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| 1 - 10 of 426 Cisco Systems Reviews | Sort by |
Jun 26, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
2.5
Career Opportunities
3.0
Recognition & Feedback
3.0
Communication
4.0
Senior Leadership
4.0
Employee Morale
4.0
Work/Life Balance
3.0
Fairness & Respect
2.5
Pros
Overall, Cisco is a good company to its employees. An open environment of communication, hard working, likeable people, they treat their employees well.
Cons
Note how I said they treat their employees well...not their contractors. It seems like once you 'get made' (like in the mob) going from contractor to employee...you're in the inner circle and get the respect, periodic salary increases and benefits that a company of this size can provide. If you're a contractor...you're in a dead end position and will have to fight hard for any increases in your pay rate...and even then they can take it away, blaming it on the economy.
Advice to Senior Management
Don't underestimate the value of your contractors! They do a lot of the dirty work that makes the business function....and they were the first to get the shaft in the economic downturn.
Jun 26, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
3.5
Career Opportunities
2.0
Recognition & Feedback
3.0
Communication
2.5
Senior Leadership
1.0
Employee Morale
2.5
Work/Life Balance
2.5
Fairness & Respect
1.5
Pros
Cisco is great for job security and takes great measures to retain FTEs. The ability to get your work done with flexible hours and/or the ability to work from home is also a GREAT perk. And because of the size of the company, there are a lot of options to move internally (lateral) to see different sides of the business.
Cons
There is an excessive amount of middle management layers, which can often result in poor top-to-bottom communication and poor bottom-to-top visibility. Cisco is also not very good at career advancement, specifically if you are an ambitious go-getter, as promotions and raises tend to have more to do with seniority and less to do with performance. They also have an internal policy that you can not get promoted when you switch positions. While I believe the intent was so that people do not jump from job to job simply for a pay increase, what happens in practice is top performers who move to a new opportunity for a new challenge, have to make that move laterally even when it is a job with more responsibility. However, if you stay in the same role for years, you will eventually get promoted just because of seniority. As a result, many top performers make a few lateral moves and then leave the company in order to get a promotion.
Advice to Senior Management
I would strongly recommend Cisco remove the policy that employees cannot get promoted when they change roles as this is demotivating and penalizes top performers. I would also love to see 360 reviews extend beyond Chambers senior mangement team, or at least require that managers are reviewed by a minimum of 1 direct report as part of the yearly review process.
Jun 17, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
3.5
Career Opportunities
3.0
Recognition & Feedback
3.0
Communication
4.5
Senior Leadership
5.0
Employee Morale
3.0
Work/Life Balance
3.5
Fairness & Respect
3.0
Pros
Strong senior management team with strategy and vision for market transformation
Strong leadership team with high ethics
Cultural diversity
Good place to start career and get experience
Good benefits and 401k
Cons
Employees using empowerment and freedom from management to abuse system
Lack of management visibility to activities of employees - employees abuse this
Good amount of tenured employees with connections that manipulate system
LIttle accountability on behalf of employees
Image going to work and listen to coworkers brag about taking +3 hour lunches
Advice to Senior Management
Continue to focus on executing strategic vision
Encourage first line managers to empower their employees, but caution and instruct them to watch for employees that work the system
Reinforce "doing the right thing"
Employees abusing system should be held accountable for their actions
Imagine the effects of employees that work short days and brag about 3 hour lunches and what that does to the moral of employees that work an honest days work
Jun 14, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
3.0
Career Opportunities
2.5
Recognition & Feedback
1.0
Communication
2.0
Senior Leadership
1.5
Employee Morale
3.5
Work/Life Balance
1.0
Fairness & Respect
2.5
Pros
Lot of exposure to different technologies, so much to learn about networks. Good people. Good HR.
Cons
Bad management, no work life balance. No risk taking in spite of stable company. They have hired donkeys to manage stallions :P
There is no cool culture of a start-up.
Advice to Senior Management
Improve the 1st line management, let them be more free and take their own decision. Allow the culture to be cool, dont panic and start innovating actually than follow market trend and running behind Googles and Microsofts.
