People are complaining that they are getting the boot because they are old. Age has little to do with it, but energy, freedom of thought, creativity and the ability to take risks are what Cisco needs. Unfortunately when your 40, have a mortgage and 2 kids and you've been overpaid for too long, you're ability to process these traits are extremely limited.
Why did Cisco have to buy AppDynamics for $3.6bn, when they have teams of engineers who could have built the same product first? Why did Cisco not come out with HyperConverged before Nutanix who is now eating Cisco's UCS lunch? Why did Slack hit the market before Spark? The list goes on and on.
The reason is the majority of our engineers don't process the traits for the company needs to be successful. Until Cisco sorts this out, it will need to continue buying its self out of trouble unfortunately.