The culture is broken. If you are in sales avoid the services sales organizations, get on the product side, they control the account and the destiney. I would have a hard time recommending being on the Services Sales side of Cisco to anyone, If I were to ever consider going back It would have to be on the product side like the ESO, you have control of your accounts vs the services sales organization really an overlay sales organization that is in denial of what it is. I have heard rumors ( 2015) that they are basically moving the services sellers into the product side, so if true I would expect chaos for the next year or so.
Back to the culture being broken, they have been doing large layoffs for the past few years, I have lost track how many, and it is not just bottom 5% type layoffs, which is why it is like Game of Thrones, you have organizational leaders trying to save their high paying fiefdoms, and it paid in the blood of the field. That is not to say there is not lots of deadwood in the company, there is, but much of that deadwood was developed by the leadership by creating a culture of scared sheep vs developing a culture of leaders. Think about what it does to moral,(this is more impactful to the sales support staff and delivery people) when you have a workforce that is afraid to make life decisions because they are not sure if they will need to be looking for a new job every year.
