I'm 27. Cisco hired me out of college. I'm a grade 10. Make over 125k a year. Friends are jealous. Cisco has been nothing but a great time for me. Work hard you get rewarded. I've had white and Indian managers. Both are cool.
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@8Dyys+Zys0Owy, I agree Cisco is short sighted and full of itself.
"Collaborative work areas" are being forced on everyone at Cisco regardless of whether or not it works for a given team, project or business unit. Hell, you'd think that better than 50% of what directors, V.P.'s and SVP's do would justify an office w/ a door, yet all of the directors have been forced out of their offices in RTP. A VP squats in an APR instead of their assigned desk in a collaborative area. The unassigned mobile desks on our floor are mostly ignored because they're too little and most mobile people only come in for days full of meetings that typically end up in a conf room booked for the day anyway.
I only have experience with this "mobile" work concept at Cisco and at Capital One. Capital One went though a huge process of taking away everyone's desktop and replacing them with laptops. Then they took away the assigned desks, and put a docking station, monitor, keyboard, mouse and power brick for the laptop/docking station at every desk and created policies about how the unassigned desks would work. Before they could really get it off the ground, their laptop vendor of choice changed the docking stations and power bricks, so suddenly people with new laptops couldn't use the stuff provided. Developers who needed larger or multiple monitors were handicapped in their workflow because you can't carry an extra monitor around every day. Time was wasted every day because they had no kiosk for picking a cube. You had to wander around trying to find a cube that had the most privacy or was furthest away from busy walkways or conf rooms. People would waste 30 min trying to find a desk that suited their preferences. Early birds would come in very early to grab the "good" desks, but then they'd leave early after 8 hrs meaning that afternoon meetings had to end by 3PM. It was a total fiasco.
Being told to leave a common area because it's not available just shows how click-ish Cisco is becoming. Common areas are just that, common. An ex co-worker told me about his experience on a new team in another building where they were forced to work at a group of 12 unassigned desks neighboring a team with assigned desks. The team with assigned desks would harass them if they spaced out and used some of the desks closest to the assigned team even though the 12 desks were assigned as a group to his team for their use as they saw best.
Thankfully, I've never experienced what you've mentioned first hand. I'd probably get fired for my reaction to the events you've described had it happened to me.
@8Dmel+Zys0Owy once again proves how short sighted and full of themselves Cisco has become.
Mobile work Centers don't have permanently assigned desks and I have setup a couple for Major corps back in the early 2000's where the mobile worker comes in , checks in at the kiosk, inputs the cube/office they want to use and their corporate phone # is automatically assigned for the day to that workspace. In some green environments power and a/c can be regulated as well from the kiosk.
I also tried to use some of those common areas and was often asked to leave and told that it was not available for use.
There was even one time they didn't tell me anything I just came back from getting a cup of coffee and all of my stuff had been tossed out on the floor.
I just guess they wanted to send a message I was not welcome there. I never bothered anybody, didn't talk on the phone in the open areas and always had my computer muted. I was just there attempting to do my work.
I am just so glad it is all behind me now. I never felt so alone in such a big place with so many people in it.
Yeah, I agree with that post. I was hired at grade ten at 45 as an SME with in-demand skills.
Yes, the 75% is “paying at the same rate as more than 75% of equivalent companies”.
Amazing how people cannot comprehend basic information any more.
I just ran across this thread due to a recent reply.
I'm 27. Cisco hired me out of college. I'm a grade 10. Make over 125k a year.
This statement makes no sense. If Cisco hired you out of college, you'd be between 21 & 23, not 27. College grads are hired at grade 4, not 10. Grade 6 is for early-in-career, grade 8 is mid-to-senior career and grade 10 is Architect, Technical Lead or manager. Even if you stayed in college to get your MBA, that makes you 25 with no job experience, so they're definitely not hiring you as a grade 10.
If you’ve paid attention to Fran, you’d hear her say that Cisco pays about 75% of what it’s peer companies would pay the same individual.
I thought I'd seen it written somewhere that Cisco paid around the 75% percentile, not 75% of what it's peer companies paid. 75% means it's paying above the average wage in it's industry. However, that was back when Cisco tried to attract and retain top talent and had a policy of ranking employees and if you were in the bottom 5% two years running, you were put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) and usually terminated to cull the lowest performing workers. Since Fran came along, the People Deal replaced performance reviews and public rankings and LR's became the name of the game.
Most folks here left Cisco involuntarily, so they're bitter... sometimes justifiably, but other times, they just don't have the self-awareness to understand they were let go for good reason.
Or, they have the self-awareness to know they were let go due to "politics" or "empire building" among teams or due to high salary cost regardless of performance.
Because I was a mobile worker I had no place to work at when I went to a Cisco facility even though other companies I have worked for have work centers setup for mobile employees onsite going back to 2002 but still seems to be impossible for Cisco up to 2019 to accommodate mobile workers onsite (pre-covid).
