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Well, you'd probably find that those 1/5 companies that don't suck at managing engineering talent are probably run by former engineers, not former sales guys.

by salem 12y ago

Well, you'd probably find that those 1/5 companies that don't suck at managing engineering talent are probably run by former engineers, not former sales guys. The best career options for engineers in Cisco are: * sales engineer (not really engineering) * become a manager * jump ship to juniper * go to a startup, maybe even get bought back by Cisco with a career boost * shoot for the moon, stay and maybe become a Cisco Distinguished Engineer, which are like unicorns Ergo, rank and file engineers are not valued by management, like they are at Facebook/Google/etc.

mathattack 12y ago
Interesting that you comment on that. One ex-Cisco engineering friend of mine went to both Facebook and Google. I think the CEO does set the tone of which types of employees a company values. I recall a quote (I thought was Joel Spolsky or Bill Gates) around why the CEO of a tech company needs to be an engineer. It's basically that only they can understand the important technical details to make big changes in corporate strategies. There's also a component of knowing who to value.