Cisco Systems Reviews in Research Triangle Park, NC

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

Salary and benefit package was good
Excellent learning opportunities
Plenty of job opportunities to move around the business

Cons

It consumes most employees 24x7
Channel conflict in the sales organization
Arrogance
Mid-level management was poor

Pros

Ok Company. Big, stable, but not great for career progress.

Cons

Very unfair in promotions. Too much favoritism. Not much growth in RTP

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce the favoritism

Pros

You set your own hours, no hassles from management. You are empowered to do what is best for the company.

Cons

Budget cuts and layoffs effect the ability to do your job right by wanting more with less resources.

Advice to Senior Management

Management is great but John needs to think deeper about cutting people. When times are good they hire like crazy but when times turn south they do lay-offs.

Try doing what you need with what you have in place of hiring new resources.

Don't let finance run the company. They know nothing about what it takes to develop equipment.

Pros

Nice working environment and well compensated package

Cons

Large and top-heavy management structure

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce mid management layers

Pros

The best reason to work at Cisco is a challenging, supportive and flexible enviroment.

Cons

If you are afraid of hard work and rising to a challenge, then I wouldn't suggest Cisco to you.