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Cisco Exec: Turnover In Engineering No Problem
alphadogg (971356) writes The engineering reorganization currently underway at network giant Cisco Systems is intended to streamline product development and delivery to customers. That it is prompting some high profile departures is an expected byproduct of any realignment of this size, which affects 25,000 employees, says Cisco Executive Vice President Pankaj Patel, who is conducting the transformation. "People leave for personal business reasons," Patel said in an interview with Network World this week. "Similar transformations" among Cisco peers and customers "see personnel change of 30% to 50%."
No old people, they have too much experience! We need to do things fast and poorly! So we can sell total crap to complete idiots!
Just today, I sat in on a lecture that basically said, engineers can expect about 2 years of work and then be put on the chopping block. Get used to it they say.
Screw that! Do your own startup! Unionize! Fight back at the 'man'. Come on you American wimps! You can beat Cisco with something new!
Anyone who can get another job elsewhere leaves. Anyone who is really good gets head hunted or starts their own business. What are you left with?
So they are down to developing customer centric solutions while leveraging their key synergies. Anything better than riding the corporate wave?
Society use your Sciences
When the PHB gets fired^H^H^H^H^H re-organized out and comes looking for a gig at your new company (because you were smart enough to leave when the getting was good), load all torpedo tubes with specific poor behaviors and fire away. So far that has happened for me twice. I am that lucky.
I may just be interpretting this discussion different than everyone else here, but assuming every developer is happy with company, and company decides to implement a new development philosophy or production model (for strategic / financial / etc..) reasons, wouldn't it be sensible and actually expected that a non-trivial number of developers won't be happy with said changes?
For example, If my company went from Dev and IT groups to merging them into devops, some people are going to be rocking the idea, and a shit ton may be unhappy about the change and decide to move on. DevOps isn't any more or any less better for an employee, but it means a different set of tasks for that developer to live in. Maybe this change will significantly improve workplace productivity and the change isn't only merited, but essential for the company's survival. Same with, say dropping support for Windows/Linux/Mac/etcc OS's and just supporting a smaller set of OS's. Some would say there are valid reasons to adopt the standard (less IT burdens), and others who use said dropped OS's will be more willing to leave.
To assume that the company simply doesn't care about its developers walking out is a little bit of an overstatement. Many won't like a change (regardless of what it is), and if you're going to leave, you might as well leave when you perceive a negative change in your job.
Bye!
Personal and business reasons are actually opposite. These people are being fired.
Lest somebody misunderstand, the very essence of an enterprise (any enterprise) is that it is a bundle of labour and capital whose essential structure and identity is independent of and more persistent than the labour it employs. The identity behind its labour component is no more important than the identity of its capital component.
It is for this reason that any contemporary HR policy is aimed at (and this is important) divorcing the work from specific individuals.
What this means is that all and any employees must (and this is essential) be plug-replaceable as a matter of policy. Those that aren't should either be unique individuals like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the actual owners of the company, or leaving.
That is one of the drivers (not the only one of course) behind the desire for standardisation of work procedures and documentation of ideas and knowledge.
The result of careful execution of such policy is a situation in which personnel really is replaceable. Even when it concerns 10%-30% of the employees. Which is what we are now seeing illustrated at Cisco.
So there's no need to be surprised. And no need to be disgruntled. It's simply the consequence of a certain feature of our society we collectively decided we want and actively maintain. And it has truly served us well for the past century and a half and its end-result is the envy of our neigbours.
Unfortunately the current economic tide makes the downsides (for such they are) of this state of affairs more visible: i.e. employees are just another commodity and any successful enterprise will treat them as such. . As a result, employees can get a rough deal (if they get any deal at all, i.e. if they are employed). Let's be clear about this: I don't know how to make those downsides go away without wrecking the competitiveness of enterprises. But I suspect it will involve a realignment in the balance of power between labour and capital.