Those days are long gone. Now you have to badge into a building at least 3 days a week or more in order to "keep" your desk as they're moving more to unassigned, collaborative working areas where you just grab a desk for the day. There are sections of 4-8 desks are are dedicated for "mobile" workers and/or visitors/visiting managers that are mostly unused. Visiting managers grab "audio privacy rooms" or APRs rather than sit at a mobile desk. Director's no longer have offices, so most of them just take over an APR and tell work place resources (WPR) that they're busy conducting back-to-back meetings requiring privacy whenever WPR comes through to inspect how people are using their assigned spaces.
Cisco was a totally bad experience, as a contractor I was lied to by the hiring manager and recruiter about being converted after 18 months.
My direct supervisor (if you want to call him that) was half a world away in India never met him face to face as the rest of my team as they were spread out all over the world and when they got together would not let me attend the meeting when they all got together in the states even though I was in driving distance and would have paid for my own expenses (years before covid).
Because I was a mobile worker I had no place to work at when I went to a Cisco facility even though other companies I have worked for have work centers setup for mobile employees onsite going back to 2002 but still seems to be impossible for Cisco up to 2019 to accommodate mobile workers onsite (pre-covid).
I have never seen so much clique'ish behaviour in a group of people since high school and the s— ups that fill the chat room on check-ins just wanted to make me throw up.
There is undoubtedly age discrimination in the lay-off process, and salary discrimination (the point where you are in the upper tiers you become much more vulnerable), and I regret therefore to say race discrimination (in certain parts of the world non-native workers tend to earn the higher salaries and again are more susceptible to termination when the rolling 3-6 monthly “business restructuring” comes along). The euphemisms used for laying people off are sickening too. Experience counts for very little when the axe swings. It’s not a bad place to work, but be prepared to continually watch your back.
There are also the few mid-20s that get thrown under the bus with each layoff cycle. This is to keep the average age of the laid-off people under a certain age (50 IIRC) and to prevent the big C from being sued for age discrimination. I got a spreadsheet with the age of each laid off person in my BU in 2015, and the rows went “55-57-66-25-58” etc.
If you’re in a non-technical role, talk to your peers who were at Cisco for many years and then laid off. Ask them how it feels going on interview after interview, learning each time how unprepared they are to compete outside of Cisco. For the ones lucky enough to get a new job quickly, ask them about the culture shock they experienced when they saw how much more effectively and enjoyably most other companies function. If you decide to stick it out at Cisco, make sure you’re staying up on the latest developments and tools in your field, with or without the company’s help. You’ll thank the folks on this thread someday.
They will throw you under the bus. Save as much money as you can for as long as you can stand it.
I understand the attrition rate for new hires out of college was 50% after two years. Bad management was mostly to blame, resulting in poor advancement, boring work assignments, and stifling frustration.
You can dismiss the people who are telling you to run for the hills as soon as you can as haters, but the self-attrition data is what it is.
How many layoffs have you witnessed? Have you watched an organization be dismantled and outsourced yet?
How do I hate thee ? Let me count the ways.
I hate thee to the depth and breadth and height
my soul can reach
Its a shock changing a company from high tech leader to a financial management company. All the engineers with their days of pride creating great products at Cisco are in the dusty past. Of course the old company people are shocked and outraged, frustrated. They don't understand whats happening. The top people figured this out long ago and left. Brand management, social media, powerpoint slides, political warfare, stock buybacks, creative accounting, buying companies and digesting/spinning imaginary value is whats rewarded now.
All that matters is that you're happy, enjoying what you do and feel recognized. This site is a place for haters to congregate, so you're hearing from a vocal minority. Most folks here left Cisco involuntarily, so they're bitter... sometimes justifiably, but other times, they just don't have the self-awareness to understand they were let go for good reason.
Kid, I loved it when I was your age too. Don’t stay past 5 years. Staying there too long is my biggest regret in life. I have a skillset that is in high demand across the industry and I’ve squandered time at Cisco hoping for the advancement that would easily come by going anywhere else. I truly loved the company, and wanted it to be the entity that benefited most from my knowledge and skills. But Cisco is its own worst enemy. It rewards mediocrity, encourages complacency, punishes those that that think outside the box. It discourages innovation. It sh--s on its technical people, paying them a fraction of what they are worth at peer companies.
And worst of all, it’s current executive team are liars and crooks. Full disclosure: I still hold Cisco stock (but not for much longer). Chuck And Kelly have bolstered the share price with spin and creative math. They’ve lied to employees and shareholders alike about how good the future looks, and where the growth will be. They are running out of spin stories to keep analysts happy. The house of cards will crumble at some point.
If you’ve paid attention to Fran, you’d hear her say that Cisco pays about 75% of what it’s peer companies would pay the same individual. So if your friends are jealous now, imagine what they would think if you worked at one of Cisco’s close competitors make 25% more than you currently do.
So heed my advice. Enjoy what you like about it. Learn all you can while you are there. Build a solid plan to market the skills you develop and target being out of there and in a better place in 3-5 years. You’ll thank me when you are running your first start up, or are a Dir/VP at a customer.