Occassionally Ciena may promote from with in, however it was my experience that Ciena always hires the talent they want from outside the company. They prefer to keep employees in the same position, it seems forever. I tried for 8 years to transfer into a sales and or sales engineering role. I am fully trained in sales engineering and designing and building fiber optic networks and in all forms of selling including Holden political power based selling and consultant type selling, My background for 20 years was carrying a quota and successfully selling private fiber optic communication networks, OSP, DWDM, metro, regional and long haul, etc etc. I was unable to convince anyone at Ciena to let me go sell for them.
I was told on more than one occasion that any training I wanted to take must be in support of my specific job duties and responsibilities otherwise it would not be approved. In other words if I wanted to grow my career towards something else, example towards Sales Engineering; the training would be my responsibility. When the sales pipeline dried up for our group, Ciena was not interested in letting our small group go sell to bring orders in for services. Ciena just let us go when there were many other positions open that I and others could have easily transferred to and been very successful for Ciena in the new positions. It appeared that there was no thought ever considered, to utilize people assets who's positions were just eliminated in other Ciena areas. Ciena made the choice to discard all of the 8 years of knowledge I had of their systems, customers, and my extensive fiber optic network experience and hire someone new who had no knowledge and would need to be trained. It was with mixed blessings and feelings I left Ciena. I now have the opportunity to do what I enjoy doing and I can apply for new Ciena positions with out my Director and Sr. Director being informed that I had applied for a different Ciena position. It was automatic for the system to let Management know if an employee applied for another position at Ciena. Now I get to sell for someone else against Ciena. Exciting.
Knowing what I know today, would I go back to work for Ciena if blessed with the chance. Yes I would. However it does not appear I will ever get that chance. Such is life.
