Here's what Cisco employees think about their new CEO

Cisco employees learned that they were getting a new CEO on Monday, Chuck Robbins.

And they have mixed feelings about it, people close to the company have told Business Insider.

Robbins is a 17-year Cisco veteran who is internally known as a good operational leader - that's in line with the praise that outgoing CEO John Chambers has heaped on him.

But employees have the feeling that Chambers, who is stepping into the executive chairman role, will still really be running the show.

Robbins "is likely to allow Chambers to continue his influence on the company," one person close to the company told us.

And employees are not overjoyed by that.

On the one hand, Chambers is highly admired and respected within the company, and credited for growing Cisco into the $47 billion giant it is today.

On the other, the company has been in turmoil for about four years, with annual layoffs and ongoing restructuring.

Employees aren't sure if Robbins will end the days of slashing and cutting, or if he's going to double down on that.

But he's hinted there may be more cuts to come:

"Being the mathematician, with a focus on numbers, we're going to make sure we drive a level of operational rigor that maybe is even a little tougher than what you did, John," he said in a video interview with John Chambers.

Confusion after massive reorg

The several years of restructuring culminated in a massive reorganization of Cisco's huge engineering department last fall. Engineers make up 35% of its workforce (about 25,000 people out of about 71,000).

This sparked many employees to dust off their resumes and begin looking for other jobs, multiple sources told us.

And confusion at the company has been reigning ever since, people close to the company have told us.

Cisco changed its reporting structure so that product development and marketing folks report up one channel and engineers report up another, sources told us. Previously, there were cross-functional units. The old system was highly bureaucratic with lots of politics and fiefdoms, employees told us. But the new system is still in a state of confusion, with two silos that are not always working together, we're hearing.

As part of the restructuring, Cisco also got rid of a lot of middle managers and unit leaders.

This change was described to us by a former employee as "cleaning house."

The upshot is that many Cisco employees feel a "lack of hope," a former employee said. With middle-management slashed and an emphasis on cost control, they don't feel like there is lot of opportunity for career growth, we were told.

Robbins has an opportunity to fix this.

The hottest business unit at the company

There's one notable exception, the group known internally as Insieme.

This is the group working on Cisco's most important network product, the Nexus 9000. It allows Cisco to compete in a new market called software-defined network that promises to upend the way companies build their networks.

Insieme is the most recent Cisco "spin-in." A "spin-in" is a startup funded by Cisco, working with the company's resources, that Cisco buys after it successfully builds its product. Cisco bought Insieme for $863 million in 2013 after investing $135 million.

The Insieme group is also considered the one really hot spot, the best career path at the company.

These spin-ins were always done by three legendary engineers at Cisco: Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, and Luca Cafiero. Internally, they go by the nickname of MarioPremLuca.

We're told that MarioPremLuca "simply refused" to participate in Cisco's overall engineering restructuring and is still its own, nearly autonomous business unit.

We're also told that the Insieme group is also considered the one really hot spot for career growth at the company.

Cisco employees want the rest of the company to be that exciting. But if Chambers is still running the show behind the scenes, they aren't sure if that's going to happen.

Not just a sales guy

Robbins is known internally as a sales guy, and fairly so. Prior to being appointed CEO, he was leading Cisco's giant sales organization, including its massive partner sales organization (known in the industry as the "reseller channel").

Chambers himself rose to the CEO ranks after leading sales.

(In Cisco's history, Chambers was the second head of sales and Robbins the seventh, Chambers told CNBC's Jim Cramer.)

Robbins has a degree in math and he started his career as an application developer for a bank before going into tech sales, reports Network World.

He's also known for having a good sense of humor.

We've reached out to Cisco for comment and will update when we hear back.