In order to stay competitive and survive or even thrive (assuming the executive team has a big shakeup), what should be Juniper's strategy for the next few years? How can Juniper instill loyalty in its employees after the regular and stealth layoffs?
12 replies (most recent on top)
If I didn’t know better I would say that Cisco planted someone on our senior staff to run the company into the ground. How else would you explain the blatantly incompetent behavior at the top like looking the other way when MM continues wasting money on useless projects with no ROI or even a way to measure associated revenue results?
@YCX5Pm6-2vfl . "Juniper is not down and out. We can still turn this ship around. Lots of things have to change, but it's possible folks..."
Wat?
You need technical innovators. Not enough of the truly great ones around in every area to keep the ship afloat on ALL sides. Attrition/layoffs/braindrain is high enough to cripple the other "hopeful" work that may be gaining traction.
Just take a pulse of quality/customer complaints year-over-year to gauge some of this.
"Me too" catch-up products don't work either as market share is already taken and aggressively defended. The only way out is to innovate ahead of group-think and Juniper hasn't been like that in a decade.
To turn around Juniper, the CPO needs to be fired. This is highly unlikely due to his connections. He will make sure he and his cronies benefit while taking Juniper down.
@YApuUQu-sho Juniper is not down and out. We can still turn this ship around. Lots of things have to change, but it's possible folks. For one the stealth layoffs have to stop and severance packages have to get better for certain countries, including the US. Senior leadership also needs to change! Someone who can instill trust in it's employees again!
@YApuUQu-1yrt Any Cloud expert worth his salt has likely already left Juniper. They can double their comp elsewhere at a FANG, etc. They're not naive about their possibilities. The "pulse" of any situation is as far away as a simple Google search.
And why would any cloud expert come to Juniper unless you pay him a King's ransom. And even if they do come, they still need an army of mercs you need to pay really generously to at least FANG level and the budget isn't there for that unless you close an entire business arm for that to fund it.
Cisco actually did something like this a couple of years back. They fired a TON of people in diminished businesses and reinvested into software. Their gamble miraculously seems to have paid off. At least Cisco fired in a couple of GIANT swings, and not weekly/monthly layoffs stealth which absolutely corrode morale!
@YApuUQu-1chl Not everything you mention on the list is something Juniper should go after, however cloud is. Juniper has a lot of catching up to do.
Reality is there is no play book for success in the networking world. And to make matters more difficult, the definition of success for networking companies itself is constantly changing with new computing paradigms, the advent of (edge) cloud technologies, IoT, autonomous vehicles, everything-as-a-service, 5G mobile etc.
Juniper has not kept up with any of these new developments. Fake it till you make it can only take you so far because everything catches up to you. So, let's stop the faking. It's time to face the music.
@YApuUQu-sho, Extreme has acquired a few companies and actually allowed their products and employees to do well. So have HPE, Cisco and many more in the networking space. Juniper, on the other hand, has done the opposite. Don't be so quick to bash other companies when juniper is already doing worse in development, marketing and sales when compared to others in the industry.
Focus on problems within, and not of other's.
@YApuUQu-sho YUP. Reinvention is absolutely necessary to avoid being swept into obscurity--a shadow of its former self.
Silicon Valley hyper time means 3-5 yr period to see what will happen.
IMO, there has been so much damage done in the past few years that there is no more hope for Juniper. Juniper will still survive, however it will be similar to other loser networking companies such as Extreme networks. We live in a hyper-competitive world, make a mistake and competitors will crucify you. Arista and Palo Alto will make sure that Juniper will be kept out of switching and security. Routing demand will continue to dwindle since there is not much difference between a router and switch these days. Service provider routing is the only hope left for Juniper, it should make sure it does not screw up there and cede to rivals such as Alcatel and Huawei.
Everyone has an opinion here though
Dude if you are looking for juniper strategy on layoff forum then good bless you 🤪