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welcome to our first presentation ofthis semester's silicon valley symposium. [applause] very good. for those of you who don't know me,that's probably everybody. i am the interim dean of this college, so, yes, i am your dean. i just started this positiontwo weeks ago, i mean, two months ago. and today, it's not about the dean, we have a very special guest to give yousome advice, ideas, suggestions.

so, it is my pleasure to introduce our first speakerof this semester's symposium, mr. joe pinto. [applause] mr. joe pinto is the senior vice presidentof cisco technical services. joe has a ba in business from golden gate university. since joining cisco in 1991, joe has directed programs that improve the customer experiencethrough product and service quality. he and his team have created and implemented ciscosmart services, enabling the company and its partners to help customers predictably managethe health and stability of their network, reduce costs, mitigate risk, and prompt innovation.

under joe's leadership, cisco's servicehas received many industry honors, for example, jd power and associates' certified technologyservices and support certifications nine times, and technology service's industryassociate star award, 26 times. so, many many times. many awards. in 2014, joe received the charles w. davidsoncollege of engineering-- that's us, dean service award for his exceptional supportto our college's program and missions. once again, please help me welcome mr. joe pinto. joe pinto: so, i'm going to talk for about 30 minutes,and i'm going to do some questions, but this is about, not only about cisco,it's about you and your career.

and the reason-- and by the way, the personwho's in charge in your career is you. you know, when i first started at silicon valley i wasvery fortunate that cisco was my third start-up. but i didn't know anybody at ciscoand i'll tell you what i did. now remember, this is before there was the internet. so, i know you're thinking, you're goingback to the days of the wagon train. okay. i had sent eight letters with my resumeto eight different executives at cisco. the head of hr, the vice president of engineering. i put 'private and confidential' on each envelope.

that's how i got the interview at cisco. i actually used the mail and put 'private and confidential' on the envelope to get the executivesto open up my resume. so, that began my journey. okay, let me go through the few slides that i have, right. who am i? i'm going to give youa little bit about my history. i'm a person that was sitting there just like you. you know, from the day i started school, i started ona scholarship for engineering at poly tech in brooklyn. i finished school 17 years later at night.

right? just think about that journey.17 years later. [clattering] holy cow! okay, it's not a person. it's okay.that was a test to see if we were awake. alright. a bit of an overview about who are theseguys called 'cisco'? what exactly do they do? and about networking. how to connect with people,and again, taking charge of your life and of your career. so, a little story about myself. i grew up in red hook,brooklyn. that is a waterfront community. my parents were italian. my father was a longshoreman.in those days that was very physical work. they unloaded the ships, and it was12-13 hours of literally 50-75 pound boxes that had to be taken off the ship one at a time. my neighborhood was mainly african-americanand latino, so i was referred to as the 'white guy'.

it was an interesting experience, living by the waterfront. i was very fortunate in as much that my parentsreally believed in schooling and education as all of you are sitting here anddemonstrating your commitment to this, i'm sure supported by your parents and by your friends. i was very fortunate that i got to cisco,and let me give you my journey. i was in brooklyn, and i was going to poly tech,and i was thinking, well, i can stick this out. and then they torched the apartmentacross the street at 4:00am. the flames were shooting offthe roof of the apartment at 4:00am. i looked at it, i went back upstairs as ifmy father knew what i was thinking.

he said, "you got a brother incalifornia. you should go to california." i came to california, cisco was mythird start-up. i was incredibly fortunate. one of my early jobs at a start-up is i was a technician, that i used to do breadboarding for the developer. so he would give me the schematic,i would assemble the components. i would go down to fry's electronics when therewas only one of them, to get the components, he would write the software, we would testthe circuit card, the circuit card would catch fire, we start again the next day. [laughter] you know, with that.

