Apr 22, 2008
Cisco reviews
4.1
83% would recommend to a friend
Chuck Robbins
79% approve of CEO
68% positive business outlook
Cisco has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 33,563 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Cisco employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).
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34K reviews
3.0
Apr 22, 2008
Cisco System's ASR Program: High School from Hell
Former employee
Raleigh, NC
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
The Associate Sales Representative program is a training program that ultimately feeds into Cisco System's sales force. You are trained thoroughly for about 8 month. Subjects of training include everything from how to be a more confident public speaker, to cold calling, to the obvious training on all of Cisco System's hardware and proprietary software. You are divided into 'teams' within the ASR program and you do most everything during the work day with them. You have a manager that is your 'team leader' and you have a tech manager who is responsible for teaching you the material on Cisco hardware as well as pointing out the relative strengths and weaknesses similar competitive products have. The ideal end result of this program is to take a sales oriented person and tech him or her enough technical information so that this person could sit down in a meeting with a client and speak to a CEO, CFO, CTO and answer all of their questions with the caveat that really technical things will be covered by an Associate Sales Engineer (ASE) who is your more technically savvy counterpart. Cisco's aim is to have ASRs and ASEs work as a team together. This doesnt exactly work out because the ASR to ASE ration is conservatively skewed at 2 to 1 respectively.
Cons
I was a part of the Associate Sales Representative program, we are referred to as ASRs within Cisco Systems. The problem working at Cisco is not the upper management or the training; I was very satisfied with those aspects of the job. Your co-workers will make this a miserable experience. The dynamics of the training program were worse than high-school. We were provided with subsidized housing through Cisco and college graduates could not act appropriately. Some were even kicked out of their leases. There were people skinny dipping in the apartment complex's pools, people egging other people's vehicles. It is the farthest thing from a professional behavior you can imagine. The sales staff of Cisco Systems is notoriously cocky and if you speak to anyone on the outside who deals with them on any sort of regular basis, they can confirm this. The program is also set up like indentured servitude. By which I mean, once you have completed the training program you are bound to work for them at a location of their choosing (ultimately it depends on your desirability as a Sales Representative and suitability to the area) for no less than 2 years. If you quit before this period, you are required in your contract to pay them back a subsidized portion of your training.
5.0
Apr 21, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
Cisco is a leader across many different sub-industries within IT: routing, switching, storage, VoIP, wireless, optical, application acceleration, etc. which allows sales engineers to gain a wide breadth of knowledge and exposure across many different technologies and products. Working with Cisco is very fast paced and you get to play with cutting edge technology that has not been released to the mainstream public yet. Cisco sales managers do no micromanage; they give their employees all the freedom and resources needed to get their job done.
Cons
If you don't love electronics or gadgets or computers, you will be lost. You have to love technology to succeed or you will be too overwhelmed. When working in sales where customer satisfaction is paramount, sometimes this means you have to make yourself available during non-standard working hours. Also, because attrition within Cisco is minimal, promotions to management positions within Cisco might be harder to obtain because few managers want to leave.
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