[edogg]

TFA leaves out what the problem is with Cisco that wouldn’t allow him to allow his engineers to improve webex while they all worked for Cisco.

What else aren’t people at Cisco able to achieve because they are at cisco?

[gridspy]

I don't know about Cisco specifically, but large companies are plagued with bureaucracy which bogs down engineers from doing what they want to do.

Imagine only the salespeople can set tasks. They set shortsighted tasks which leave no time to actually improve the software fundamentals - always adding new features and abandoning half-baked projects.

This is the way most large companies work their software teams in my experience.

[robocat]

> They set shortsighted tasks which leave no time to actually improve the software fundamentals

Does anyone have anecdotes to share where the software engineers were set free, and they bankrupted the company with irrelevant development?

[solarkraft]

> large companies are plagued with bureaucracy which bogs down engineers from doing what they want to do.

Are there places where engineers can just do what they want to do (Google?)? What comes out of it? Brilliant architecture? A cluster fuck of features a some devs thought were cool? Awesome spin-off products?

[babesh]

I’ve been told by an ex-Cisco employee of that timeframe that Cisco was full of politics.

The way people who worked there talked reminded me of how IBM people talked when I interned there. It was all about who was the boss of who. Virtually no talk of technical topics. Lots of talk about which organization would be on the chopping block next.

Supposedly their interview process was a joke as well as people got hired into positions without a technical interview.