Cisco Systems Reviews

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

Work-Life balance, Fair compensation, Chance for success without constantly busting your ass. Good performance review structure. Chance to learn about many areas of the business (subject matter expertise) and new skillsets

Cons

Very complex organizations with constantly changing vision & goals. Long cycle times to deliver on most projects. Many fundamental architectural challenges which require many go-rounds to address

Advice to Senior Management

Simplify

Pros

- Great benefits
- Good natured people
- Great work-life balance
- Can shift between different areas of the organization for new career/functional opportunities

Cons

- Slow-moving; it can take a while to make change happen
- People become comfortable in their legacy setup so can be resistant to changes / new ways of doing things
- No clear processes - can feel inefficient

Advice to Senior Management

- Allow for less duplication of effort but instilling more centralized knowledge-sharing for teams in similar functions
- Upgrade from the old "email" way of communicating

Pros

Flexible working. Lots of knowledge to be learned. People are respectful and smart

Cons

Hard to get promotion. A lot of organization changes lately, not always for the better.

Advice to Senior Management

Hard to get promotion. A lot of organization changes lately, not always for the better.

Pros

The breadth and depth of the business allows for near endless opportunity for the identification of improvement. An operations manager or analyst can uncover potential efficiency gains under every rock.

Cons

The breadth and depth of the business has evolved quicker than the capacity to create efficient processes and policies that can be globally adopted. This allows for near endless and hidden opportunity for improvement. An operations manager or analyst can get lost in the red tape without clear focus on specific targets and a roadmap of how to navigate the political landscape.

Advice to Senior Management

Re-stoke the thrill of working for your company through recruiting focus. Then creatively evolve the way that you harness and utilize the massive brainpower possessed by your employees. Innovate don't incubate.

Pros

Large Company, Friendly Workers, The Internet is growing and so is Cisco's role in the world

Cons

The bottom five percent of employes are let go during cut times.

Advice to Senior Management

I really enjoyed the Bagel meetings we had every friday that helped keep workers informed.

Pros

-Forced to learn quickly, very fast paced
-Great resources for anything you need
-Great benefits and compensation
-Equipment available for engineers

Cons

Cisco is such a large company that often times people can hide in a corner and collect a paycheck with out doing much work while others work very hard to keep the company profitable. This can be demoralizing to hard working employees. The Re-org helped but left some fat to be trimmed.

Pros

Great benefits
 great use of collaboration technologies they we sold.
A lot of autonomy
"work is an activity not a location"

Cons

Lacks team environment
Working all the time due to amazing technology, there is never a day off.
Cisco managers hire to what has worked in the past, the market has changed and they need to mix it up.

Advice to Senior Management

Know your talent and provide opportunities for internal recruiting.
More diversity, not all white males..

Pros

Flexible work schedules, good benefits, smart people, comfortable pace

Cons

Can be long hours, especially working with overseas partners, career growth can be stunted, a lot of "fire drill"

Pros

Huge opportunity for the company translates into many interesting possibilities for future projects. The feeling inside the company is still positive.

Cons

Cisco has become a very large company in many ways that leave some people with feelings that the management is impersonal.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue innovating into new technologies, don't stand on the past successes. Market domination comes from being early into a market that few others see or understand.