Out of control bureaucracy threatens a great company
Pros
I like the flexibility of my job and the diversity of cisco's workforce. I have good opportunities to work on a wide range of interesting projects with people all around the globe. I'm very grateful and proud to work at Cisco. In the current economic downturn, I believe Sr Management is working hard to avoid layoffs (by cutting contingent workforce and expenses first--who knows what the future will bring?). I also think they're being open and transparent about it and are generally doing the right things. The hours and work locations are flexible; I am able to work from home often.
Cons
The lack of coordination across projects is appalling. It seems like I work in a giant crowd of project managers who do nothing but run around in circles looking for projects to manage. There are waaaay too many 'boards and committees,' the function of which is mainly interfering and delaying projects. People at the middle-management layers are simply not incented to work together, despite all the talk about collaboration on the part of Sr. Management. As such, political skills pass for leadership and the people who have the best political skills get promoted. The political realities often ignore development realities, which leads to a scramble of ass-covering. The collaboration technologies are over-hyped. While telepresence is good for demos and meetings where people just talk to each other and show presentations, the lack of interactive whiteboarding and 'working' collaboration technologies cripples my ability to do 'real work' with my colleagues across the globe. Product development processes are also crippled; there's either no process at all or people use process as a tool for delay and obfuscation. This is the bureaucracy at Cisco.