Cisco Systems Reviews in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX Area

Pros

Good work and recog from mid-level managers and my direct manager. Work is self starting, freedom to go and pursue initiatives I feel benefits our clients.

Cons

Red tape, easy to get overlooked if not always giving extra effort, sometimes overworked in services (not sure about engineering divisions). Easy for others to "cruise" but also easy to stand out if you put in the effort.

Advice to Senior Management

Good direct level and mid-level mgrs. More direct messaging from executives (face to face or in-person meetings).

Pros

Excellent pay and benefits with good coworkers

Cons

VERY San Jose centric. Few advancement opportunities or recognition if not in SJC.

Pros

Good compensation
Good benefits
Good location in Richardson

Cons

Inept management
No development/engineering work @ the Richardson Site
MANY/MANY broken internal tools!
Stock consistently a low performer
Not a growth company anymore
Little/no competence in S/W

Advice to Senior Management

Need to further weed-out inept managers!!!

Pros

performance recognition scheme
Flexible work hours

Cons

Salary hikes are bad
There is much too much of hierarchy within the organzation

Pros

Great place to get experience and training on extremely expensive equipment that you may never touch otherwise. Huge environment with a lot of opportunity. Great people in a very respectful and friendly atmosphere!

Cons

Cisco does not compensate at the level of the work that is typically performed, and the ability to be promoted is slow due to many HR obstacles.

Cisco has also been rapidly reducing employee benefits (ultimately offloading more and more costs on employees) which is taking a major toll on morale.

At this time of writing, management seems VERY disconnected from the individual contributors, partially due to way to much management and ever increasing bureaucracy.

The result of these factors is that much of the top talent ends up leaving the company.

Advice to Senior Management

1. Return to laser focus on making customers happy and always put them first...regardless of whether or not it always makes "sense".
2. Then, treat you employees as though they are customers. Remember that they are investments, not expenses. Don't compromise this. Focus on the culture and prioritize major team-building events and off-sites again.
3. Hire (and pay) only the very best. Then, trust your employees and remove obstacles that prevent employees from innovating. Empower them to make change. Change from a top-down organization to bottom-up.
4. Reduce the massive layers of management. No org chart should have directors with only 3-4 managers beneath them. This will empower your people.

Without these things in place Cisco will continue to decline and high performing dedicated and really hard working employees like myself will take higher offers when recruiters come knocking with better offers from companies that put their customers and people first.

Pros

Good benefit and pay well

Cons

Not much opprotunity unless you are at San Jose

Advice to Senior Management

Focus. Be Cisco and not Apple.

Pros

Overall, great people. Most are willing to chip in and help out across teams. Competitive pay though it is slipping. Still have several solid products. One of the best sales channels in the industry.

Cons

Lots of uncertainty as the company refocuses in FY11. I expect to see several long time team members choose to leave the company during the next few months. Expense budgets continue to shrink but expectations of employees are increasing. Do more with less. Headcount constraints are serious issue as back-fills are not being approved. Competitive hires are difficult to acquire due to compensation falling behind the industry average.

Advice to Senior Management

They are on the right track of simplifying the strategy. We need to get back to our core business but we need to fund the field to execute. Treat people with respect and equip them with resources and they will deliver

Pros

I work network consulting, not software dev, so we see much more support based and customer driven interactions.

 - Challenging Problem Sets
 - New customer environments and topologies
 - New hardware and software deployments
 - Opportunities to develop both soft and hard skills
 - Opportunities to work with top-of-the-line hardware
 - Rarely have to work weekends

Been lucky with my managers at Cisco for the last 5 years - the two I have had are excellent.

Cons

- Long Long hours - Sometimes two or three days of all-nighters for maintenance windows
- Lots of red-tape - Everything has a system or a form
- Lots of corporate directives - but no real explanation of the larger picture - I'm not sure what the direction of the company is.

Advice to Senior Management

Clearly communicate with us our objectives and goals - If we have to have just ONE thing (not the 5 or so global initiatives) that must drive our entire focus for the year - what is it?

Pros

Very decent salary. Mine was at 97% of the market.
Excellent base to become technical but don't stay too long in TAC.
Excellent benefits package.
Exciting if you like to work on web sessions with customers. If you are successfully, then it really shows to future employers that you have awesome communication skills

Cons

4 weeks of vacation is amazing but with sick days as part of it, it is horrible.
No promotions whatsoever. Only if you are phenomenally technical and are a good talker
Bonuses not distributed fairly.
Constant stress of being rated by customer satisfaction surveys. Bad customer sat scores can get you fired.
No cost of living raise.
Just like most places, politics and bureaucracy. A whole lost of senior management does not even have a bachelors.

Advice to Senior Management

Give some say to employees, who are actually what makes this company a success. You just make decisions but we are the ones who implement them.

Pros

smart peoples cooperate to achieve common goals
best benefits, health care, 401K...
open communication between team mates and managers

Cons

waste of time on sometimes useless process
sometimes decision making is rather slow

Advice to Senior Management

nothing particular