Pros
Very good place if you are a manager , you do not need to adhere to any software process, you do not need to plan for the project, just the dump the project to engineer and ask them to deliver it in 2-3 months time , ask them to work 20-24 hours per day , once the project is delivered , there will be hundreds of bugs due to lack of clarity and time , you move most of the engineers to another project and hire one new engineer and ask him to fix all the bugs , if any customer escalation happens just fire him and inform the customer that you have taken action.
Cons
Managers use foul language regularly, also they will motivate you by saying if you cannot do it by end of this month , you will be fired. Project transition happens in a day , like in a day 4 people working in US in a project gets laid off , and people working in india are asked to handle this extra project as an extra assignment You get work of 3 people without any knowledge transition , since management decided to lay off 3 peoples in your project, just after few months , they will forget you are working day and night in a project which had 4 people in it, your manager will ask you to stretch you 20-30% more to take up more work If you fix a bug but cannot test it properly because of lack of infrastructure in your place , but if it comes back from the customer site , you will get fired If you complain to higher management about your project managers , you will be removed from your current project and dumped into a more horrible project Many cisco engineers have lost their family , child ,etc as they are forced to spend all of their time working for cisco Cisco's Work from home policy sucks , like you work from office for 12 hours , rest of the time you work from home. No software processes are followed , I do not understand how cisco passes software quality audit In a quarter if there is less profit , layoff 20% of the people , in next quarter if there is good profit hire 20% new people, your company cannot sustain you even for a quarter. In 24X7 call center there are at least 2 shifts , but people working in support and sustenance projects in cisco are asked to work 20-24 hours regularly by the management, like in your daytime you support customers from india , in night time you work for US customers , manager says Cisco globalization means you need to be available 24x7 and handle customer across the world. You are expected to be available at your night time just to answer trivial queries which your manager gets after waking up in midnight just to check whether you are online or not. Consultants are prefered over employee for development projects, employees are made to languish in horrible 24x7 support and sustenance projects until and unless they decide to quit the company Whatever money cisco is saving by laying off people across world are used to acquire new new companies worth billions of dollars.