What you're basically saying is that Cisco is so incompetent No, I'm sure the company is very efficiently and rationally operated, but they can do that and sti

What you're basically saying is that Cisco is so incompetent No, I'm sure the company is very efficiently and rationally operated, but they can do that and still suck at innovation and retaining top engineers. They could pay an engineer whatever the hell the engineer wanted They could, but they'd also have to figure out how to let that engineer be productive and overall figure out how to balance research and innovation, and maintaining existing product lines (which is a huge drain in Cisco) If you want interesting work, it's somewhere in the org, or will be on the next acquisition. Yes, I worked with an acquisition at Cisco, it was cool, until they vested and almost all left. I got a raise and a better job by leaving too. Four, they don't even need talented engineers to create products that will sell. Even college kids with no industry experience can create a successful product if they're determined enough. In my whole time at Cisco, my group was not able to recruit a young "college kids with no industry experience", and not for lack of trying. Cisco was just not offering an attractive environment for junior engineers either. Their well-oiled machine can deal with not having 'rock stars'. Then why do they need aquisitions? Five, great engineers work at all sorts of places for all sorts of reasons. Some may stay regardless, but Cisco is not giving them the environment to innovate outside of incremental improvements to existing product. You don't need to personally have the best engineers, you just need to be able to license their tech. Sure, Cisco could give up market leadership, and just rebrand other peoples stuff, but then they wouldn't be a leading tech company. They would just be a marketing shell.