Seems like Cisco has a bad rep...
Wanted to know whether all the Blind reviews were an accurate depiction of what's going on...Anyone happy at Cisco? If you are can you explain what's been great over there?
In general Cisco is bad. Reason is tones of Indians and Chinese hiring their own relatives and friends and hacking the shit out of it. Upper management is toxic and political. Some teams are sweat shops while others are slow and ready to be Bangalored. Salaries are not competitive for engineering while upper management makes millions.
On top of it, their hiring process is fucked up. The bar is very low in general so lots of incompetitive friends have sneaked into the company. When quarters don’t go well due to bad software or unfavorable market conditions, management has figured out quarterly layoffs as a method to get rid of employees to make up for the numbers. Layoffs used to be annual affair, then they became every 6 months and looks like now they happen whenever CEO feels like.
Mgmt is non existent..people deal is a stock prop up. It's all who you know and right now if you identify as having a skirt. Get out if you can...
Im at Cisco in east coast location working on web based stuff and its pretty fucked up. Everything these guys said about bad hiring, plus not getting proper promotion due to budget even with years of excellent performance reviews. Not having the right people for right work. None of the PMs are PMP certified, project owners write all the content for the web, PMs ask the designers to follow up with the dev, no clear timeline...frustration...Only good thing is flexible work hours due to Webex lol
There was a time when this company moved mountains. Now they simply follow whatever their nearest competitors seem to be doing. Little respect for senior leaders. No direction, and worse yet every year layoffs.
Cisco Meraki, baby =)
As a new grad, I am pretty happy at cisco’s acquired start-up. Good engineering practices, a lot of seniors to learn from, relatively competitive TC. No regret of rejecting Amazon offer.
OP ... These response should answer your questions and should be a pointer for all future inquiries. Now TC or your banned
Meraki 👍
TC/YOE or GTFO. Cisco is a big place, so there's a wide spectrum of possible experiences.