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