Cisco Systems Reviews in Boston, MA Area

Pros

Cisco provides great benefit of life and work balance

Cons

Cisco's growth is very limited in recent years.

Pros

- Good benefit package overall
- Flexible work options
- Good work-life balance
- Very knowledgable, senior people to work with.
- Respect co-workers

Cons

- Slow career growth & stagnation
- No protomotions or raises for long time.
- Not enough recognition for good work.

Advice to Senior Management

As the company is very SJ centric, the remote sites do not get a chance for visiblity & career growth.

Pros

Compensation, benefits are very good. Performance based equity. Work time is flexible. Component vendors will bend over backwards to get their product designed in. Engineering staff is top notch. Good people to work with. HW design tools are best avail.

Cons

HW engineering a dying breed at Cisco. Focus is on SW feature delivery. SJ is the center of excellence and the remote US locations are just support sites. Development teams are global - expect late night conf calls with china, india, malaysia. Internal support of design tools is weak. Layoffs have become a way of life. Morale has dwindled.

Advice to Senior Management

Give engineers confidence that their job won't be moved overseas. Show more support for US sites outside of SJ and RTP. Stop the never ending re-orgs. Learn from the smaller, focused companies that have stolen your market share. Figure out how to get the entrepreneurial spirit back into the company.

Pros

Good Compensation, good tech. work

Cons

Outsources Content & Core Jobs to China & India

Pros

Good place to learn IP/routing technology. Open and fair process in place for information sharing. Good and knowledgeable employees.

Cons

Heavy on processes. HR and Finance put rigid rules. The company wastes volumes on unnecessary collaboration. A sales force that has no desire to sell more than its quota. The sales force waits for the channels, and resellers to make and maintain the customer contacts. It does not know how to do business directly with the end customers. It is also not well structured to reduce overlaps among the BUs.

Advice to Senior Management

Collaboration is good, but the ability + swiftness of decision making and execution are much more important.

Pros

They generally treat employees well, and benefits are good.

Cons

They have been outsourcing a lot of work in the past few years.

Pros

Cisco has a lot of resources and Subject Matter Experts available so that you can grow your knowledge base and be competitive. It's a great learning experience that is rarely matched in most companies.

Cons

As it is a big company, there will be a bit of red tape/bureaucracy. The politics can roadblock your career or program. Though this is apparent in all companies, Cisco does a better job on critical feedback that should help the individual's growth and awareness.

Advice to Senior Management

Cisco has to refocus and catch it's edge again as the competition is starting to thrive.

Pros

Opportunities within the company
High salary
Women are treated equally
Liberal work-at-home policy
Excellent benefits

Cons

Long hours
Inept mddle management
Lack of opportunities within one's department
Fear of having your job sent overseas
Older workers are encouraged to leave with early retirement, taking their skills and expertise with them. Management needs to be assessed and culled.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a good hard look at the mistakes management is making and stop trying to balance the books through outsourcing and early retirement.

Pros

The benefits at Cisco were adequate

Cons

The compensation at Cisco was inadequate

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on customers, employees, then shareholders.

Pros

Management team is very supportive. Compensation package is good.
Documentation is well established. Cozy environment to work. Rich training
resources.

Cons

Technical is mature, no cutting-edge technical learned in daily
work..such it is hard to find a new career outside Cisco. Cisco
is adopting new strategy which is hiring more new graduates
to replace mid-level engineers

Advice to Senior Management

Technical is mature, no cutting-edge technical learned in daily
work..such it is hard to find a new career outside Cisco. Cisco
is adopting new strategy which is hiring more new graduates
to replace mid-level engineers