by the way, one other thing. we needed an oven to heat up all the circuit cardsbecause finally, we got the cards to work. and they said, "well, we need an oven to burnthem all in," but we didn't have an oven. and an oven back then to burn circuit cardscost 60 to a 100 thousand dollars. that was a lot of money.even back then in a start-up. so, i got tasked with trying to find an ovenfor a lot less than 60 or 70 thousand dollars. so i said, "well, i need jimmy to go with me."they said, "why do you need jimmy?" i go, "jimmy's got a pick-up truck." i took jimmy to the junkyard. we foundan oven, the guy said, "it's $200."

i said, "look, we don't even know if it works. i'll giveyou $100 in cash, and we'll take the oven now." he said okay. we took the oven. thank god it wasthe rheostat that had burnt out and that was it. but that's how we got an oven for a grand total of $100,plus a rheostat which i think was another 20 bucks. anyway, i started at cisco asa technical support engineer. i took inbound customer calls,helping them configure and set up cisco software, routing,switching, terminal servers, and when i first started, there was 8 people in my group. today, i'm proud to tell you we have 5500 peopleglobally, including about 500+ in san jose who deliver world-class technical service forcustomers that use our data center products,

our security products, collaboration, video, etc. and we support all customers in all different segments. the public sector, enterprise, telcos, the web 2.0 companies as an example. anyway, over here you can see a pictureof me and my three other brothers. you can see a picture of meand my parents as well. and you can actually see a-- oh,by the way, this was a good lesson for me. this is when phones first started to have cameras, and i learned a lesson that if youput on a pair of sunglasses, and put on a hat for a split second,somebody will take your photo.

so there you have it. and by the way, that's me after17 years, getting my college degree through the amazing support ofmy coworkers and my wife. it was quite a journey. also, a picture of a-- obviously i'mpart of the community. part of my obligation to the community is to give back. my wife and i are involved in anumber of charitable organizations, as well as being involved inseveral schools as well. it's about creating the future for all of you, just likepeople did for me when i first got to california.

okay, the beginning of cisco. it was a husband and wife that were going to schoolat stanford trying to solve an issue because the two different schools at stanfordcannot communicate with each other because they are using two different protocols. and back then, that was like two different languages. they were not going to speak to each other. and so, they begin to build the algorithm around routingthe protocols, making them understand each other. and by the way, originally cisco was a play onsan francisco, which is why you see the bridge. it was a small "c". i'll never forget,it was a big debate about making it a large "c"

because we had to change all the marketing material. so, what are we about at cisco? it's hard to believe now that cisco is coming on 30 years,by helping the way people work, live, play and learn. now, from a world stage, and those things matter.i'm going to talk a little bit about this in a moment. but, we have cisco academies is all overthe world educating thousands of students. we have set up telemedicine injordan, in the middle east, to permit high class healthcare, sopeople don't have to go 7-8 hours of bus rides to get to the main city, to getthe type of care that they need. our strategy is to build solutions and to drive outcomesfor our customers that are out there around the world.

we're a company that does about $50 billion a year. about $12 billion of that is in services, the rest is in all the differenttechnologies that we sell around the world. the internet of everything.digitalization. it is changing life. if you look it up on wikipedia,you can actually find the word 'digitalization'. these words have been now defined with that. but it's about really making a difference-- now,this is a very unique opportunity, because typically in life, cities,and states, and countries, typically are laggards when itcomes to adopting technology.

in this case, cities, states and countrieshave become leaders because it affects the safety and security of their citizens,given their citizen's access to quality services, helping them collect more revenue for parking,you know, one of the things about most major cities is 25% of the traffic is people arespinning around looking for parking space. by the way, i felt like that a little bit this morningwhen i was in the garage on 10th street, by the way. but anyway, it's about-- digitalization,is a way that a business tries to increase their revenue and drive more value through a setof processes that become digitized. what the hell does he mean when he says that? well, let me give you an example.how many of you are familiar with amazon dash?

