I've watched the decay from within engineering over the past couple of years. People can speculate on the reason (poor culture, bad leadership, non-stop layoffs, low morale, etc.) Regardless of the cause the problem for Juniper is that the engineering BU doesn't have a deep bench of "superstar" talent. These top performers have been quitting en masse over the past couple of years. Replacement reqs have been issued to backfill these positions but each replacement is significantly lower quality. The replacements are usually inexperienced younger people or filled in India. Cost, vs quality, seems to be the top priority. As with any larger company it has momentum due to existing product lines. However, these products eventually become obsolete and new innovation is required. However, without the superstar talent, Juniper is unable to innovate. Derivative products that are late to market become increasingly common and marketshare starts to errode. Management tries to protect earnings by doing more layoffs. This has the effect of erroding morale even more and the remainig top performers will find new jobs. The layoffs and erroding market share also makes it impossible to attract top talent. The downward spiral is impossible to stop. My prediction is that after a couple of years of layoffs and decay the market cap will be low enough that the only way out is to carve up the company and sell it off in pieces.
Originally posted by @PWR3mTg-3yob.