Someone's post about Cisco still being a good company in many aspects made me laugh. Maybe I just don't see those good aspects very well. Perhaps someone can remind what are the good sides of Cisco? (before I give notice)
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I've worked for 5 of the world's largest employers and Cisco may have cons but so do all the others.
Those companies can afford endless scr3wups. Most of the people I’ve worked with at the large companies would wash out quickly at a well run small company.
My guess is most of you will post the same stuff about your next employer. I've worked for 5 of the world's largest employers and Cisco may have cons but so do all the others. The grass is always greener elsewhere when you'e a complainer by nature..
It depends on which group you are in and how far up the ladder. But here are the pros/cons as I see them:
Pros:
- Some teams have great work/life balance, decent management, and simple requirements (which is an okay trade for some - for the under-market-rate pay). Easy gig while focusing on your own priorities.
(Caveat: Some teams are the exact opposite - 55+ hour weeks, nights and weekends, overloaded and a mess. Be careful which Cisco BE/Team you work for.)
- Anywhere you are Cisco has good benefits, PTO, and 401k match (besides contracting - contractors are the first to be cut, last to be considered, and seem to get dreg work at Cisco).
- They take care of their people in emergencies
- Most teams (below the execs) are really good about thoughtful diversity without being too "woke" obnoxious about it (IE- they pick good people for the jobs at hand with an eye for creating a team with a wide range of thoughts/opinions/backgrounds so we have a lot of different backgrounds to look at a problem from).
Cons:
- A large share of the company is controlled by black rock since our CEO is on the board.
- The ELT are obnoxious about "woke" (aka - ESG) agendas and spend more time talking about social BS than actual business outcomes. Which seems to be having the side effect of making business outcomes less important to many in the company.
- The Pay is under market rate.
Take it or leave it:
- It's a relationship company. If you don't like having to hob-nob and brown-nose, this isn't the company for you. You need friends here to get somewhere. Your work quality won't cut it. For promotion - it doesn't seem to matter much if you make or save the company money - it seems to matter who you can call on your cell phone.
- There seem to be good number of people in the company who firmly believe the company is going to die and are just riding out the last coughing sputters for an easy paycheck (Maybe 20-30%?) . No one really knows what the future holds - but it makes getting things done difficult when several people on any team are just phoning it in.
- Upper management is severely out of touch with what is going on in the lower ranks and in the company in general - as far as I've seen - My guess as to why? - (1) Because many of them are getting garbage data (because that is all we have after multiple tool changes and a lack of quality data people). (2) Many of them just don't make it a priority to have skip levels with the base of their pyramid. (3) The hierarchy structure of Cisco (as opposed to the flattened levels of many newer companies) makes lower "grade" people less likely to speak out and anyone who does usually gets LR'ed - so most people have learned to keep their mouths shut unless they have something to say that their leader will love to hear (brown nosing - yes men - as far as the eye can see).
- Our habit of acquiring businesses and stuffing their code base together with internal products - has made most of our products full of spagetti code that breaks regularly. If you put sales before quality products, eventually your customers figure out you have cr---y products.
There are so many positive things happening at Cisco right now. Our BU just brought in new consultants to manage the upcoming restructuring and offshoring activities from the firm Dover & Qit - I can’t recommend them highly enough. Together, Ben Dover and Tae Qit are placing the engineers in our BU in their best position for success!
@1cer+1iUlXrRW sounds familiar. You must work in Security, aka Cloud Security.
@1cjs+1iUlXrRW agree with you and the previous poster. Was working 55+ hrs myself, even at projects that I did not get paid for. Was waking up at 4 AM in the morning to deliver projects at other geo locations that I did not get paid for. All for Cisco. But got the distinct impression earlier this year that I was being managed out. Took the hint, updated my CV, resigned a while ago and am at a place where there is professional respect, dignity and peace. I shall be lying if I said I did not feel stupid for investing so much time, energy and loyalty to an outfit where the management did not care at all. But such is corporate life. All we can do is try our best. But cannot beat the fiefdom. My plus was I saw the light before too long.
My take is that if you are a Cisco lifer (many years there since early career) then you are likely OK and probably it is hard for you to change as you don't know much outside of the koolaid culture. If you are like me, came in with some experience under your belt, then this may not be the right place for you - especially if you are technical. If you are "hand waving" technical then you are at home at Cisco.
Same view as the previous poster.
He's not wrong, but some of us like to work. Some of us enjoy accomplishment. Obviously, Cisco is not the place for our type.
Oh, and I'm the one that wrote 55+ hours. I was not virtue signaling. I was venting.
But again, you ARE correct about accepting what Cisco is or leaving.
No need to be a di-k about it.
