Cisco

Cisco Systems is the market leader in network switching and routing.

It has a global presence, an incredible sales force, and an outstanding support organization focused on customer satisfaction.

Cisco is to networking what IBM is to computing.

Cisco has attempted to diversify into many new market segments in the last many years, but at the same time has lost focus on its core switching and routing markets, falling behind competition in getting new products to market.

Cisco is trying to address this problem with "spin-ins" where selected engineers are promised millions of dollars in stock options to join a startup that develops a next-generation switch that Cisco subsequently acquires.

The irony is that Cisco could and should be developing these next-generation products internally instead of farming the work out to people who leave the company and then come back, while making millions of dollars in the process.

This has an extremely demoralizing effect on the engineers that were left behind whose projects were canceled because the message to them is either the company is so disorganized that it cannot develop its next-generation products internally, or that the existing engineering teams are not good enough to do it.

Either way, it is hard to imagine a more negative internal message to motivate folks.

Don't do any more spin-ins if you want to keep your best engineering talent from leaving.