Read Cisco employees b1tching

wintermute000 · December 28, 2015, 03:40:05 PM

Just found this blog, the comments are HILARIOUS - full blown Cisco employee complaints/slagging off management and lack of direction / failure to execute etc. (ACI, collaboration, security etc.)Lengthy but well worth it for networking nerds

http://www.bradreese.com/blog/11-13-2015.htm

The Insieme criticisms are really enlightening to me - I had no idea they were perceived by other employees as making out like bandits (the spin-in thing), the explanation makes sense.

To get away from the ACI/SDN pile on for a bit, I always suspected collaboration (webex CUCM etc.) was starting to turn into a dud but various comments/threads confirms this. The sheer complexity and difficulty of the entire stack was mind boggling, as well as the sheer crappiness of CUBE vs real SBCs and what everyone else in the SIP compliant world was doing

burnyd · December 28, 2015, 04:23:55 PM

I see Joe Onisick has toned it down a level. That makes things a lot less exciting. A lot of great points there especially about customers purchasing 9ks with the aci bundles yet never using aci.

deanwebb · December 28, 2015, 05:08:32 PM

Ah yes, the Brad Reese blog... I've greatly enjoyed reading it over the years. Some measure of salt should go with the stuff there, but likely less than what is needed with Cisco marketing materials. His reporting on executive and director level moves inside Cisco can help show what directions they'll push in... or drop entirely.

wintermute000 · December 28, 2015, 05:37:47 PM

The level of vitriol being spewed by some of the alleged internal employees - makes you wonder why they are still employees!

deanwebb · December 28, 2015, 07:01:22 PM

Quote from: wintermute000 on December 28, 2015, 05:37:47 PM
The level of vitriol being spewed by some of the alleged internal employees - makes you wonder why they are still employees!

Because (x) number of years working at Cisco looks great on the resume, or so they suppose?

Because they lose their H1B visas if they quit working at Cisco?

NetworkGroover · December 28, 2015, 08:59:13 PM

Haha yes this is a gem....

and I miss Joe... he seems to have majorly slowed down from his days arguing with myself and Lincoln Dale about the supposed benefits of ACI...

http://www.bradreese.com/blog/6-23-2014.htm

wintermute000 · December 28, 2015, 10:10:21 PM

HA HA HA HA HA

I had a convo with a Cisco Intercloud tech the other day (yes its alive) and they were telling me about having ACI forced upon them. I told them to push back hard and why do they need ACI when they are running openstack? Just VXLAN overlay and be done with it, N9k EVPN if you have to eat your own dogfood and he said no its being shoved down their throat

NetworkGroover · December 29, 2015, 12:35:56 PM

Quote from: wintermute000 on December 28, 2015, 10:10:21 PM
HA HA HA HA HA

I had a convo with a Cisco Intercloud tech the other day (yes its alive) and they were telling me about having ACI forced upon them. I told them to push back hard and why do they need ACI when they are running openstack? Just VXLAN overlay and be done with it, N9k EVPN if you have to eat your own dogfood and he said no its being shoved down their throat

Pretty accurate assessment, and now you see the political aspect... I dunno how... but Cisco seems to be experts at massaging those with influence into screwing over their engineers...

EDIT - This is exactly what happened to me in a relatively large deal... we did side-by-side testing against Cisco, and won over their engineers. Next thing I know, I'm being told by the same engineers who loved us that they were being forced down the ACI path. Unfortunately my only source of intel as to how that's going was let go (probably because he voiced his opinion against the new Sr. Architect who just happened to be a former distinguished engineer at Cisco) - but last I heard they weren't able to get ACI up so they're running in non-ACI mode. I'm sure Cisco will count this as an ACI customer though.

EDIT #2 - Oh, did I misread this? Are you saying a Cisco employee?

that1guy15 · December 29, 2015, 06:47:15 PM

Oh man I havent been to that site in 8+ years! Used to read and follow his stuff all the time but it just got too negative. Right or wrong it wears on yah and you turn into that dude.

I have always heard of all the poison inside of Cisco but I also talk to alot of people who love their career with them. I guess its like anything else out there, you make what you want of it.

This thread has some interesting insight but there is also a ton of bashing.

NetworkGroover · December 30, 2015, 09:38:04 AM

Quote from: that1guy15 on December 29, 2015, 06:47:15 PM
Oh man I havent been to that site in 8+ years! Used to read and follow his stuff all the time but it just got too negative. Right or wrong it wears on yah and you turn into that dude.

I have always heard of all the poison inside of Cisco but I also talk to alot of people who love their career with them. I guess its like anything else out there, you make what you want of it.

This thread has some interesting insight but there is also a ton of bashing.

You make a good point, and I discovered something interesting about myself yesterday. I shared this with some folks and they were like, "Wow, there are some really racist comments in there, and bashing like it's YouTube". I didn't even really think about this before I shared it. I've become so accustomed to seeing crap like that on the Internet that I just ignore it, and I just automatically ignored that stuff and paid attention to the actual valuable/interesting info in the tidbits in between which was the reason I shared it.

It's interesting how different people's experience/perspective changes how a piece of data looks to them.

wintermute000 · December 30, 2015, 03:03:11 PM

some of it is fairly racist, but I've been over to India before as well as having had the short end of the offshoring / onshoring stick (as have we all...) and its easy for legitimate, professional complaints to turn into personal ones once the dislike sets in. It undermines your argument even if your position is essentially truthful e.g. offshore team X is incompetent, yes, but dress it up as a diatribe and it just sounds racist.

Its undeniable the quality of Cisco engineering - whether you measure it by code quality (bugs), TAC support level etc. has gone down the clapper over the last 5-6 years and in that time the offshoring and onshoring has gone to new levels. Correlation is not causation but we've all had extensive dealings with offshore BUs / offshore TACs.... you can all draw your own conclusions....

BTW I'm not white so I feel qualified to comment on racism LOL

re: aspiring networker - yep, cisco intercloud tech LOL.

NetworkGroover · December 30, 2015, 03:24:09 PM

Wow..... just wow....

wintermute000 · December 30, 2015, 04:20:59 PM

re: intercloud or the racism discussion?

I apologise if you think I'm being offensive with the latter.

deanwebb · December 30, 2015, 05:23:57 PM

Quote from: wintermute000 on December 30, 2015, 04:20:59 PM
re: intercloud or the racism discussion?

I apologise if you think I'm being offensive with the latter.

My interpretation was that the wow was for a Cisco employee going all racist in public, even if behind a pseudonym. Didn't they have training for that or something?

NetworkGroover · December 31, 2015, 07:48:50 PM

The Cisco Intercloud Tech guy openly admitting a failed product being pushed down their throats.... what he should have said was:

"While both solutions are great, and my preferred solution would by X, solution Y will work just as well and blah blah blah"