the little wifi thing. okay. it's great. once you have it,you know, you do the subscription, you press the button, all of a sudden your laundry soap shows up a month later. you'll never run out. you know, when i was younger, you boughtnewspapers by subscription. that was it. now you can buy batteries, you can buylaundry soap, again, it's a simple device. they sell it for 5 bucks. of course, they lose money ondoing that, what they want to do is get you as a repeat customer withlongevity, that's an example. the other example i gave youwas sorting around telemedicine. another example is the workwe've done with harley davidson.

we will take new product introduction,which has been measured literally to the tune of one and half years, down to two weeks. and in the world of harley davidson and motorcycles,people's tastes change quickly, and to stay relevant, they could no longer afford aproduct cycle of a year and a half. so, where are you guys called cisco?we are literally everywhere. when you order something online, there's an excellentchance that online experience is powered by cisco. if retainment, one of the best things that we offer is service provider video. so if you use video, whether it's netflix, from verizon, and you stream it on your phone, all of that is powered by cisco technology, and that's literally one of our business units,

called 'service provider video', just to name a few. certainly, it's about security. you know, you gotta remember when the internet was born, no one ever thought about security, and of course now, a lot of people could get fired for security hack. and the bad guys have gotten incredibly smart. viruses that get compiled at the other end through multiple sources, or they send you an email based upon your linkedin profile on something you're more likely to open up. so, if you talk about you're interested in sports, and particularly into baseball for example, somebody might try to ship you an email based upon your likes, trying to get you to open that email, and open up that attachment.

they're getting very evil out there. anyway, and it's about affecting people's life, from education to public services. okay, so, a couple of other things. the rio olympics. hundreds of thousands of hours of video streamed around the world without incident. now, you got to remember, in north america, you're thinking, well, that's not a big thing. but think about the people watching bolt, the sprinter out of jamaica. we were on call with digicel who provides the video streaming for the folks, because literally the whole country shut down when those events were going on, but to supply tens of thousands of hours of video around the world seamlessly,

which was powered by cisco. we're certainly involved in amazon web services, we certainly are heavily involved with microsoft, and again, with many things that are on espn and things like that. by the way, interesting thing about video. video drives an incredible amount of internet traffic. but also when it comes to sporting events. sporting events, the advertising money has been going through the roof. why is that? that's because around the world, culturally, we want to watch sporting events live. sometimes people tape a sporting event, they may go back to it later, but in general, people want to watch sporting events live. and therefore you can see the amount of ad money going into sports. absolutely going through the roof, which is completely changing that business model.

so, let's talk a little bit about cisco. headquarter on tasman, by great america, literally about 15-20 minutes away. 71,000 regular employees, that does account tens of thousands of contractors. 380 offices around the world. you could see here, the breakdown. 35% in engineering, a lot of the r&d is are done in san jose, california. some of it is done in raleigh, north carolina. some of it is done in bangalore, but the majority is done in san jose. 20% in services from around the world, you can see in sales, 26%, and 19% accounting and other. it really takes a team to pull these things together and to provide these outcomes and these solutions

for our customers around the world, about who we are and the competitive landscape. and by the way, the competitive landscape has totally changed over time. we have niche competitors, like foundry and extreme, then we have major competitors such as hewlett packard, and on the service provider side, such as alcatel out of europe, and huawei out of china, just to name a few of our competitors in the marketplace. by the way, one thing i do want to mention. i put up these numbers, but i should never forget that it's about our people. you know, at cisco, i often talk about people, process, and technology, but people are the ones who tells you what processes you need to get better, and people are the ones that tell you

what technology you need, and people are the ones that actually make it happen. you know, sometimes we over rotate about... it's about the technology, it's about automation. well, none of that matters without really sharp people who are passionate, who care, who are not afraid of failure, who want to be part of a team. passionate, not afraid of failure, they want to be part of a team, and they want to get some things done, and they want to solve some problems. now, let me talk about some of the job roles that are happening with digitalization. so, i'm going to point to a couple of these. under cyber security, there's a million openings that are listed in north america.

