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Rating Details
Career Opportunities
3.3
Communication
3.7
Compensation & Benefits
3.7
Employee Morale
3.8
Recognition & Feedback
3.4
Senior Leadership
3.4
Work/Life Balance
4.0
Fairness & Respect
3.2
Overall Rating
CEO Approval
John T. Chambers
Chairman and CEO
77% “Approve”
Details
“Do you approve of the way this person is
handling the job of leading this company?”
297 responses
(45 'Not Sure')
77% Approve
8% Disapprove
1 - 10 of 305 Reviews
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Oct 4, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
2.0
Communication
3.0
Compensation & Benefits
3.5
Employee Morale
2.0
Recognition & Feedback
1.0
Senior Leadership
2.0
Work/Life Balance
4.5
Fairness & Respect
2.0
6 of 6 people found this helpful
Pros
Cisco is relatively stable due to their success in business. Cisco pay a little higher than market average, offer good benefit and competitive high bonus. Cisco is good for those:
(1) New graduates with weak technical skills and no work experience.
(2) Immigrants who need visa & green card sponsorship based on employment
(3) Lazy engineers who do not want a progress in technology and career
(4) Ass kissers who enjoy spending 90% of their time on office politics.
Cons
Cisco is very successful in marketing for hardware devices, but has a very bad and extremely expensive way for management. Try to develop innovative software product here is so tough, just like a "group constipation": Many people works very hard on it, and takes very long time, and it turns out little -- s**t. They keep on deliver software product which makes little or no money and abandon it later, and no one say any thing bad inside Cisco for those garbage software products except their customers. Cisco has to use their famous strategy : keep on buying good technology from other company, to make up this shortage.
Cisco's performance system over require so called leadership & influence no matter what your position is and how much you actually need it. This encourages people spending too much time on virtual work, spending endless time on meeting, phone calls, writing emails and not much useful documents. The more time you spend on real solid work, the less time you may spend on increasing your "visibility" or "influence", and worse performance you will get. My whole team was acquired by Cisco from another company. In my previous company, my performance never drop below top 15% for a few years, but in Cisco, with the same boss, same team members, same kind of excellent project I lead and accomplished, my performance drops under average. Cisco is full of mediocre engineers. The reason is not because they hire mediocre engineer but they make their engineers mediocre, they are encouraged and forced to be mediocre. If you stay long enough in Cisco, you will probably become mediocre even you are excellent before, and you will find it is hard for you to find a decent job outside again with what you learn in Cisco. Cisco is a "traditional" big company, not Google, or Microsoft type. Motorola, Lucent, Nortel's today will be Cisco's tomorrow.
Advice to Senior Management
For those managers who feel comfortable in Cisco, no advice for you guys, keep on enjoy what ever you do as long as possible.
For those managers who claim to change Cisco's cultures and management way, forget about it, because it will end up with: either you get changed or you get out of there in 2 or 3 years.
Nov 13, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
3.5
Communication
2.5
Compensation & Benefits
4.0
Employee Morale
2.0
Recognition & Feedback
3.5
Senior Leadership
2.5
Work/Life Balance
3.5
Fairness & Respect
2.5
2 of 2 people found this helpful
Pros
Good pay, with some nice benefits, like a good remote access policy, free drinks, good cafeteria.
Cons
Cisco acquires all their companies. This creates "silos" where each company is still closely nit and not interacting with the rest of Cisco. This is commonplace, even among acquisitions that took play over a decade ago. It's hard, as an outsider to these groups, to get information out of them. Management needs to force their hands. Cooperation is not what it should be, even among people in the same department. Many employees have a view that if you can't do your work, it makes them look better.
Advice to Senior Management
Fix the silos.
Nov 20, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
4.0
Communication
4.5
Compensation & Benefits
4.0
Employee Morale
4.5
Recognition & Feedback
3.0
Senior Leadership
3.0
Work/Life Balance
5.0
Fairness & Respect
3.5
0 of 0 people found this helpful
Pros
Friendly employees, great culture, lots of good benefits and new products coming out. The San Jose campus is massive, with just over 50 buildings, and there is always work going on somewhere. The work environment is also good, and the labs are generally well organized. They also have free soda/tea/coffee, and you can occasionally find free food by going to various presentations. There are also two gyms and a daycare center, and provide great benefits to full-time employees. I accumulated the equivalent of 3.5 weeks PTO per year as a co-op/intern, the same as any regular employee.
Cons
There are too many managers and executives, and endless business/technical meetings which do not contribute much (in fact the most useful meetings are the meet&greet because they encourage teamwork, even though they have nothing to do with your job). Also, the work can be slow and boring at times, and you will not be immune to "burnout" at Cisco. As a co-op, I received no benefits other than PTO and hourly pay.
Advice to Senior Management
Thin out the number of managers, because there are too many. Also, it would be nice to have the various teams working together instead of only following instructions from their boss.
Nov 19, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
3.0
Communication
1.5
Compensation & Benefits
3.0
Employee Morale
2.5
Recognition & Feedback
4.5
Senior Leadership
3.0
Work/Life Balance
3.5
Fairness & Respect
3.5
0 of 0 people found this helpful
Pros
Cisco Choice Program is great for full time hires. However, as an intern you really won't get much "choice". You do get PTO at the same rate as full times which is a nice perk.
Cons
Very much a large company. Bogged down by bureaucracy, multiple versions, protocol. Can be very frustrating. Also not a very exciting place to work for people under 30.
Advice to Senior Management
..
