I'm thrilled that Duo will be joining an amazing business filled with a deep bench of security talent and wonderful customers. It's a really strong fit with what Duo has already built and with where both teams are going, now together.
I guess I should mention I was founder / CEO of OpenDNS, was acquired by Cisco, previously led the Cisco Security business, and am still an executive at Cisco. So maybe a bit biased, but still factually on the mark. ;-)
Spoken like a true Cisco executive. You could have just said "I'm supportive but it's out of my hands."
Or perhaps, no reply at all.
I'm not responsible for the buildings or teams in SJC15 and the OP knows that. The people who work with me at Cisco know that when I say I'll help, I do.
Caveating your offer of support three or four times signals hostility not helpfulness.
Any rational actor reading that statement would assume you’d forward their message onto HR without a real response. And make note of the complainer in question.
If you can’t be concrete with your words, why even bother?
"I'll see if I can give you some pointers of how to make some progress on that ask"
probably means
"I'm not the god damn office facilities manager, and I'm not spending my limited time and social capital to quarterback your request for you, but I'll see if I can figure out who in god's name in this 70,000+ person company you should talk to, and tips for how you might convince them to change their budget to give you free snacks".
The same can be said for people who know David outside of Cisco too. I know David from SHDH, EveryDNS, & OpenDNS. He's a man of his word.
/s
It's been a long time since my negative experience and I should probably update my prejudices. Cheers.
I hope you read this,the reason why Cisco chooses to aquire rather than compete is the same reason those companies would do better without Cisco. I am glad for the founders who get aquired but at least the John Chambers era aquisitions did not fare well.
The reputation of Cisco's internal engineering culture used to be pretty grim. I never understood why any PM or lead would actually build something from a Cisco internal MRD, rather than jumping ship, building it privately, and selling it back to Cisco. I know of more than one person that did literally exactly that, successfully.
But post-Sourcefire I think it's a different scene there; they have some very large, long-lived teams with coherent cultures now. I assume in the post-Sourcefire Cisco game plan, Duo stays Duo.
Not overly surprisingly if so. Meraki, and in some ways OpenDNS, have stayed mostly their own with varying degrees of integration.
Talos is a good example: it was created from merging Cisco SIO and SourceFire VRT, but I would wager it's 80% VRT [in terms of culture]. They also have so many researchers now that it probably has sub-cultures. Even a single remote office can have its own culture.
On the other hand I don't like how the acquisition's leadership gets to absorb other BU's which are targeting similar market space because there is a lot of time and effort that gets invested into integrating teams working culture and style. Also the incoming teams fight to keep their product portfolios alive which leads to sub-optimal decisions.
They provide all the resources you need, are very ethical and help your newly acquired team do your best. If your team (business unit as they call it) doesn't cut it after a few years, they start maneuvering those resources elsewhere. But they've always given every acquisition a fair chance to have their own story. See: Meraki, Insieme, Webex.
Cisco probably doesn't care if a few of their startup acquisitions don't work out.