and by the way, when you have that many openings, there's probably another million behind it, because if you need 10, your boss does not typically let you open up 10 openings. your boss typically goes, "open up 5, if you get those filled, we'll open up the next 5." tremendous shortage in cyber security, which affects all industries. this is not unique to high tech. i mean, you could be into making food, water, utilities, etc. this affects everybody. certainly around network programmer, sdn, software defined networking. you know, that is how the data center is getting automated to take advantage of changing a business process. so, it used to be, in the data center, to turn on applications, which are the lifeblood of your business,

to create revenue or to improve the customer experience would take months. we live in a world now, that people don't want to talk months. people want to talk hours and and days, and through sdn, these applications can be turned on in literally days through the appliance that have been designed by cisco, as well as a couple of other companies. certainly, a 3d print technician. you know, as 3d printing has become main stage-- and i'll give you great example. i had hip surgery five years ago. back then, the surgeon had to pick from a couple of different sizes. if that surgery occurred today, they would literally take a measurement and then print out the hip on a 3d printer.

and why is that beneficial? because then the surgeon has to do less cutting if there's less cutting, you'll recover quicker. just to give you an example about how this is really changing the way things are happening. certainly implant technician with neuro. i'm sure we all have families, aunts, uncles, grandparents, that the size of the listening devices, that if they have a hearing impairment are getting smaller, and yet more powerful, giving them good quality of life. because it is no fun when you have a family member or grandparent who feel left out of the conversation because they can't hear, but this is really radically making a difference, and the batteries has gotten so much better.

i remember the hearing aids from years ago used to be very large, used to be worn outside the ear, and the battery would literally last like a day or two. it was crazy! now you got things with much more power, much more sensitivity, again, for good quality of life. certainly a cloud architect. in the world of cloud, and the world of hybrid cloud, which means a lot of companies are going to do some things in the cloud, some things they are going to with both within their enterprise and with the cloud. they're going to need architects to figure out the traffic, the queuing of this traffic, and how to really get that done. so anyway, i think what's important, is a lot of times in the news, you'll hear about what jobs are going away. but typically you do not hear in the news all the jobs that are getting created, that are shorthanded.

you typically don't hear that part of it, right? but this is why education is so important, and you've taken a critical step. by the way, in your life you'll learn three ways. you'll learn through education, you'll learn through exposure. as you get out there, you'll learn because you're getting exposed to things, and you certainly will learn by experience. the one caveat i will tell you about experience is that you don't want to learn the same thing 20 years in a row. that every couple of years, you've got to think about reinventing your capabilities and your skills

about who you are and what you're doing, because if not, you then fall behind. the beauty is being an engineering student, you've created a foundation of learning that'll last for you as you go forward in life. so, let's talk about our networking academy at cisco. how many of you know we have networking academy at cisco, around the world?i got one taker! okay, good. at least i know one person is paying attention, good. anyway, 193 academies all over the world, 35% female, 84000 students. we have really made a difference in people's lives about the network computer engineers of tomorrow. we work with stem partnerships, with 3000 youth getting trained.

people with disability, high levels of employment, volunteering. we're very big about giving back. a lot of times you'll see us down at the food bank where we're getting food together. let me tell you an amazing stat about the food bank. it used to be the people who went to the food bank for food because they were out of jobs. now, a lot of the people who go to the food bank, they work. they have jobs. but their jobs do not give them enough money to pay for their family's groceries. there was an example last year of a husband who worked, the wife was studying nursing, they have two kids, and she was having to cut the milk. literally, having to cut the milk.

we live in such a rich area, you know, it's just an incredible story to hear from the food bank, about global hunger. i'm going to give you a great example about this. in india, they figured out when they improved the quality and the volume of food at the school, attendance went through the roof. why? because kids were not eating enough at home. so, the attendance went through the roof, but then they found that after lunch, many of the kids would leave. so what did they do? they had a snack for them, including a food they could take home at the end of the school day to drive complete attendance. talk about basic hunger and food, right? it's an amazing story. i got to meet that individual who has an amazing story about how he meet--

and by the way, he does this all over india. he started in one area, he does it across india now. pretty powerful thing. but it's about being a part of the community. a lot of times we hear giving back and we think "okay, i got to write a check." sometimes, the most important thing you can give, is time and yourself. much more than actually the money aspect. so, with your career, don't be afraid to have people look at your resume to critique it. that's okay. the only way we get better is through feedback michael jordan was an incredible nba basketball player. how many of you remember michael jordan?

