Old company is dead now
Pros
Still has a good work/life balance - you control your diary and management generally back you up Good customer contacts - not many organisations that won't at least entertain Cisco Good perks - some of the benefits are very good
Cons
Terrible technology - constant failure to execute in cloud/software. Promises made and broken continuously. Backstabbing colleagues - I worked with one extremely nasty piece of work who'd constantly backstab people and put them down. When half the team issued a formal complaint he got a payrise and an award from management instead! Best they could do was apologise to us... No willingness to listen to problems - 6 months of dire morale and a collapsing team yet no one took any time to listen, understand or fix it. The team I was in lost 5 or more people in 6 months because of this. Not one of them got an exit interview. Petty politics - lots of power struggles and empire building at the expense of anyone's hopes and dreams. AMs and PSS treated like rockstars whilst SEs thought of as resources to book and use like meeting rooms. No sales apititude - most sales people happily admit they don't understand what they're selling. An embarassment that would be met with complete shame in any other line of work. The worst are the so-called sales experts. No career prospects - once upon a time you could look at the big pyramid that is Cisco and see how you could progress. Now there's nowhere to go other than to do the same job with the occaisional payrise to keep you in your place. LR used as a stick when people get old and/or expensive.