[ih] The linux router project and wifi routers

[Craig Partridge]

As I recall, and Wikipedia seems to support in its bios of Lerner and
Morgridge, the process was a bit trickier.

Sandy and Len founded Cisco in 1984.  In 1987 they got a CEO named Bill
Graves.  At the time, I was told Graves was brought in by Cisco's VC folks
to get Cisco to a certain sales level and then would transition out for a
more senior person.  That person was Morgridge, who became CEO in 1988 and
managed the process of getting Cisco to the point it could go public in
1990.  Somewhere in that timeframe Len got sidelined to being the head of a
research team (my recollection is that Len described this to me in a car
ride at an IETF in Boston in 1987, but that may be too early).  I think
Sandy retained a leadership position, but am not sure.

The blowup in 1990 leading to Sandy's departure is well documented.  But
Len (whom I thought highly of as an engineer) was already sidelined.

Craig

On Fri, Nov 4, 2022 at 2:17 PM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On 11/4/2022 1:11 PM, Bill Nowicki via Internet-history wrote:
> > A famous episode is when Sandy had a falling out with the vulture
> capitalists, they brought in John Morgridge as the CEO and fired Sandy.
>
> Offering another rumor:  at the time, I heard more than one person say
> that Sandy was aggressively alienating the staff.
>
> A milder point is that it is rare for folk who have been good at
> starting a company are also good at growing it to the scale that was
> anticipated at the time of this management change.  The exceptions get a
> lot of notoriety, which tends to produce a misunderstanding of just how
> rare it is.
>
> d/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


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