okay good. i got a handful. i remember one day he was practicing free throws. i said, "michael, you won a number of championships, you're an all star, you're an mvp." he said, "i still need to get better." those words never left me when i was watching that interview with him on the court. mock interviews. you don't put yourself out there. go through a mock interview. don't do your first interview in front of a real company. have some fun with it. be prepared to answer questions about what do you enjoy to do? give me an example when you learned from failure. things like that.

it's okay to put yourself out there. that's how we all learn, we all have gone through this. remember, you're not alone. you are not alone, we've been through this. but do incorporate your friends. by the way, it's fun when people go, "i need some help, can you help me?" people don't mind being asked. info session for companies. get to learn about the companies that you may be talking to. certainly career fairs. etiquette dinners. the reason why this is important is because managers are told to be passionate, that failure's okay and to build strong teams.

you want to make sure that you can be a member of a strong team, and you can have an additive effect to the team, if they were willing to take a chance on putting you on that team. right? this is a quote from albert einstein, "scientists investigate that which already is; engineers create that which has never been." that put you on the driver's seat. pretty exciting, yeah. and, staying connected with cisco, five or six ways of how you can stay with cisco, i'll leave this up on the board here, with this. anyway, i wanted to spend the first part of this talking about cisco, talking about our cultures, about our values,

about who we are, hopefully making it exciting for yourself about things that you need to be thinking about, things that you should be doing. obviously you've made a commitment in here today to spend time here today listening to me speak. i know we got a microphone, and we've got a runner, i'd love to hear a couple of you in the audience if you'll be okay asking a question or two out there, and i've got my brave runner right here. ah, good. two brave runners. runner: oscar, do you want to take that one? okay, good. thank you. alright, we're ready to get on the scoreboard, thank you.

audience: thank you mr. pinto. my name is rohini, i'm sorry i was late, so that's why i'm standing here. pinto: it's okay. audience: alright, so my question is basically like following your career progression from being a business admin graduate from golden gate university and being at such a top position in a technical company. so, what were those skills from being a business background and working all the time with technical, and considering from 1990 to now, the transformation in technology is so phenomenal, what were some things that you did, or what would you like to give us as an input on how we can cope well.

pinto: no, it's a great question. so the question is, what are some things you learned, what are some things you did from where you started to where you end it, and got to this position. so, a couple of things. first, i quickly realized it was about people. that giving people respect, respecting their main expertise, treating people as equals was an incredible way of getting the best people to want to be on the teams i've worked in. and it was about embracing people's cultures and backgrounds whether it's different foods, or different holidays, or whatever. i think i was very fortunate because my parents were very unique. my mother was incredibly kind. anyone that came into the apartment, no matter who you were,

you were going to get food. she did not care. your background, the color of your skin, your religion, you were going to get served, you were going to be made to feel comfortable. on the flip side, my father actually survived a prison camp and escaped in world war ii. so, people tell me i'm tough to have survived, i go "no, no." tough are the people running to burning buildings. tough are people like my father. and so, i persevere. and the reason why i used perseverance-- a lot of times at the workplace, people shy away from difficult problems. my experience is, difficult problems don't go away. they typically get worse. it's a bit risky to dive in, but i will tell you, the best way you can learn, is to dive in into a difficult problem

and to try to tackle it. so, it's about people, it's about being kind and being respectful of people about whoever they are, building a team, and certainly, it's about perseverance. i think the last thing is about the willingness to take feedback. i was incredibly fortunate through the people that i've worked with, my wife at home, that people were not afraid to give me feedback. and sometimes taking feedback is not always easy. you know, sometimes i'll get a text message or an email from an engineer, and the engineer might be a year or two out of school. and if their heart is at the right place, i tell them, i go, "you can tell me whatever you need to tell me," right? but, you know, how we get better, is by listening. by being out there. never thinking you know all the answers.