You’re not wrong but you know… some of us have dreams. We’re not quite willing to accept a life of mediocrity in exchange for a mediocre paycheck.
Why give notice when you can accept another job and collect two paychecks like most of the other Cisco slackers?
One day they told me "Happy Thanksgiving, here is eight months worth of money now get lost!" It's why I could never hate Cisco or say anything disparaging. I still have a soft spot for the company which is why I continue to read the posts here.
Was that 19 years ago? :P
I want to preface this statement by saying that what I'm about to post is 100% genuine and not some tongue in cheek response.
I spent many, many, many years at Cisco and it was just one extended vacation. The team I worked for was your classic "BEE ESS" job that only existed to swell the ranks and stroke the egos of directors and VPs who I'm sure periodically viewed the org chart and salivated over the number of peons they could lord over. For something silly like career advancement it was a dead end but if you liked showing up to the office at noon and sleepwalking until 3:00 or 4:00 while collecting paychecks it was a dream come true.
Cisco has provided me with a very comfortable life for very little effort and the kicker: they paid me to leave the company! One day they told me "Happy Thanksgiving, here is eight months worth of money now get lost!" It's why I could never hate Cisco or say anything disparaging. I still have a soft spot for the company which is why I continue to read the posts here. The posts by marks on the verge of heart attacks are the ones which amuse me the most.
I'll even go a step further and give everybody here a free education. The corporate world is no different from "Mean Girls" and this is doubly true for a company on the managed decline like Cisco. Nobody cares about your skills or your innovative ideas or "muh hard work". I saw some dude whining and virtue signaling on another post about working 55+ hours per week. NOBODY CARES.
You are dealing with the cutthroat world of petty social cliques. The key to a fulfilling career is simply to be charming. Say hi to everyone, smile, never engage in gossip, never take your silly job seriously, and be happy. Everybody knew I was a loafer but everybody liked me. There was a guy on my team that nobody liked. He was a smart guy, hard worker, always like the people on this site whining about never being appreciated. My manager would just dump all the work on him!
People at work would prefer to be surrounded by people they like. If you can charm the socks off of people even if they know you're a lazy b-m this will create a reality some of you couldn't even possibly conceive of right now! Absolutely no virtue signaling from me, my Cisco career was an absolute cakewalk.
Maybe you can share with us why you got fired and kicked out from Cisco 17 years ago that made you an obsessive person which need a mental therapy.
You get to have every development project cancelled so your team can “help this team get over the hump” for a few years until it becomes apparent that project will never work in which case you saddle some other team outside San Jose with a six to twelve month transition who will then waste another year or two on it before it gets cancelled outright. Cha-ching!
You can enjoy listening to senior management scream at someone for 20 minutes threatening to fire them and anyone else who uses the word “week” in describing how long a task will take in worldwide all hands meetings. In the old days this dovetailed nicely with John Chambers’ ever so realistic goal of having 100 first priorities so you wouldn’t have more than a few days a year for each. So funny!
There was going to 21 day sprints when the branches you worked on wouldn’t build for 42 days at a time in part because most people checked in code that wouldn’t compile not to mention pass any of the required tests. The same managers above would yell at anyone who did follow ISO9000 policy for 20 minutes at a time in large all hands threatening to fire anyone who did the same. Being an ISO9000 auditor who just has to phone in a “yeah, everything’s OK” once a year must be an awesome job!
And who could forget managers parroting Chambers’ “don’t fall into the trap of helping other people” speech pointing out as managers they don’t know what you do and don’t want to know so if you make someone else look better than you they won’t know and simply fire you instead of the other person. Thankfully you’ll never be expected to perform any kind of leadership task as required by all the senior job title descriptions!
But the thing I miss the most was the expired rancid dairy products in the cafeterias. Ah, good times!
If you’re on the right team, it’s pretty light work if you want it to be. Additionally, The lax PTO policy, leave policy and flexible hours are beneficial for families. The health care coverage is above average.
Note, there’s plenty to dislike about Cisco. OP specifically asked for the positives.
My own experience at Cisco was average. The first couple of years were OK - I actually grew and did more work than anywhere else but was not too fond of my management. Then my management changed and became worse than anything I had experienced before to the point were I got demotivated. After another year of experiencing such steady decline, I quit. However, there are nice managers and groups around with whom I was fortunate enough to work with during internal collaborations. It was my misfortune that I did not manage to transfer to one of those groups due to hiring freeze at that time. But admittedly, such groups are hard to find. Most teams, especially in sales related teams, are as the OP describes.
For me, my team culture and boss are awesome. Fun people, positive life/work balance and our customers want us to succeed. Our products/technology are pretty awful...