One way of achieving this is through the use of force. Also known as "legislation". Fortunately we have a mechanism in place for effecting change. It's called Politics. But what actual policy should be enacted through Politics? If knew (and could prove it) I'd tell you, but I don't.
One of the problems is the constraints imposed on all of us through competition. I.e. if the policy we adopt is too disadvantagous for enterprises, they will simply take their capital, set up shop elsewhere, and drive the disadvantaged enterprises off the market.
So it's up for debate really, and this isn't a new debate. It's a debate about a basic balance in our society that needs to be realigned from time to time.
Because at Cisco outsourcing is just another word for nothing left to lose. Cheap, poorly trained labor is low cost labor. If only they could do it the open source way: NO COST LABOR!
it is not uncommon for employers to purposefully keep their turnover high so most workers are are the bottom of their wage scale.
in tech, it is no different.. new employees, even with years and years of experience, will typically earn less than employees in the same job but with that many years of experience at that same employer... plus, of course for tech industry, h1b's aren't permanent, so expect turnover there, too.
It's interesting what Cisco is becoming.
A decade, even half a decade, ago, Cisco was greatly admired for their ability to acquire without attrition. When a company acquired another company, you usually saw 10-12% attrition in the first 6 months, after the pay-for-stay for key personnel expired, and another 8-10% at the end of 12 months. That meant that between 18% and 22% of what you just bought had walked out your door in your first year.
Cisco's numbers were 2% and 5% for 6 and 12 months, respectively. Cisco knew how to do an "acquihire", and keep the talent that it bought the company for, and in acquisitions which weren't simply talent plays, it knew how to do that too.
It seems that this expertise has been lost along the way, or that in one of these annual "transformations", something broke. Either way, with the way they are acting like IBM Global Services these days, or perhaps the post acquisition EDA or post-divestiture Agilent, they are unlikely to be able to repeat their past successes in acquisition, since the trust has been lost.
Which is really a shame, since they were the envy of the entire tech industry for their capability in this regard, not just Silicon Valley. We used to have meetings at IBM about how we could possibly do what they did, with the numbers they got, and thus avoid killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Similar meeting took place at Apple, particularly prior to the acquisition of P.A. Semi (and much of the team deserted Apple for places like Google anyway, after the lockout handcuffs were removed so that the people who were there prior to the acquisition could cash out and skedaddle.
It's interesting what they are becoming, because it's not the old Cisco; it most resembles, if I had to pick a company and an era, the post Carly Fiorina H.P.; here's hoping it doesn't turn out the same for them, and that they can correct their course before the rudder falls off entirely.
My company is "partnered" with Cisco to develop networking equipment for smart infrastructure. Working with them is impossible, and they are completely dysfunctional as an organization. The result is that their product is total shit and doesn't work, and their attitude is that it's our job to make our product work with it, despite the fact that their stuff does not comply with published networking standards.
They've been riding on their brand's coat tails for far too long... Hopefully a Ubiquiti or someone like them will step up and fill the hole that Cisco is digging itself into.
I started my company about 20 years ago on a simple principle. Only hire people that are worth keeping, and keep them.
I have never had anyone resign, and I have never laid anyone off - in 20 years.
As a programmer, my goal is to make sure I am replaceable with good code documentation and written documentation. I get bored easily, so I don't want to work on something forever. If I don't design the code correctly and implement it properly with documentation, others will have a hard time picking it up. In practice, I find that ends up being a huge benefit for me. I get to do new things and people taking over my code have generally been positive. Several former co-workers even praised my work to my former bosses and heard about it a year later.
so turn over is a natural thing.
They announced several thousand job cuts at the same time that every job board today lists hundreds and hundreds of 'openings' but when you apply for them you get a response that the job doesn't exist. And tomorrow is the same thing, and so on. Cisco is a half-tarded company like all the rest that doesn't know from one minute to the next what it's doing and none of the stove pipe orgs know what the other stove pipes are up to. Long story short they're going to appease institutional investors by massively cutting the US workforce and moving it to Asia. Quality will suffer and no one will care. Any day now Cisco will turn into IBM which is little more than an investment fund that buys and sells other companies.
