There is an opening for full-stack engineer at CIsco I was thinking of applying for, so I was doing some research and ran into this page. Now I'm no longer sure Cisco is the place to give up my current job for.
Is the situation really as bad as it is presented here? Should I stay away?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Backstabbing. First one to look out for is your direct line manager.
So many insecure dipshits in mid-management.
It is a terrible place to work. Infighting, backstabbing and nepotism.
just view Cisco as a boring 18 month temp job
The long answer- no.
Cisco is by far the best company I have ever worked for, from many perspectives. I have recently left only because I needed some stability and had a hard time to live between LR to the next.
If you are OK with less stability and think you can find the next job easily i would say go for it,
I had the best 6 years there.
Cisco keeps rolling on their redundancies every 4-6 months. They do not look at people just go by the organisation tree. You can be the star and they will still fire you, even there is another job just like yours in the company. You can be super bad and if you are in the good organisation, they will not touch you. I would not give up any job to go there.
Although there is some trolling here, there is also some truth.
Compare the posts here among companies and you will see the difference and you can make up you own mind.
A little hint, when I was looking last year for a place different than Cisco, I was shocked at how little there was on this site for my target company. Because that company doesn't just wake you up one day and throw you to the curb.
I didn't get the job. I'm too old. So, I'm retiring in a few weeks. Done.
I left a little over a year ago. It's a fine company, and if the works sounds interesting, you got a good vibe from the interview, and they're offering a good package then take it.
Don't take this site seriously. It's anonymous and troll-filled. Ex-employees who were let go or left are just venting their own bitterness. It's a good outlet, but recognize it for what it is.
I'm a white software engineer. The Business Unit I worked in was predominantly Indian, as was my boss. An overall great group of people with good attitudes.
Cisco's not perfect. Some of the criticisms you'll read here and on glassdoor are valid. You'll always find a-holes, back-stabbers and political players in any company. That's just life. Cisco never struck me as being remarkable in that regard.
Good luck.
Cisco is the best company ever! We just donated $50M to fight homelessness. Of course, if we paid our workers (incl contractors) decent wages and paid the taxes on our overseas revenues (instead of investing in stock buybacks to enrich our "leaders" and their 1% friends), we probably wouldn't have homelessness in the US.
Yeah ask for SPVSS, specifically the OVP team, it’s the Navy’s Seals of Cisco and ask to be located in Lawrenceville aka the 80s
Just tell them you want to join SPVSS. Then you'll come here again and again, and again... never stop.
Nobody has the balls to be racist to your face. The keyboard commandos wait until late at night to unleash their Trump agenda.
Re Cisco, it’s often a chaotic organization that lacks real SW skills both from a management perspective but also from developer side. If you’re looking to work at a slow pace/semi retired and are ok with your team dotted around the globe. Sure Cisco is a good fit
I worked for Cisco in the UK for a few years and whilst it was interesting and fairly well paid. If the revenue stream dries up don't expect to be redeployed to other projects, be ready to be laid-off. In my case the whole team was chopped.
When Cisco was a high growth company it was one of the best companies in the industry to work for and we all drank the cool aid and most of us profited from stock appreciation. As the company matured, it now faces intense competition, its core hardware business has become a commodity and now needs to transform into a software based business model. Their are many layers of management, competition feels more internal and tribal in nature versus external which means you need to be selective in which group you join.
The racists probably save all their bile for this site then.
I'm from east Asia, with Cisco for about 4 years. Never experienced any racism whatsoever.
Cisco acquires and grows--products that are already built and have customers. There are hardly any in-house product (other than a few in switching/routing) which can be boasted about. Here, the CTO organization suggests to acquire instead of building something, as building in-house has more failure rate here.
But if you are UI developer, you may be developing nice GUI which our HW centric products lack. So, it's choice upto you. Don't join old products.
If you want to work with racist, arrogant xenophobic Americans then definitely join.
what location and business unit ?
In my process of applying there I discovered complaints of racism and found reports of openly racist and derrogoatory language at one site. I can't work somewhere that allows that or hires people who engage in it. So no, Cisco does not get my great knowledge and skills, they can have the awesomeness of other applicants who are not concerned about racist practices and environments. I am not the right candidate for that type of environment or company.