Cisco Systems Employee Review

I have been working at Cisco Systems

Pros – * Flexible work hours
* Management not averse to employees working from home
* Company gym is convenient
* Used to be able to attend classes, but that seems to be changing with budget cuts.
* 401K match is decent. 100% match upto 4% contribution.

Cons – * Unbearable levels of politics.
* Unhealthy Performance Review process. Because they need to document why they are unable to promote you, management purposefully kills your self esteem. The process is very unhealthy. The purpose of the epm is no longer a tool for healthy development, but rather a tool for managers to 'keep score', put you down, and keep you 'under control' - these are actual words I have heard. It happens 3 times a year, and for this alone, avoid this place.
* Its a big company, but management is constantly ratcheted under pressure. What happens is people run very fast, work under a lot of pressure, but with the added huge overhead of a big company. And they run round and round, instead of making progress. People who say things are slow are not working in engineering groups where the pressure is immense and very unrewarding.
* Benefits are cut almost constantly.
** The paycheck contributions for Health has been going up ever since I joined 4 years ago.
** We used to get free water bottles - that's gone.
** We are expected to attend meetings late at night, early mornings, and work weekends but Cisco will not pay for broadband (that went a couple of years ago). How can they expect you to work weekends? Oh, they will not say that directly. It will be more like an email late Friday evening asking you to fix a problem by 9am Monday.
** We used to have receptionists in buildings - helpful when you have visitors, that's gone.
** This may sound mundane, but it is a bad experience for men - they removed water flushes from all men's rooms. It's in the spirit of going green, but the toilets stink - at least they should have more janitorial service, but instead they keep cutting that as well. The janitorial service has picketed in Cisco at least two times to my knowledge.
* There is no face to Human Resources. There is a 408 number is San Jose, but you will be hard pressed to find the number on the intranet. They are making it harder and harder to open cases for anything, probably discouraging you to do so. I heard most of HR has been off-shored.
** We used to get free access to safaribooks, but now departments get charged and so you are not sure of access. This is such a simple perk with huge ROI for Cisco and even that they cut.
** I once opened a case with WPR (Work Place Resources) saying my chair was bad. Some one evaluated it and a week later I got a chair must worse that what I had!
** When I wanted to move to another group in another building, the Secretary told me not to move because Cisco is not approving moves. I said I am in engineering and cannot work in another building while the rest of the team is in an another one. I was told that it would be better if I moved everything myself otherwise Cisco will end up rejecting the move. I couldn't believe what I was hearing!

I cannot believe Cisco keeps getting voted one of the best places to work for. Everyone I speak with seems to be unhappy. I think a lot of folks stay here because the pay is good and mainly because of family and mortgage commitments and commute. As an engineer I felt completely unwanted from the day I joined.

Advice to Senior Management – Cisco does not know how to do software. All the software departments are being propped up my the core router, swtiches, call manager products. This must be changed, otherwise there will be a constant struggle for profits.
There is an extremely stagnant 1st, and 2nd layer of management. They have burrowed fox holes for themselves and have mastered the game of survival and 'meeting dates' hook or crook, but they will prove ruinous to Cisco in the long run. Blast a hole through this unchanging, monolithic wall of management that is impeding innovation and change.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend