Pros

Though Fortune 100 status, growth company
Great executive management and CEO
Diversified product and technology portfolio

Cons

Salary can stagnate unless you leave the company and rejoin

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the job

Pros

Financially stable company. For the most part work environment is flexible. CEO is dynamic. 4 weeks vacation is great. Well run company.

Cons

Too much bureaucracy. Very top heavy. Decisions made a lower levels are too mind boggling. Very disjointed. Not easy to transfer jobs. Internal jobs are posted even though hiring decisions are already made.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't forget the employees. Get rid of middle management and layers. There are too many directors without any reports, Don't get cheap by cutting down on beverages. It actually costs the company since people leave campus for lunch instead of spending 10 mins at desk with their choice beverage.

Pros

I knew it wasn't the right place for me within three months, but I lasted three years. It's basically a typical big company with the advantages and drawbacks you'd expect.

Cons

The isn't really a clear path up the corporate ladder beyond director. Most of the management was somehow from another company. It's usually ranked as a good place to work, but I always felt like they went through the motions on the criteria and didn't actually care.

Advice to Senior Management

Seriously look at pay; be honest about layoffs; develop a clear vision for the company. No, not that BS you put on cards--something more tangible.

Pros

Vast amount of information and learning available to you.
Technology Leader

Cons

One manager can derail your entire career if they have favorites they want to advance.
Once you start in one sales organization as a systems engineer, services manager, etc. you are not considered to be carrying a bag.
It is career limiting to go to Human Resources about any job roles and or management issues.

Advice to Senior Management

Peel back the onion and face the fact that it is still very much an old boy network.

Pros

At Cisco you can find a great team of people to work with, people who are committed to making their products the best, people with a lot of integrity. Cisco offers some of the best benefits of any high-tech company in the world, and they encourage people to explore opportunities within the company that can help you further your career.

Cons

At Cisco you may find your manager stretching your limits to complete tasks. Although you can find satisfaction in breaking your perceived limits to workload, you may find yourself working weekends to keep up.

In its effort to streamline operations, Cisco has made some aspects of working at Cisco very impersonal. For example, the use of Telepresence in some building lobbies means that you do not see a person in the lobby when you enter and exit the building. When you start a job at Cisco, you do not interact with anyone in Human Resources (HR) because the process is automated over the Internet. When you leave a job, you do not have any interaction with HR.

Advice to Senior Management

Each year, management presents a new set of goals for its employees to meet. The expectation is that everyone will complete a task related to each of the goals. Not all the goals relate to an employee's tasks. Management should ask employees to select only those goals that make sense within their job role.

Pros

Working with my colleagues. Nice and knowledgeable. There are still some very bright people trying to make the best product they can.

Cons

It becomes bigger and bigger. Therefore, not as good as what it was like several years ago. Lot of bureaucracy

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce the overhead caused by too many levels of management, and make the work environment more efficient. Improve open communication.

Pros

Good benefits
reasonable hours if you work smart and set limits
can work from home
friendly coworkers
good intranet with tons of information

Cons

Lack of ambition amongst coworkers.
Many people are very comfortable with their jobs and set in their ways. Not a good place for a young and ambitious person.
Lack of excitement.
Offices are very plain.
Cafeterias are closed after lunch.
Is English the language of business here? sometimes I wonder

Advice to Senior Management

inspire some ambition and excitement
cut down on process and management overhead

Pros

Cisco is pretty much what you'd expect of a company with 70,000 employees. High levels of management overhead, and if you're towards the bottom of the tree (as most people are) then to a large extent you just become one of the numbers.

Benefits are good, pay is reasonable but not great.

Cons

Again - just what you'd expect of a 70k person company.

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

Working with many smart people in challenging environment, which help people to grow technically . There are many positive aspects of corporate cultures including customer satisfaction and information sharing.

Cons

Now it is too slow in terms of technology leadership and too much politics. So many pressure among senior engineers to get promoted.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should think to grow together with employees. The management tries to get only visible output, which makes work place worse everyday.

Pros

excellent benfits, good place to learn new technologies

Cons

poor work-life balance, very slow career-growth, some managers can be slave drivers

Advice to Senior Management

ranking everyone on a bell-curve in annual performance reviews leads to lot of unnecessary competition and ill-will within the CDO engineering teams, and can be counter-productive. Fellow engineers don't trust each other