Cisco Systems Reviews in Austin, TX Area

Pros

Coleagues are quite valuable people

Cons

Operational stuff stops sometimes innovation

Advice to Senior Management

Try to check field leadership value

Pros

Energetic, Caring, Understanding management. One of the best places in the world to work for. Love the environment and people. Very helpful work environment, team oriented, Vast suppositories of knowledge available for all.

Cons

kind of a weird schedule depending on which one you are assigned to at the time. No rest for the weak at heart.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider employing more Blue badges. Offer employer paid certification training for contractors. Network Engineers in this location work very hard, mostly for menial pay compared to other similar positions, and all because Cisco is where they WANT to work. I do. For us to work as hard as we do, and not be able to receive anything like certification training internally kinda sucks.

Pros

* Pay and benefits are very good
* Engineering talent is top notch - much to learn from your peers
* Work/life balance better than it used to be

Cons

* HR has become too fragmented - mistakes are made and there is no single point of contact for new hires
* Way too top heavy at middle to upper management and councils. Layoffs typically impact those doing the actual work and management doesn't realize the mistake until it's too late.
* Becoming more risk averse and less innovative

Advice to Senior Management

* flatten the management chain drastically
* let technologists have more sway over product direction
* find a way to re-spark innovation and risk-taking

Pros

Opportunity for advancement. Competitive salary.

Cons

Oursourcing of jobs previously performed by dedicated, hard working Americans..

Pros

The illusion that one day you will be hired on, if you just have a "Cisco attitude".
Free Coffee & microwave popcorn
Pool Table in the break room.
Ridiculous benefits for Cisco employees.

Cons

You will never be hired on full-time. You have a better shot at winning the lottery. Cisco is in a perpetual hiring freeze, and is now working on cutting 4000 positions because the CEO has run the company poorly. Contractors get the shaft. No benefits, severely underpaid, way below market. But another plus of being full-time, when they lay you off, they will bring you back as a contractor.

Advice to Senior Management

There's no way people will get the "Cisco attitude" if the majority of the workforce is contract labor. Stop investing in bad decisions like Flip cameras and Umi telepresence that are superfluous since every cell phone has a camera, and Skype is free; invest in your workforce... gain loyalty through making people a priority, not a commodity.

Pros

Edge of Technology
Good work culture
Smart people
Potential to make this challenging if you want with the reward of recognition if you do well.

Cons

No commitment to contractors
Low pay compared to market
Value certifications over college degree
Feedback on work performance could be better

Advice to Senior Management

Identify those employees who are working hard and hang onto them. Set the proper expectations for new employees. Give feedback to employees.

Pros

- The salaries and bonuses are acceptable.
- You get to work with latest technology
- Very smart and talented co-workers

Cons

- Every year, approximately from July to Sept, Cisco targets internal organizations for reduction in head count. Your job is at risk every year.
- Salary increases are rare
- Once technology becomes stable, Cisco moves development to India and leaves US employees to search for new position or leave Cisco. So, if you do a good job, you are rewarded by losing your job.
- Cisco is always trying to get rid of the bottom 5%. After a while, this reaches the good workers.
- You work long hours, weekends, all-nighters, etc
- very limited job opportunities outside HQ
- no professional development.
- no training dollars.

Advice to Senior Management

- Cisco makes a ton of money. Share the wealth in salary increases and bonuses at the engineer level.
- Stop the outsourcing to other countries. US employees will do a great job, if given the opportunity.

Pros

Good Brand name
Still Market Share Leader

Cons

No chance for promotion
Engineers are treated as second-class citizens by MBA grad managers
No innovatation, simply to mantain staus-quo

Advice to Senior Management

Start getting rid of some layers of management. There are too many instances in the reporting structure where a Director has a single Director, who has a single director under him/her.

Consider laying off some director-level management instead of all taking the cost cutting on engineers in the trenches.

Pros

Cisco offers the ability to gain exposure to many different technologies while working for a single company. Pay and benefits are very good and while the workload is high, it is not "startup" hours for the most part. Cisco can be many different companies depending on which group you are in or whether your programs are in favor or not. High visibility programs, senior exec. sponsored initiatives can be good experiences, while other extremely important core business can feel very unappreciated.

Cons

Cisco continues to move jobs overseas despite being incredibly/ off the charts profitable. Cisco has a globalization strategy to develop products for low cost geographies in those geographies and have access to global talent. This strategy makes sense, but the way budgets are handled, the individual business units are simply shedding higher cost US jobs. The way the businesses are rewarded and budgeted, it is all about headcount expense these days. I really wish Cisco would show more integrity here and show a little loyalty to its workforce.

Advice to Senior Management

Cisco's strength during the down economy provides incredible opportunity to capture employee loyalty. Unfortunately, this is lost opportunity as everyone I see is becomming more eager to leave every single day. Cisco is going to lose a lot of top talent due to the way it is treating people and organizations during the downturn. Cisco is simply no longer "doing the right thing" for employees that built its success.

Pros

pay, benefits, people, technology - all great

Cons

internal IT systems out of date

Advice to Senior Management

single sign-on!