2017-April-13

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Two Cisco Veterans Embody the Best of Our Rich Heritage

As Cisco honors its 30-year history with the opening of "Our Story" exhibit, we celebrate two of the company's living examples of what's great about Cisco. Ed Swenson and Phillip Remaker joined the company a quarter of a century ago. Today, Ed is Director of Technical Support, and Phillip is a Distinguished Services Engineer.

"Phil and I are old timers," Swenson says. "His badge number (860) is one digit off from mine (859). We're buddies."

Both joined Cisco as technical support engineers, Ed in December 1991, and Phil just a few weeks later. Ed says he got the job because he spoke Japanese, having recently completed a six-month rotation in Tokyo with his previous employer, Pacific Bell.

"I was a customer of Cisco before I worked there and liked the product," says Swenson, a native of Seattle, Washington.

Phillip, who grew up in Philadelphia, was also a Cisco customer before he joined the company. As a network engineer with Advanced Micro Devices, he says he made himself "a thundering pain to Cisco," pushing our products to the limit, and flooding the support group with emails and late-night phone calls. He jokes that Cisco hired him to make it stop.

"They said, 'If we hire you, we can close all your cases,'" Phillip recalls.

A Fork in the Road

Since then, both men have held a variety of roles. For Ed, they included writing IOS software as a software engineer in the development team, but mostly within the tech support arena. In 2002, he reached a crossroads where he had a choice to move into a director role in tech support, or become a Distinguished Engineer.

"I liked managing people so I chose the director path," says Swenson, who has three degrees from Stanford University, and three daughters—each of whom also has a degree from Stanford.

As Director of Technical Support, it's Ed's job to make sure all of Cisco's spare parts depots are well stocked, in case customers need hardware replacements. The company issues about 1 million replacements a year.

Phillip worked his way up to become an analyst, then joined—and later managed—an Escalation Team that handled especially tough problems (what he calls "the bizarre, sublime and ridiculous"). He joined the Professional Services Team in the early days of VoIP, VPN and Cisco's UCS server business, becoming the first-ever Distinguished Engineer in Services in 2002. The role combines deep technical expertise in multiple areas with an ability to mentor other engineers and a strong understanding of the business.

"Engineering and management are not dichotomous," Phillip says.

"It's all about working with smart people on hard problems. Even after 25 years, I still find myself surrounded by people I can learn from," he says.

History buffs

Both Ed and Phillip are extremely supportive of the Center for Cisco Heritage and its CEO, Don Proctor. Both were fascinated with Cisco's history even when the company was in its infancy and made efforts to preserve that history even then.

"I'm kind of a packrat," Ed says.

"It's about preserving those things that were important in making us a great company, paying homage and making sure they remain interwoven into our culture," says Phillip, a Cisco Heritage co-founder and board member.

What advice would Ed and Phillip give to someone wanting to join Cisco?

Ed takes pride in starting Cisco's TAC college hire program in 2002. He has since hired or trained hundreds of engineers. Specific to the TAC program, Ed says there are three things potential new hires should consider: 1) The TAC support engineer's job is important because Cisco makes products that are used pervasively to help people communicate; 2) the role allows you to help people; and 3) the problems that you need to solve are interesting and varied.

"Don't do the support job for the money," he says. "Look for a job that suits your personality. For me, it's a job of solving problems with Internet devices."

Phillip urges engineers to stop reading and start doing. That's how innovation happens. "A lot of engineers are very into book knowledge and studying," he says. "But you don't learn to dance by reading about dancing. Roll up your sleeves and jump in—which is also the way to have the most fun."

As for Cisco's culture, both concur that it was as great 25 years ago as it is today. Ed has a framed poster on his desk with Cisco's values from when he joined the company. Most of the values on it—customer success, creating value for employees and partners, and changing the way we work, live, play and learn—are as relevant today as they were then.

And then there are Cisco's amazing people—such as Joe Pinto, who is Senior Vice President for Technical Services. Ed recalls an early incident that's stuck with him over the years. Soon after Ed joined Cisco, his wife found out she was pregnant with twins and needed bed rest. Ed needed to stay home to help her, but had used up all his paid time off. But because Pinto understood the importance of family, he let Ed work from home over a 14.4k dial-up modem for two full months—which was unusual at the time.

"Joe's a great guy to work for," Ed says, crediting Joe with hiring him in the first place. "He does those little things that make people want to stay around."

Phillip concurs, saying it's Cisco's people, stories and mission that make the culture special. "When we talk about changing the way people work, live, play and learn, we mean it," he says. "We have changed and continue to change the world, and that's pretty exciting."

Related Links

• The Center for Cisco Heritage
• Cisco Heritage: A Physical Archive of the Digital Age
• Cisco's Heritage Archive is Where Past Meets Future
• Our Story: Cisco's Heritage Exhibit Opens

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