Cisco reviews

Cisco's philosophy is that the best way to get high productivity is to keep employees guessing and afraid. They do this by having very large annual layoffs. And it absolutely works, everyone scrambles to meet deadlines and holds everyone else's feet to the fire to do the same, no leniency is afforded anywhere. No deadlines slip unless it literally breaks and then everyone scrambles to make sure someone else gets blamed instead of themselves. Someone is going to be laid off next July, you better make sure you don't give anyone reason to think it should be you. I've never seen a company treat folks so horribly, everyone was fighting for survival. Not many companies could survive long doing this in high tech, where the economy is so hot. I worked with surprisingly great people who could get another job in a minute if they wanted to be in San Francisco or Boston. However, Cisco offers an amazing ability to work from home. This is a powerful incentive for employees with families, working in areas with bad commutes, or in a geography with few other job options. Many people use this remote access to relocate to cheaper parts of the country and take their higher pay with them, you can get an amazing standard of living this way. But be warned, the price for taking this remote work benefit is living in fear and dread every day. I held on through three layoffs and finally moved back to the Bay Area when I heard the fourth layoff was coming. The strain of being at this place was too great. Terrible company to work for, I'll never work for them again. Think twice before you take their faustian bargain.

Management talks about doing the right thing and most employees believe in doing the right thing, but the management prevents people from doing the right thing at times. Customers are often kept in the dark about potential issues. Meetings are held discussing customer issues or bugs the customer may hit and then engineers are told to keep their mouth shut when talking to the customer. The company is so obsessed with the numbers and stock price and stockholders, a lot of bizarre cost management edicts and processes have started to appear. The phrase "penny wise, pound foolish" is very apparent at Cisco. Layoffs are a tool used regularly by management. People are paralyzed by the fear of being a boat rocker and getting laid off which results in low morale. Employee dissatisfaction is obvious. Compensation is okay, but raises are rare. No cost of living increases. Promotions are also rare. There ere people in the same position for years. If you want to advance your career, it won't happen at Cisco. One tactic is to work there, get Cisco on your resume and go to a partner or another company and get a much better title and compensation, coming back to Cisco after a year or two. Too many contractors. Cisco is trying to hit a magical number of contractors so that they can terminate them without notice instead of laying off employees. Contractors that are currently working there get strung along for months and years. To add insult to injury, instead of offering current contractors employee positions, Cisco hires outside folks without offering the open positions to the contractors. There are so many groups at Cisco, you will do one narrow range of tasks. This leads to many jobs, especially in TAC or HTTS, being highly repetitive and un-challenging. There are a many "experts" who are not. Working at Cisco will illustrate that having a CCIE is only proof that someone can pass a test and a lab that in no way reflects the real world. There are plenty who "earned" the certification by attending "study" sessions where people memorize questions from the written exam and scenarios leaked from the lab or by using brain dumps of questions smuggled out of the exam. Additionally, the CCIE is valued above real world experience; an employee with decades of experience and CCIE-level knowledge will not be treated as well as a newly minted CCIE with little to no experience.