Cisco Systems Reviews in Raleigh-Durham, NC Area

Pros

Flexibility, good people, fair compensation and benefits

Cons

Top heavy, process heavy, too many people to show how to put on the bulb, few doers and less credibility for the doers.

Slow decision making

Off-shoring of IT functions has in fact increased costs (as onsite resources are required anyways), quality has suffered, and delays and failure in delivery of IT projects.

Advice to Senior Management

In IT: Back to the Basics in true sense- dont need Accenture to be doing Administrative work, very expensive. Reduce count of IT Analysts and PMs, focus on increasing core techno-functional resources and simplify process.

Recent changes are good, but some more top trimming would have been good.

Pros

Good Company,
Large,
Competitive,
Broad portfolio to sel

Cons

At times too large
Upward mobility somewhat hindered with ridiculous HR people/rules

Advice to Senior Management

Realize that sales keeps the lights on, i realize this is an IT company and run by a bunch of techies, but no sales, no light, no compay - make iteasier for us to sell

Pros

- Flexible work hours and work from home as needed
- Great work environment (facilities & equipment)
- Great benefits & pay

Cons

- Perks were cut back in 2008/2009
- Politics. Poor managers can succeed by managing upwards and making life miserable for the people under them.
- Performance reviews: Team members are ranked, so even a team with all good staff someone gets a poor review and no bonus.

Advice to Senior Management

Penalize managers who get bad Pulse survey results year after year to get rid of bad managers. After my teams last Pulse survey results, the director said there were no surprises with the results yet one of his managers under him was rated as ineffective by 80% of his staff! That's not a surprise? You're proud of it? This manager has had a 66% turnover in 18 months since he joined the team where the previous manager had great team morale for 3+ yrs and only team growth instead of turnover.

Pros

results oriented culture
work life balance
good compensation
smart, driven people
lots of resources for sales and business development to get their job done

Cons

too many cogs in the sales machine
need greater accountability by senior leadership
lack of focus
new focus = same old thing

Advice to Senior Management

management needs to stop talking about solutions and start implementing simplified go-to-market modes that provide an incentive for sales to sell things outside their comfort zone

Pros

Um.... I get to work at home, but that's only because they want me to work even more hours(move this to con) Working from home used to be a great idea, but Cisco uses this to get you to work more hours!!! Don't be fooled!

I learn a lot from my coworkers.

I get to say I work at Cisco

I would have more Pro's if I was on a different team. It's sad really....

Cons

Expected to work ALL hours of the day. No respect for people's time even if you have children. I laugh when I hear about "Best Places to Work" My team is a corporate sweatshop. Everyday we are expected to work until 1AM+ when our day starts at 8AM. This isn't happening before a release these hours are everyday! Call me crazy if I actually want to pickup my child, feed her, and take care of her.

My wife is a single parent after I started working for Cisco because I am ALWAYS working.

Horrible business processes, horrible quality of data, and horrible workarounds that cause more issues with the data.

Never in my life have I ever seen managers yell and degrade their employees. I haven't had that directed towards me, but I've been in meetings and witnessed this. I've seen managers yell at employees who want to go home when it's 9PM and they are IN THE OFFICE with NO DINNER when his or her day started at 8AM. This is not a third world country!! Some managers need to stop this mentality!!!!

Way overly complicated processes and offshoring to India doesn't help matters. It takes weeks to deal with Cisco's customer support which is in India for simple issues or questions that should be a matter of minutes.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire your managers and directors! Managers on my team have NO clue the hours we are working nor the labor involved to get the work done.
Scrap every single ERP, reporting tool, etc.. that you have and start over! Yes this would cost millions, but geez you are spending millions on labor just to deal with the horrible data and processes your systems create!
Stop with the family friendly garbage cause you are NOT! If you think so send out a survey and follow up. Be sure to include your slave labor I mean your contractors.

Pros

* Flexibility in work hours and telecommuting
* "Family comes first" mentality for most first-level management
* Health insurance benefits
* Discount programs

Cons

* Promotions did not come easy even if first-level managers rank you as the best on their team
* No job security (top performers, high visibility projects, etc. it doesn't matter)
* Compensation was static
* Very political

Advice to Senior Management

Performance metrics have been put in place... use them to rank people and don't cut entire groups of talented people based on out sourcing replacements or geographic location.

Pros

- generally pay at market or higher
- offer bonus even in lean times if Company meets targets
- driven, smart employees
- good products, quality

Cons

- expect a lot of sacrifice from employees (and family)
- no longer treat employees as the once did (shifted $ responsibility of perks onto employees)
- no more company loyalty to long term employees

Advice to Senior Management

- think long term and not what gets short term profits at expense of long term impact

Pros

Flexible hours...get to work from home at times...definitely a learning experience

Cons

Too many managers...as a partner pay is low. thre are more partners than employees it seems. Opportunities to go to direct hire are almost impossible within IT support.

Advice to Senior Management

The management chain needs to be significantly reduced...too many chiefs and not enough indians. The quality of staff seems to have gone down and the fabled elite of Cisco Systems is quickly disappearing as more "cheaper" labor is being replaced with the quality of knowledgeable staff.

Pros

Great people to work with.
Flexible work schedules
Work is always interesting and state of the art
My last 3 managers have been the best I have worked for in 20years.

Cons

As every company progresses in size there are growing pains. Chambers is an excellent CEO but is struggling with getting Cisco to the next level.
8 layers of management above the guy getting the work done is too much.

Remove all VP and dont replace them with VP's from failed companies like Nortel
SVP Chief Tech Officer publicly blasted Apple's iphone as a failure. This is the last person you want picking winners and committing futures in your company. Its not just management, but technical/vision incompetence at high levels too.

Echoing most workers here the CEO and bottom level is great but the VP ranks and some mid level management needs to go.

Advice to Senior Management

The CEO's job should be to lead the company. That is, the people who are the company and create the success. In today's crazy world all that matters is WallStreet and the shareholders. They have no loyalty to the company and do not help get new products out. They are passive investors and need to be in the back of the bus, not driving it. So I beg to differ the CEO's job is not just to pander to what the shareholders want. In the end killing the company is not in the shareholders interest anyway. Screw the shareholders and steer the ship. Success will bring the stock price back not begging the shareholders.

Pros

There are still some great people at Cisco, although because of process and politics the people don't have the ability to influence change like they used to. You can learn a great deal from the people who have been around for a while.

Cons

There are hundreds of directors at Cisco with no reports. The company is so executive and management heavy that its mind boggling. They have also placed a bet on outsourcing many functions, and as a result its difficult to get even the simplest tasks performed by anyone competent.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop spending 100+ million dollars to acquire companies and acquire talent instead. The people acquired during a buyout leave first chance they get, and are often dead weight until they get their package.