So, for anybody who doesn’t know by now, I do want to mention that my time with Cisco is coming to a close. Our team got cut a month ago as part of a restructure. We thought that, being a relatively new team with a product that we thought was strategically important to our business unit, we would make through any cuts the company might make in the near term. Sadly, we were proven completely wrong. We were actually among the first to go. The product, however, will live on in some form and taken on by our team in Bangalore. They have a considerable challenge on their hands, especially since there are currently no plans to add staffing to that team. I hope nothing but the best for them. Needless to say, I’m sorely disappointed with the way it all ended. The timing was terrible, and I feel the company is handling the transition of the product poorly.
The team was a truly special team. We never lost our start-up spirit even after we were acquired and grew in size. We did things very differently from the rest of Cisco, which drew both good and bad attention to us. We had some ridiculously creative and intelligent people on the team. We were a team of about 25 people doing the work of about 35. Managers were also developers. Developers were also customer support. Customer support was also IT. We worked on a platform-independent process messaging system and then we open-sourced it, which was unheard of in Cisco. We proved we could do things with our platform with one guy in a couple weeks what took other teams in the company months to just plan. We were mavericks and trailblazers, and we had fun while doing things our way. On top of all of that, we were close like friends, and not just coworkers. The sudden dissolution of the group was even harder to take because of that.
Between my time with the startup and Cisco, I had put in nearly five years into the team. The things I have learned in those five years as both an engineer and as a person have been innumerable. I’ll continue to have many fond memories of those times in spite of the way it all ended.
I had an extended employment with Cisco for a month (which ended earlier this week) to help with the transition. I’m currently in a period of a couple months where my primary goal is to find another job, although Cisco will keep me on the payroll. This is all part of a rather generous severance package, which is easily the one thing in this whole ordeal they are handling well. In all honesty, though, Cisco was one of the best companies of its ilk to work for, and it seems that it also one of the best companies from which to get laid off. Unfortunately, it still could not escape the typical trappings and politics of a being a large technology company and stuff like this still happens.
I also have a fair amount of free time on my hands now…which, granted, already seems to be taken up by other things. However, I do plan to take some time very soon to get around Texas to spend time with the usual suspects and some people I haven’t really made time to see. Aside from the larger cities, I’ll probably try to hit up some other places I normally don’t stop in like Ft. Worth and College Station. Some e-mails will be sent out soon.
