Cisco Program Manager reviews

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.

Even though we have a great CEO, that charisma does not flow down to most of the executive team. It is a BIG & bureaucratic company now. I was here during the late 1990s boom and a LOT has changed. There's a lot of mid-managers that just suck the life out of you because they don't care about leading, rather they care about managing their own next promotion. Lots of "fringe" benefits that were part of Cisco are slowly being taken away (i.e., free sodas, company paid broadband, etc). Those were nice while they lasted.