i tell you, once, somebody told me that a sign of someone who's smart is someone who clearly knows what they don't know. think about that. who clearly knows what they don't know. think about that. so, no, thank you. great question. we're on a roll now. who's ready to go next? ah, i got a couple of hands right here. thanks. we'll get to you, then we'll get to you, thanks. now we're rolling! audience: hi mr. pinto, my name's ethan clark. i was just curious, when a group of interns steps into your office, what do you look for

when you're picking say one out of the 10 or 20. pinto: when a group of interns walk in, what am i looking for to pick one out of the 10 or 20. by the way, we do pick a few more than that.[laughs] well, you know, i'm looking for a willingness to learn, a curiosity, i'm also looking-- i'm trying to feel out chemistry, because i do believe in the power of teams, so i'm looking for those three or four things, and i'm looking for someone that's prepared. that's a bit tricky. what do i mean by that? someone that can ask a thoughtful question at the moment, showing that they may have spent a little bit of time prepping. those are three or four unique things.

and i think lastly, be yourself. be authentic, be genuine, because we are who we are. but those are 4 or 5 things i would say. great question. please. audience: i was wondering if, has cisco ever been used for like nasa or space applications, like for instance on board the space shuttles or the space stations or the satellites? pinto: oh, phil. phil. phil is here. phil is a distinguished engineer who i've had the privilege of working with for 20 plus years. phil: you'll find cisco ip phones in the international space stations. we've been involved with i think the irish routers in space and the interplanetary-- we've done some research work along the interplanetary internet. it turns out that when your delay starts to reach seconds and minutes,

forget everything you've learned about networking protocols on planet earth. but we're involved in those things. we do have our products in space. pinto: by the way, to fit in time, because yesterday was the 50 year anniversary of star trek. and, now, i know there's been a lot more newer star trek since then. how many of you are familiar with star trek? okay, thank you. don't make me nervous here. you're making me nervous. by the way, i'm going to confess to all of you. when i first started watching star trek, i thought it was pretty cool. why did i think it was cool? well hey, with science fiction there were these aliens right, but also, i thought it's pretty cool that he was dating these women from different planets.

[laughs] i mean, i thought it was pretty cool. anyway, okay. next question. ah, thank you for being brave. audience: hi, i am zacky from industrial technology, i'm also working on this project. networking routing router is [reaching?]. i was wondering how do i apply for an internship during the summer, and i'm an international student from china, and the immigration has very strict rules about international student and-- my question is, is there any opening during the summer? pinto: [laughs]i love it, i love it.

no, we do hire interns. it does vary by country, by function and by group as you'd imagine because different groups have different approaches. the r&d group tend to do a lot in san jose. in services there's a combination of raleigh, north carolina and san jose. we do have facilities in china and both beijing as well as dalian. thank you, thank you phil. we typically do internships at bigger sites, so dalian is a bigger site, san jose is a bigger site raleigh, north carolina is a bigger site, krakã³w, poland. so we tend to do it in the bigger sites, and go to the website and also work through the university because we do have a fair number of interns for obvious reasons because of the fact that

high tech tends to be better at interning than a lot of other industries, because that's how high tech got built was through using interns, and then you get a lot of your folks from the pool of interns. phil, anything to add there? interns? phil: for individual situations, you're best best is going through the website in the careers information. again, i know there's complications in international assignments and things along those lines, the details vary quite a bit, so your best bet is to reach out through some of these links you got up there. pinto: yeah, with that, good question though. audience: to add to that, from the university's point of view, we are a cpt sponsor, so we do sponsor f-1 students through curricular practical training.

so, i would encourage you to talk to the international students advising center. they are in clark hall, and they can help you with any paperwork for industry sponsorships that are interested in internships. pinto: good, good. thank you, thank you. okay so now that we're all friends -- i see a hand. we'll get the microphone out to you. audience: how's the company culture over at cisco? pinto: company culture, great question. there's going to be two critical decisions you're going to make in life. you've may already made one. who your spouse is, is a critical decision because that is a person that can really help support you,

gain, to go to, beyond your own expectations. the company culture, that's another important aspect. because wherever you work, you want to work in a culture that is nursing, that is forgiving og failure, that is there for you. and what i mean, there for you, not so much when things go well, when things don't go well. we have done amazing things. so the company culture at cisco is based upon four or five factors. first is based upon the employee. because without the employee, nothing else matters, right? it's also about the dna-- the customer's dna has to be in everyone. everyone's got to be thinking about the customer. then it's about teamwork. it's about teamwork, right? and it's about a culture of supporting each other.

but the reason i go back to supporting you when things go wrong, we have done a-- i'll give you an amazing story. we had an employee who's child suffered from a very difficult disease in a place where they didn't have good children's hospitals. we moved them and their wife and the child to the children's hospital in london. we just moved heaven and earth. another good example is that, about five plus years ago, there was this tremendous tidal waves in japan, knocked out 600 central offices at ntt. within four months they got those central offices back online. they said even including the local japanese partners, no one partnered better than you, cisco, to help us. but it's about the individual. it's about being there.

one last story. i had an employee go from london to sydney. they went to sydney, they figured out they had a blood clot in their chest, potentially life-threatening. so, i called them, and the first four things i offered them, the manager had already offered. i said, "can i fly your wife and children out to be with you?" my manager offered me that. "when you go home, can we fly you back home with a doctor?" my manager offered me that. by the time i got to the fourth thing, i go, "you know, i'm not providing a lot of value here, you obviously have a great manager." but that's what we want from our managers. to really be there for our people. then when things are good, you certainly expect recognition, rewards, raises.

one of the good things about cisco is we have two budgets. one employee welfare, where we'll do things like food, or even rent the movie house, and then we have connected recognitions where anyone could give anyone an award ranging from a 100 dollars to several thousand dollars just based upon someone going beyond the call of duty. and that person necessarily need not be in your group. that could be if you are a tact engineer working with a systems engineer, working with a developer, that the systems engineer goes out to visit the customer at night, you are empowered to give that systems engineer an award, thanking them for giving up their evening to go out to that customer, right? so, it's also about a culture of environment as well. does that makes sense?

good good. one more quickly. follow on to this, and then we'll get to you. audience: are you guys doing anything in your work environment to nurture creativity? pinto: to nurture creativity? we do. i think that it's all about innovation, and this is why-- the reason why you hear so much about innovation. when i grew up in high tech, if you build a piece of software, if you built a platform, the shelf life on that was 7-10 years. those were really good days. that was yesterday. now, the shelf life is literally months. so you've got to absolutely have a culture of innovation.

so we do. we have different events. we have hackathons, we have different ways of rewarding people, when people get patents, we have a way of rewarding them. every person in service that gets a patent, i personally call them, thanking them, because i think it's very unique. so, we do it through different ways that we encourage people to go out there, to go--as an example, we have an incredible program that when people go out to get additional training, we pay for it with tax-free dollars. so, if you want to go get some certifications from even a competitor, we'll pay. if you want to go get some advanced learning in engineering, we'll pay. so, we do about seven or eight things really well that we force to that,

because we're respectful of the fact that the need of the individual to constantly raise their game. and everybody's a little bit different in how they like to do it. some people like to participate in events, some people like to go get a couple more security certifications in addition to the ones they have. everyone learns at different paces. and also, we're also very respectful of the need for great set of benefits to support people in their endeavors, too, as well. ah, you got a question. by the way, i haven't had any coffee yet this morning, so i'm a little low on my energy. forgive me. audience: good afternoon. my question is, what was one of the biggest challenges that cisco faced as a start-up, and what advice can you give to start-ups nowadays?