Nov 18, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
4.0
Communication
3.0
Compensation & Benefits
4.0
Employee Morale
2.5
Recognition & Feedback
3.0
Senior Leadership
1.0
Work/Life Balance
5.0
Fairness & Respect
2.5
0 of 0 people found this helpful
Pros
fair pay, reasonable hours, on iste gym, cafes, etc. there are pockets of good people and some very productive teams. you just have to find them
Cons
sexist (toward women), leadership isn't the best and brightest, colleagues aren't always straight forward and there tends to be a fair amount of passive-agressive behavior
Advice to Senior Management
provide more high level strategic direction. seems confused as to where company is heading
Nov 18, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
3.0
Communication
4.0
Compensation & Benefits
4.0
Employee Morale
4.5
Recognition & Feedback
5.0
Senior Leadership
3.0
Work/Life Balance
3.5
Fairness & Respect
3.5
0 of 0 people found this helpful
Pros
Great pay for an internship, great experience if you end up in the right group. San Jose's a nice area to live for the summer, and the other interns there are good people.
Cons
The learning curve when you join makes most of a three month internship dedicated to figuring out what's going on in the company, although I'm sure this is pretty common across companies this size.
The intern experience can vary greatly depending on what group you end up in, and there's no way to know this before hand. Some groups will have you doing real work while others won't.
Advice to Senior Management
Try and make sure managers have a plan for an intern before they join to make sure that they will actually be doing something over the summer.
Nov 17, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
3.5
Communication
3.5
Compensation & Benefits
4.5
Employee Morale
3.5
Recognition & Feedback
2.0
Senior Leadership
3.0
Work/Life Balance
4.0
Fairness & Respect
3.0
0 of 0 people found this helpful
Pros
The pay is good, though in the Bay Area it never seems to be enough. The benefits package, however, is great, especially if you have a family, and the new central gym/clinic/juice bar/pharmacy facility is amazing. A dominant company with plenty of cash in the bank, it's definitely a good place to be in this economy.
Training is encouraged and widely available and people seem to be encouraged to change roles every couple of years. If you want to get a flavor for a lot of different aspects of the business, its possible to do.
At least in my org, there's some flexibility on hours and work location - working from home on Fridays has never been an issue.
Its also great to work with people who have interests and concerns aside from just making money, and impressed with the amount of philanthropy and volunteerism. Most of the people here seem genuinely smart.
Cons
The politics. It seems the only way that people move up is to make their sphere of influence greater, not do a good job with what they are already have. So forget trying to get into a job and start kicking ass - its all about managing expectations and having a few wins, and then spinning the results. Everyone takes pride in the company's innovation, but I think we're mostly riding on past reputation, and improving products we already have. While we've done a great job promoting TelePresence, its not exactly a new idea - we just improved on it.
Part of the problem with the politics is that its difficult to move up once you get to say Sr. Manager/Manager level. It isn't clear what the requirements are to develop your career, and people aren't always willing to develop their direct reports for fear that then they'll take over their job.
The boards and councils that drive many of the initiatives are all executive driven, and its isn't clear at all that they are productive. Its tough to get everyone on the calendar at the same time, and it doesn't seem that they want to do any delegating to those of us further down the chain.
Advice to Senior Management
Councils and Boards are nice, but give someone the ability to make decisions. Collaboration just for the sake of collaboration is a waste of everyone's time.
Create more options for people to move up and start to take this globalization thing seriously. Allow people to get out of SJ and work remotely or at other office locations, instead of making SJ the center of the universe.
Nov 7, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
5.0
Communication
5.0
Compensation & Benefits
5.0
Employee Morale
5.0
Recognition & Feedback
5.0
Senior Leadership
4.5
Work/Life Balance
5.0
Fairness & Respect
4.5
0 of 0 people found this helpful
Pros
Great place to work - you have the power to make the best of what you do. As with any other workplace, make sure you have the "right" manager - makes all the difference in the world.
Cons
Can be so engrossing that it sucks you in
Advice to Senior Management
You do an excellent job in communicating company strategy - put more focus on operational discipline - be willing to make the tough decsions.
Nov 1, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
3.0
Communication
2.0
Compensation & Benefits
4.5
Employee Morale
3.0
Recognition & Feedback
1.0
Senior Leadership
1.0
Work/Life Balance
4.0
Fairness & Respect
1.5
0 of 0 people found this helpful
Pros
the benefits and perks are good, especially work at home technology
the pay is still above average
about half the people are great -- smart team players who do the right thing
some units are very good places to learn and advance
Cons
too many meetings where people waste time talking about work and not doing it
some groups are petty and political, and if you are in one of those, it can be a constant struggle to stay in the loop
some executives are incompetent
often different teams are given the same job in blind competition == wasted effort
Advice to Senior Management
try to get back to the old corporate culture
Oct 1, 2008
Details
Career Opportunities
1.0
Communication
3.5
Compensation & Benefits
3.0
Employee Morale
2.5
Recognition & Feedback
1.0
Senior Leadership
1.0
Work/Life Balance
2.5
Fairness & Respect
1.5
3 of 3 people found this helpful
Pros
Locally, it is one of the highest paid company. It is really the only game in town. Hours are flexible with a lot rich company amenities like free soft drinks and bottled water. Still paying a bonus --- for now.
This is a very good place for out of college people - lots of security and compensation for Jr. level people.
Cons
Cisco is a very SJ centric company. All major decisions are made out of SJ. RTP is a staff augmentation to SJ with most people are reporting to managers/directors in SJ.
Visibility is one of the biggest factor for promotion and not performance.
Reward the dive and catch more than sound and steady management.
Lack a good portfolio management process causing too many projects/initiatives with questionable values and results.
Artificial time bounded project
Advice to Senior Management
Reorganize the teams to be agile. Get back to basics.
Now that we went to RSU but only a few get them causing a lot of morale issue with the rest of the population. If there is no stock options and only 10% of the population have a long term compensation, how about a retirement plan for the rest?