Jun 2, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
4.0
Career Opportunities
1.0
Recognition & Feedback
1.0
Communication
2.0
Senior Leadership
1.0
Employee Morale
2.0
Work/Life Balance
3.0
Fairness & Respect
1.5
Pros
Good benefits package
Relatively stable
Broad range of technologies one can work on
Usually, work load not too bad (but it hugely depends on which part of Cisco one's with)
Cons
In my experience, if you're not from the right startup acquisition or the right part of the world, you may as well forget about career growth within. (So people go out and come back 1-2 yrs later and get promoted way faster than any amount of hard work within would ever get them promoted.) Likewise, from what I've seen, promotions are mostly about politics not ability or hard work.
Advice to Senior Management
1) Get Charlie Giancarlo back to CDO (or someone like him); this 30+ committee that runs CDO is really not working too well
2) There should be *some* internal innovation and applied research, relying near-100% on acquisitions worked well so far but cannot be viable forever
3) When you recruit people out of college / grad school, devote some time and energy to growing them instead of leaving them at mercy of generally very short-sighted and often times incompetent lower- and mid-level management at BUs
Jun 6, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
3.0
Career Opportunities
3.0
Recognition & Feedback
3.5
Communication
3.0
Senior Leadership
3.5
Employee Morale
4.0
Work/Life Balance
4.5
Fairness & Respect
3.0
Pros
You can balance personal life very well with job. Again, it depends on the which group you are working with. You can just plan to work for eight hours a day, rest is yours. Benefits are good compared to other same level of organizations.
Cons
Management is old-school. It is hard to convince the management some times, as they can not see the value in the innovations. For the same reason, management fail to asses/promote good resources
Advice to Senior Management
Fifty percent of the full-time employees in the IT department are way out-dated, and not fit for their duties/roles. Mr. Chambers team has to find a way to let the folks go who are not competent.
Jun 10, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
3.0
Career Opportunities
3.0
Recognition & Feedback
4.0
Communication
4.0
Senior Leadership
3.0
Employee Morale
4.0
Work/Life Balance
4.0
Fairness & Respect
3.0
Pros
Good place to work and learn. Frugality is the buzzz word. Also green is getting very important.
Cons
Old startup work culture is going away. Cisco is too big now. You need to be with the right boss (not group) to grow.
Advice to Senior Management
Recognize and reward good performers and eliminate the bad performers.
Jun 8, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
4.0
Career Opportunities
3.0
Recognition & Feedback
2.5
Communication
3.0
Senior Leadership
2.0
Employee Morale
4.0
Work/Life Balance
5.0
Fairness & Respect
1.5
Pros
Great work life balance in the group which I worked. Good benefits.
Cons
No raises without getting a new job. Management is very reactive, despite employees being encouraged to be proactive. Personal feelings brought into the organization from management, i.e. work performance being graded on how much charity you do at home. And donations are not good enough, you MUST donate time. To me at least, you should be graded at work on how well you do your job, not on what you do at home.
Advice to Senior Management
Plan all changes before they are actually executed.
Jun 3, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
5.0
Career Opportunities
5.0
Recognition & Feedback
5.0
Communication
5.0
Senior Leadership
5.0
Employee Morale
5.0
Work/Life Balance
5.0
Fairness & Respect
5.0
Pros
It's a great environment to work in. Everyone I worked with was great. I'd love to work there again. You get hands on experience with amazing gear.
Cons
Try to get all your Cisco certs before you get hired on full time. There are not a lot of downsides to working at Cisco.
Advice to Senior Management
Keep up the good work. The systems you have put in place are a joy to work with. Thank you for eveything
Jun 1, 2009
Details
Compensation & Benefits
4.0
Career Opportunities
3.0
Recognition & Feedback
3.0
Communication
3.5
Senior Leadership
2.0
Employee Morale
3.0
Work/Life Balance
2.5
Fairness & Respect
2.0
Pros
Action oriented culture. Willing to try new things. Good information sharing. Global company. Great sales force. Progressive for a big company.
Cons
Don't deal with systemic problems - just move on to the next new new thing. Scattered focus in too many areas. Management spread thin.
Advice to Senior Management
Change starts at the top.
