Cisco Systems Reviews

Pros

Great, awesome, hard-to-beat health benefits. This is not a sell if you are single, young and fit, but great family support and campus life works well.

Cons

Small cog in a small team as part of a large team in some business unit whose name changes so regularly that one forgets and doesnt care.

Sometimes management dont trust engineers!

Advice to Senior Management

Engineers can do a great job if permitted and promoted!

Pros

great place to work as it is a stable and strong company. with good social responsibility

Cons

lower pay, many bu to work for

Pros

Cisco is a place that provides many interesting work challenges and opportunities to learn. The benefits are great and the flexibility to work from home is there

Cons

Changing business processes is slow as molasses.

Advice to Senior Management

Manage by objectives and move away from authoritarian management style.

Pros

Pros:
Leader in industry
Good work culture
Mutual respect
Work from anywhere

Cons

Too many processes
Complicated matrix with many teams

Advice to Senior Management

Simplify processes

Pros

Big company. Lots of ability to move around. Cisco itself really does work to take care of it's employees. That said, are there bad managers? Absolutely. I didn't have one, but I saw some.

Cons

There is some politics of course. If you want to succeed in a big company, you have to accept that. Just be civil and reasonably personable and you'll do fine.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work. Just make decisions that are financially conservative so you won't go bankrupt and put us all out of work.

Pros

Mature experience
on campus perks
Variety of opportunitues

Cons

Hard to get salaryadjustments
Groups have varying degrees of experience
Groups are silod

Advice to Senior Management

Present a bigger picture to the individual contributors

Pros

- Good benefit package overall
- Flexible work options
- Good work-life balance
- Very knowledgable, senior people to work with.
- Respect co-workers

Cons

- Slow career growth & stagnation
- No protomotions or raises for long time.
- Not enough recognition for good work.

Advice to Senior Management

As the company is very SJ centric, the remote sites do not get a chance for visiblity & career growth.

Pros

- Great benefits
- Good natured people
- Great work-life balance
- Can shift between different areas of the organization for new career/functional opportunities

Cons

- Slow-moving; it can take a while to make change happen
- People become comfortable in their legacy setup so can be resistant to changes / new ways of doing things
- No clear processes - can feel inefficient

Advice to Senior Management

- Allow for less duplication of effort but instilling more centralized knowledge-sharing for teams in similar functions
- Upgrade from the old "email" way of communicating

Pros

Work-Life balance, Fair compensation, Chance for success without constantly busting your ass. Good performance review structure. Chance to learn about many areas of the business (subject matter expertise) and new skillsets

Cons

Very complex organizations with constantly changing vision & goals. Long cycle times to deliver on most projects. Many fundamental architectural challenges which require many go-rounds to address

Advice to Senior Management

Simplify

Pros

Flexible working. Lots of knowledge to be learned. People are respectful and smart

Cons

Hard to get promotion. A lot of organization changes lately, not always for the better.

Advice to Senior Management

Hard to get promotion. A lot of organization changes lately, not always for the better.