Pros

Large company, many products, lots of opportunities and innovation. You could easily spend a lifetime at Cisco and never run out of challenges.

Cons

Product teams have a lot of leeway and don't necessarily hire designers. This can lead to an uncoordinated mass of multiple design directions, many driven by non-designers, throughout the company. More strength should be given to central design teams, and more teams should hire designers.

Advice to Senior Management

User experience is beginning to take hold at Cisco, but there is still more of an emphasis on grassroots efforts than coordinated and unified design systems with executive support. Give the centralized user experience teams more of an enforcement hammer if you expect them to collaborate with the rest of the company to find innovative solutions.