Cisco was an innovative company that created huge market value. Now they're becoming "lean, agile" company with no real vision or future. They want to be "market focused" yet they're supposed to push the market to their view of technology and to create markets. When you lead from behind you certainly take on less risk but you sure don't create the profit margins and patent portfolio investors look for. Sell your shares now.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Is this possibly another great opportunity for the NSA to get their filthy little beggars in the door?
What new backdoor electronics will we see from CISCO in the future?
Giving a message that the company will streamline "development and delivery" is such an empty statement that none of the employees would ever find it inspiring. It would rather attract clueless engineers.
This is not an vision, it is mere b-s. The real vision would be actually some really good idea on the networking itself. And what they say, that they will try to make it even they have been failing recently with that.
So why they would suddenly reorg and start delivering results?
Such change takes very long years of developing real culture and environment. if anyone believes that radical changes could help in engineering, is just plain incompetent.
With such a wrong start, one could expect only situation getting worse and one faux-pass after another.
Lest somebody misunderstand, the very essence of an enterprise (any enterprise) is that it is a bundle of labour and capital whose essential structure and identity is independent of and more persistent than the labour it employs.
That's a horrible oversimplification, but let's take it as read for the purposes of this discussion.
It is for this reason that any contemporary HR policy is aimed at (and this is important) divorcing the work from specific individuals.
What this means is that all and any employees must (and this is essential) be plug-replaceable as a matter of policy.
Unfortunately, if you adopt that policy, you have immediately and severely restricted your ability both to hire and retain the most effective staff and to build the most productive teams.
It is obvious that HR would love for employees to be plug-replaceable in such a way, and it is obvious why. However, the reality is that in a creative industry, and particularly in one related to technology, no two employees offer exactly the same potential contributions. If as a matter of policy you won't hire or depend on anyone with unique contributions to offer, then almost by definition you're only going to have staff with typical combinations of widely available skills and no special experience or unique insights to draw upon.
However, given that the creative component of technology companies is often where much of their value comes from, a business that can't or won't hire the most creative people is always at risk of a competitor disrupting their business model with a new product, service, distribution model...
Moreover, technology can be a dramatic effectiveness multiplier. A single smart, creative person using the best technologies can sometimes outperform an entire team of mediocre people with average technologies. More importantly, in scalable fields like software and on-line services, a relatively small team of smart, creative people with complementary skill sets and the best technologies has the potential compete with a much larger organisation on raw effectiveness, before you even consider the overheads that the larger organisation must bear.
Finally, one of the major factors in maintaining productivity and developing existing technological assets and IP is keeping sufficient knowledge and expertise available within the development team. That can be done through good documentation, tools, processes and so on, but in reality this very rarely happens and word-of-mouth advice is a far more efficient and effective way to pass information around. Of course, if you treat everyone as replaceable you not only forego that most efficient mechanism but also incur the very substantial overheads of trying to use other documentation and tools to compensate. In short, high turnover is an efficiency killer in technical teams where shared knowledge is a vital asset.
If you think all of this is nonsense, you might consider that this is a discussion about Cisco, whose main business model is currently facing an existential threat from modern technologies like SDN. I'm guessing you're a business studies or MBA student, so you might like to consider the commercial relationships between Cisco and the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google as a case study for what can happen. Cisco's recurring model of spinning out and later buying up side companies to do the R&D for innovative technologies would also make an interesting case study.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Take a drink every time you see a parenthesis.
in any sufficiently large company, doing sufficiently large projects, you have to move towards "interchangeable" workers. If it's just you, Mr. Angelo, carving David out of a big block of marble with a couple devoted helpers, sure. But if you're building the pyramid of Khufu, you need thousands and thousands of "rock draggers" and "rock carvers". Even though the average creativity and productivity of that mass of humanity is much lower than Michaelangelo, it still gets the job done.
