People keep saying they're leaving for huge pay bumps. How about you share where you're going?
18 replies (most recent on top)
The Bay area is ridiculous to live. The pay compared to the cost of living is horrible. Compare your yearly pay to what a 2000 sqft costs and it's horrible
Left for A company that has stuff that actually works, good training, and more $$$ and opportunity so not sure why you say what you are saying unless you are lazy or lack the necessary skills to market yourself.
@5lvq+1gu6hEAl ok but you have to live in NC shudders
Is this a serious question? Almost any tech company in the Bay Area pays better-even start ups.
Not everyone at Cisco lives or works in the Bay Area. Most jobs in NC pay anywhere from +/- 10% of what Cisco pays.
I had a job that paid 5% better than my base Cisco pay w/ no bonus and worse benefits. I was micromanaged by a director who would bypass my manager to change my priorities. After a year there, my first performance review was that I wasn't meeting my manager's priorities. Gee, I wonder why that was. I left to come back to Cisco to avoid that stress, got more than the other job paid plus I'm eligible for 10% bonus depending on the CPF/IPF and have better benefits and work/life balance.
Is this a serious question? Almost any tech company in the Bay Area pays better-even start ups. I would ask you the reverse- Where are you interviewing that doesn’t pay better?!? I’m not trying to be a jerk but these jobs are like Teslas in SF- you just trip over them.
I left 6 months ago. 2 offers and both paid 30% more in base and offered a larger number of shares (and the shares were worth much more).
Moved to Apple, got a 60% pay bump, free iPhone & iPad every year.
Chose PAN over Cruise and Zscaler. Did not negotiate salary much, was just happy with the offer (more than Cisco but not the 40% previous poster mentioned below). Manager knew I did not negotiate much on the offer, so at the first year performance review, I was nicely taken care of. RSUs have more than doubled since I joined. As a bonus, I really like my day to day job too and everybody around is really appreciative of what I do.
Moved to PAN for 40% more in base salary plus a ton of RSU which more than doubled my total package (and the stock went 4x since then so it's even more)
"Cisco's challenge is that it doesn't effectively track and reward technical performers."
Cisco's challenge is convincing Wall Street that we are a technology company. Who cares about technical performers when we don't have any software, cloud, or security products?
I left Cisco around a year ago, had 3 offers all paying between 30-100% more, over 100K in RSUs and better benefits overall, my base is now the same as my OTE at Cisco….I have an annual review coming up and been promised a pay rise, whereas in Cisco you would be lucky to get a decent pay rise in 3 years ….people should just apply to test the market and see for themselves rather than believe the “hype” even if they don’t want to cut the umbilical cord.
Checkout levels.fyi
Left Cisco for Amazon. My increase was more than %100.
Cisco's challenge is that it doesn't effectively track and reward technical performers. It throws too many people in the same buckets without differentiation. High performers with highly marketable skills get grouped with the low and average performers with average skills. They are not rewarded appropriately.
These superstars don't stick around long and get enormous increases when they leave for organizations with more differentiated reward systems. This includes Meta, Amazon, Google, etc. Their interviews are killers and require substantial preparation. When you successfully get through them, there is a lot of gold at the end.
I moved. . Instant 30% increase without any negotiation. Plus 2 x the vested stock…leading security company .. leave you to figure it out..
I changed from Cisco to fruit company for 2.5x bump 3 years ago. There are so many tier 1 companies that pay better. If your skill are specific to networking your market will be more limited. Even among tier 1 companies that need networking skills for infra (ie Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc) the pay will be lower due to the market rate.
Most companies offer stock grants to join their company that vest over 4 years. The value of those grants is what results in a 50%+ increase.
OP, you can easily do ~30% increase if you have skillsets aligned with market needs which unfortunately does not include ccie/cisco_hardware. Example: Take a year and get AWS professional architect and you will be more aligned but still will have to navigate the system ambitiously for that 250k.
(something tells me I'll be only hearing crickets)