under his management has gone done exponentially but there is no business impact because we don't generate much revenues for Cisco.
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Most are bootlickers and stooges simply looking to climb the ladder. They are generally technically incompetent and have little in the way of empathy or leadership skills.
My current RM is a total mo--n and the biggest yes man ever… guess that is how he survived 15+ years… more than willing to throw is team under the bus if needed!
I ran into an old Director while running errands over the holidays. A complete worthless enlightened one who made his Cisco career out of schmoozing, building an organization of his same ethnicity only, and being a politician. He walked up to me and asked if I remember him, I said “yes”; and that was it. He asked what I was doing these days. I said “shopping”, and indeed kept on shopping. I heard enough of his crud on conference calls, and answered enough of his rediculous questions over the years, to indeed warrant a two word (two words too many) further conversation. Hopefully (but probably not), Cisco will wake up and realize the ZERO value these clowns bring to a one great company.
Many frontline managers (FLMs) lack technical skills, making them unable to understand technical topics or grasp what is happening in their projects. As a result, they provide no real value to their companies. Worse, their actions often work against the company’s best interests.
It's been my experience in engineering when most companies only had a five layer stack for the engineering titles where the fourth level was Senior Engineer and was the terminal state for most engineering careers. A few with really broad skills that could keep projects distributed across sites in a larger program together and a few with very narrow skills for a critical specialty make Principal Engineer. Because most can't get past Senior Engineer management is the only alternative to keep moving up a ladder.
The interesting thing is most companies I worked for those managers did not involve engineers when doing project and program planning and the reason they went management is because they didn't have the technical chops to do that kind of front end work. Scrum seems to have extended this with the idea a marketing person without an engineering background has to do the requirements, preliminary design and critical design down to the point where you can spoon feed children 1-5 day work units. The result is no modern software system I interact with actually works anymore, from appliances to cars to phones to tablets to computers to servers to networking gear to..., and too often the Wile E. Coyote Super Geniuses store the state that trashes the system in persistent storage to insure turning it off and on again won't correct the situation.
Over time too many "software engineers" will never have taken on anything larger than a few day's work and despite being promoted to Technical Leader 37 they'd get destroyed by Engineer 1s from 40 years ago who were able to lead small 12-18 month projects right out of school. That was the pivot point from assembly on bare iron and FORTRAN on minicomputers to modern languages, processors and operating systems and looking at static analysis on Cisco's large C code bases that inversion remains to this day.
Many frontline managers (FLMs) lack technical skills
In my experience they are people who have technical skills, but wrongly believe that career success is correlated with how quickly they can remove themselves from technical duties.
But the FLM doesn't have any real decision making power or business responsibilities, so they end up running meetings, reviewing documents, doing paperwork or other trivial tasks and fall out of their technical competence over time.
I think these people will be toast post-Cisco. They don't code or do technical work anymore, but they have no meaningful management exposure either. Who wants them? I suspect many will scramble to get back in to technical work but will fail to pass interviews.
Sounds like the OP was so annoying that the VP said, "I can't get rid of this person because reasons, but I also can't have them report to me anymore", and hired the Dir...then, the Dir realized it, and hired the Mgr. Mgr has no other option.
You're probably safe from an LR, but no one likes you.
Many frontline managers (FLMs) lack technical skills, making them unable to understand technical topics or grasp what is happening in their projects. As a result, they provide no real value to their companies. Worse, their actions often work against the company’s best interests.
Rather than contributing meaningfully, these managers focus on micromanagement, excessive meetings, and creating unnecessary issues. For instance, some may turn minor matters—like not sharing selfies in a Webex group—into major dramas. They trivialize team meetings, engaging in unprofessional discussions (such as asking engineers whether they prefer the "language of cats" or "language of dogs"). Engineers who do not participate in such nonsense may even face retaliation, including job loss. This kind of behavior not only undermines team morale but also jeopardizes critical projects.
While some managers without a technical background manage to adapt and align with the company’s goals, the majority of non-technical FLMs add little to no value from a business or technical perspective. They are often the first to engage in social or DEI events and merely repeat what is said in company-wide meetings, without offering any original insights. Their primary means of control is threatening individual contributors (ICs) with performance improvement plans (PIPs), when in reality, these FLMs should be the ones under performance review.
Instead of supporting their teams, these managers spend their time issuing threats, engaging in favoritism, and even blackmailing ICs into providing positive peer reviews in exchange for personal favors. In one-on-one meetings, they often do not even know the names of their team’s key deliverables. Their influence extends beyond their direct reports, as they also pressure contractors and employees from other teams, warning that failure to comply could result in termination within weeks. It is not surprising why the engagement pulse is so low, and when it is occurring, those kind of FLM organize meetings to enforce all ICs to provide their opinion
I've never seen a case where someone was removed two levels from power that wasn't ultimately disappeared. The only thing that makes Cisco's incompetence at any level different from most other companies is that Cisco can charge enough to stay afloat despite all the failure.
Quite a few engineers are overhead as well.
you manager thinks you are overhead(because you are not their tribe) and he will LR you in next cycle to replace it with tribe. Moderators please delete this comment...
Cisco is a rest home for D-list middle managers
they are surrounded by D-list ICs who will grovel and hang on every utterance
CR himself is basically a middle manager who somehow got Peter-Principled into the CEO role...but his operating model is just that of a paper pusher who has no strategic capability
most Cisco employees have never worked for anything but D-list companies so everyone has made peace with their fate
Be careful and watch for signs of next LR. These bobble heads usually target people who know what they are doing because they make all over heads look bad
Time to bring DOGE and Musk onboard.
You ask too many questions they will LR you.. esp with non technical managers/Directors, they have very high ego ..
Managers that can not give straight answers are a red flag.