This is what big management is all about. And it's the difference between pre-industrial and post-industrial societies.
You cannot do a big project by relying on a few stars.. much better to plan for average, and lots of them.
Remember when Cisco was the largest corporation in the work, as measured by market cap?
Small companies create jobs. Big companies destroy jobs.
Big companies improve productivity by laying off 10% of the work force each year.
Then, to stay a big company, they have to buy more small companies.
Ah yes, stupid "business metrics". I met this manager who was evaulated on "metrics". An important one was "profits divided by capital". He boosted that one by buying home PCs for his employees. This little for the profits - except that some might do some work at home. But it cut down the capital, so his "metric" got better.
I pointed out that he could maximize that metric, and keep it up too, by giving away half of the capital every year. Obviously, his department would shrink and profits would plummet - but the profit drop would alway come after a big giveaway, so his "metric" would still be stellar. And give him a promotion after a few years.
Wow. Totally reminiscent of Digital in the late 1990s (and I did work for both Digital and Cisco).
The important thing is not to innovate, but to focus on V.next switches.
Cisco NEVER had any serious focus/commitment on security (I know - i worked for Okena, which was bought by Cisco, and then slowly killed over a couple of years). The corporate focus @ Cisco boils down to: If it isnt a bigger/faster router, it isn't interesting/relevant.
Wall St. already knows that Cisco is stagnant; this confession by Cisco execs overwhelmingly supports their lack of interest in much of anything except their own salaries.
I've been working with Cisco gear since 1992 or so, and I've seen a continuous drive to crap. Once rock solid products are now feature- and bug- bloated, impregnable silos exist between the product lines, support simply sucks on both an account team and TAC level... and every time Chambers puts forth a quarterly report he doesn't seem to have anything good to say. (Mind you, I appreciate honesty, but sometimes as CEO you have to sell the company a little).
Perhaps if they spent a little more time preventing the attrition of decent people they'd see some benefits.
That type of thinking drives prices up and makes a company suffer in the end. Most people want far greater pay for jobs that are not permanent in nature and they just might drag their feet or not care about a job that will let them go when a project ends. And it gets around that a company doesn't mind laying off workers. Toyota became a major company by making it next to impossible to get laid off by their company. They had a lot of loyal workers as a consequence and became a major company as a result. It also helps if a firm pays more than any other firm in the business. Frankly misuse of notions of economics points to an ignorant and ill willed management and ownership of a company. In the US we have not reached the point of dealing with the reality that capitalism is a losing notion and sort of evil as well. Wake up people and look at what has been happening. The US is the last industrialized, western nation to offer public health care and it is still too limited in scope. Germany offers to provide free college for US students as well as housing and in some cases food as well. The US has a totally out of control prison population and are sort of singular in applying the death sentence to anyone. The US now has a lower standard of living than many nations and on top of all of that we have lost the respect of the world by allowing torture of POWs. Are we the new N. Korea?
"Streamline product development reorganization byproduct realignment transformation" ..
In other words mass firings, the savings on the wages bill showing up in next years accounts as increased revenue. Followed by the company imploding in the following year. By which time the CEVPaCDO will have took his bonus and moved on elsewhere.
Instead of a handful of product managers, engineers and marketers working directly with those SVPs on a customer hardware/software solution, engineers are now split off into separate business units, making product development coordination more cumbersome and perhaps elongating development cycles.
from articles like NetworkWorld's Cisco reorgs trimming SVP ranks .
Separating engineering from marketing's' "Yes, we can - and by tomorrow night, too!" is far and away the best primer for a vaporware pump.
But hey...corporate longevity is as nothing compared to the need to provide current senior executives and large shareholders with maximum returns; somebody else can part out the wreckage.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"