pinto: the biggest advice-- the biggest challenge as a start-up was trying to do things at any sense of scale because when you're a start-up, you know your customers, you know your people. and as things begin to go from a 100 million to 250 to 500, all of a sudden, it puts a lot of pressure on who you're hiring, it puts a lot of pressure on your processes, and do you have the right people to do scale? and it's tricky, because typically you go out and hire people to do scale, that you probably would not have hired at the start of the company. at the start of the company, you just want gorillas, barbarians, people who'd just make it happen no matter what.

they're not even worrying about how to sell the customer number two, but they know how to sell the customer number one. but then you need a different skill set of people that can do things at scale, at globally, which is the number one thing i'd say is about the hiring mechanism. because if you don't have that right, then you'll hire the wrong type of people that don't share your culture, or your values. from a cisco perspective, your question was one of the biggest challenges that we faced. i know this like it happened yesterday. years back, this is about 20 years ago. there was a problem on ethernet lines with excessive collisions.

so if you had an ethernet card from cisco, or 3com, or sun, off the workstation, it would cause the internet link to be incredibly slow. but back then, remember, ethernet was kind of fast at that time, could you have serial lines of 9.6b, 19.2. hell, i remember there were 4800, yikes. 2400. so, we took a decision as a company which was very painful, that we'd replace every ethernet card we had shipped. that was painful. we were a small company, we weren't sure if that was going to work, but to our shock, everybody else in the industry said that they wouldn't do that. well that turned out to be an incredibly bonus for us because we got a lot of kudos

from our customers that we were willing to do the right thing because we're all going to be faced with a moment in time with a start-up about doing the right thing. and when that happens, you got to really think about what's the right thing for the customers and for us, as employees. and when people start talking about, "well, this wouldn't look good." that's a bit of a red flag. when people start to say, "well, that wouldn't look good." or when people start distorting the truth. that's another red flag. that's when you got to say, "time out." this is about being direct. and sometimes to be direct, and straight with the market, hurts in the beginning, but then you get the credit on the back-end. does that make sense?

i'll take one or two more. don't forget, we got some goodies at the end. right here, i got a hand. okay, go. audience: alright, i got two questions here. one, how did you get that oven to work, and two, if you were to go back to school now, what would you study? pinto: okay, what was the first question? audience: how y'd you get that junkyard oven to work? pinto: the junkyard? oh the oven. oh, the oven in the junkyard. how did i get the oven in the junkyard to work. well, we were really lucky. it was just the rheostat because we measured, it was shorted. we went to the hardware store

not knowing they were rated. i'm lucky i didn't burn down the building because i wasn't a licensed electrician. i was a technician. i got it shorted, i went to the hardware store, i needed one. i went back, i plugged it in, and one day about a year later someone said, "it's good that it didn't burn up." i go, "why?" he goes, "those are rated. did you buy the proper one for the oven?" yikes. what would i study now? boy, i got to tell you man. my head spins on that question because i think it'd be a combination of something to do with technology, with business, with people. all these things are coming together at once. the reason i mentioned about people, i think one of the critical things of how far you'll go

is how well you interact, communicate, and deal with people. if you get it right, it's a real joy. one tip i would have, when i talk to my technical support engineers, i use a phrase, "remember the 99". and they go, "what's that?" i go, "remember the 99 customers that say, 'thank you.' ignore the one that gave you a tough time, because they're probably having a tough day, and they're probably a good person, but remember the 99." in life, how often did you have a great day, and then when you get home because someone cut you off, you get home and you're [grunting sound]. don't let that person who cut you off, screw up your day. remember the 99.

anyway, good question. thank you. thank you. do i get one more taker here? okay, so we got some giveaways for you on the way out. we've got the-- you're streaming your video we got these wonderful phone stands, and we got some 3d technology too, with the phones, as well. so, thank you all and have a great day.thank you.