Pros

Above average compensation
Innovative technology
Good Benifits

Cons

Too much management
Difficult place to be in a downturn
Go to marlet strategy is not realistic
Too many wasteful meetings

Advice to Senior Management

CA service and sales need to be one organization in order to succeed.

Pros

flexibility in work hours and tele-comuting

Cons

hourly pay is less than the market rate and work is sometimes stressful

Advice to Senior Management

management is doing good job

Pros

Good Salary
Lots of educational opportunities
Good people to work with
Management is open to new ideas
Solid Marketing ideas

Cons

There is an expectation to work very long hours
Lack of direction for meaningful projects
There is a lack of synergy between marketing and sales

Advice to Senior Management

Senior Management needs to provide more direction and listen to project managers
Managment needs to respect more life and work balance for employees

Pros

Competitive salaries with the market. A significant number of talented people to work with and learn from. A diverse culture within every department. Great benefits for health and finance.

Cons

Uses the GE philosophies on employee reviews using a bell curve to evaluate and a mandatory number of employees must be in the top range to be promoted and the bottom in a high pressure situation to quit or be fired. The average or core personnel are given the carrot of still getting a bonus, but no promotion or raise. The environment leads to a lot of back stabbing and almost no collaboration between peers who fear giving someone an advantage over them during reviews. One of the most dysfunctional places I have ever worked.

Advice to Senior Management

Jack Welch may have brought GE out of its plight or the economy at a global level did. But using his methods of treatment of employees makes working at Cisco an undesirable and hostile place to work. Jack also believed the nothing but the bottom line mattered. After working at Cisco I can see why other former employees warned me about it being a meat grinder.

Pros

The best part of working at Cisco has been my interactions with my colleagues. There are some very bright people there that still try to make the best product they possibly can.

Cons

Management. Cisco management used to be comprised of the best and brightest of the industry. They used to have a very technical background and were able to make sure that "stuff" got done right.

Cisco is now a shining example of the Peter principle run amok. There are typically seven to nine layers of management above each employee. It is impossible to have that much management and have all of them be competent. From a worker's perspective, it appears that management spends half the year on evaluations and the other half messing up the work that you're trying to get done. To add insult to injury you will have the pleasure of reading mass mailings announcing the promotion of directors and VPs while trying to get your work done in the middle of a two year hiring freeze.

Evaluations are very political and emphasize work that may have been done as much as a year ago, which is an eternity for a tech company. While your individual performance is graded through a performance review, your actual score is determined through a secret ranking of all persons in the same job level within your division. It does not take a genius to realize that it is the sycophants that get ranked highest while those that cause a fuss over quality and process get ranked at the bottom. At Cisco, it pays to be quiet about quality issues and to make sure all of your process-related check boxes are checked.

Opportunity for advancement has evaporated over the past five years. I've seen too many lower level employees left to languish at low pay grades while they've done twice the work of their higher level colleagues all because they had the bad luck of not getting the promotions while they were still being given out many years ago.

Advice to Senior Management

If you have a senior manager reporting to a director reporting to another director reporting to a VP to a VP to an executive VP, there just might be something wrong with your organization. While it is important to have a strong management system, it is wrong to dedicate so much of Cisco's resources to those that don't actually produce anything. We sell networking equipment, software, services, and support, not policies. If there were a way to productize the infinite number of policies and procedures coming down from above, I'm certain Cisco's stock price would double.

Pros

Great place to develop skills

Cons

None that I can really think of.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the choice program alive!

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

Cisco in the Middle East is very dynamic with a lot happening and amazing growth. We are working on many interesting projects and initiatives and we are way ahead of our competition thanks to our investment in the region and coverage.

Cons

Working in an ever changing environment can be tough due to the unknown. Pressure is extremely high within Cisco Middl East and a lot of the time this pressure is unjustified. Management are focused on growth, growth, growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Management in the region should focus more on their people and less on the numbers. People need to be motivated and inspired, not just by money and commissions. Management should take a real interest in developing their people and their careers.

Pros

very professional environment and the career is clear. Very freindly management. Training is very good and you are the CEO of your job

Cons

mafia's is there and in some cases they cluster and manpulate the work. the company should put more restrisctions against # of employees from each nationalities

Advice to Senior Management

divesify throught out each team. Because there are many teams who all the team members are from same nationality that makes it very diffecult to other nationalities to deal with that team

Pros

- Flexible working hours: it does not matter when or how long you work as long as the job gets done
- Work from home: you are given the flexibility of working from anywhere as long as what you are asked for is done properly
- Good benefits

Cons

- HR is inexistent: they never answer employee inquiries, never answer phone, email or voice mail left to them by employees
- HR avoids answering any questions with regards to salary increase, grades....
- Managers find it smart to pay as little as possible to employees and not promote them
- Too tactical and focused on the commits of every week
- You will close to never get a salary increase or promotion: there is always a freeze
- Finance and HR do their best to cut benefits and salaries if possible
- HR keeps reminding you that you are lucky to work for Cisco
- Unfair in terms of equal employment opportunity: a lot of new positions are not announced and are arranged by managers to be taken by certain people before you ever hear about any of them

Advice to Senior Management

- Take care of your employees: they are all you have got and competition will be more than glad to hire them
- Focus on strategy on the regional and country levels instead of the narrow sighted weekly commitments
- HR to frequently review the status of employees that have been with the company for more than five years and got no promotions: try to understand what is behind it and do not leave this to first line managers only
- stop bragging about being a top company: you do not pay like one
- Be FAIR