Cisco reviews

4.1

82% would recommend to a friend

(33,623 total reviews)
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Chuck Robbins

78% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

Cisco has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 33,623 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Cisco employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

34K reviews
2.0
Dec 3, 2009

A company still living in the '90s

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Solid benefits package Great job to have on your resume Front row seat to the latest and greatest technology trends in the industry

Cons

Line managers more concerned about their own success rather than their direct reports success Diversity policy is pure comedy gold -- most diversity hires are very limited in ability and are not strategic hires or promotions. Promotions are purely political -- not based on ability/accomplishments Director level (and below) management is ill-equipped to lead, but is great at parroting corporate buzzwords Company fits the definition of "bloated bureaucracy" quite well Stock options went away, and now only executive levels benefit from (excessive) stock grants Constant reference to "Cisco family" is ironic, unless your "family" fosters an atmosphere of back-stabbing, brown-nosing employees Fanatical expense reduction has sucked the life out of the workforce and has brought morale to an all-time low Focus on political correctness has resulted in an atmosphere of "yes men" Committees and councils do not equal "nimble" EPM process (annual reviews) is laughable, and fits right in to the culture of cronyism Entirely too many VPs (446 as of July '09), and quite a few of them are simply cashing a paycheck Empire building prevalent even amongst lowly line managers 360 review process is a joke, as HR is not willing to listen to criticism of managers Bad/non-productive managers and employees are often simply reassigned, instead of weeded out The arrogance of management -- especially the line managers up to director level -- makes for an exceptionally unhappy workforce.

2.0
Nov 16, 2009

Used to be a good place to work for.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Looks good on the resume.

Cons

A bad psychological experiment gone wrong. Management is enamored with its GE style of management. You will fit in fine if you like back stabbing and brown nosing.

1.0
Nov 9, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very good place if you are a manager , you do not need to adhere to any software process, you do not need to plan for the project, just the dump the project to engineer and ask them to deliver it in 2-3 months time , ask them to work 20-24 hours per day , once the project is delivered , there will be hundreds of bugs due to lack of clarity and time , you move most of the engineers to another project and hire one new engineer and ask him to fix all the bugs , if any customer escalation happens just fire him and inform the customer that you have taken action.

Cons

Managers use foul language regularly, also they will motivate you by saying if you cannot do it by end of this month , you will be fired. Project transition happens in a day , like in a day 4 people working in US in a project gets laid off , and people working in india are asked to handle this extra project as an extra assignment You get work of 3 people without any knowledge transition , since management decided to lay off 3 peoples in your project, just after few months , they will forget you are working day and night in a project which had 4 people in it, your manager will ask you to stretch you 20-30% more to take up more work If you fix a bug but cannot test it properly because of lack of infrastructure in your place , but if it comes back from the customer site , you will get fired If you complain to higher management about your project managers , you will be removed from your current project and dumped into a more horrible project Many cisco engineers have lost their family , child ,etc as they are forced to spend all of their time working for cisco Cisco's Work from home policy sucks , like you work from office for 12 hours , rest of the time you work from home. No software processes are followed , I do not understand how cisco passes software quality audit In a quarter if there is less profit , layoff 20% of the people , in next quarter if there is good profit hire 20% new people, your company cannot sustain you even for a quarter. In 24X7 call center there are at least 2 shifts , but people working in support and sustenance projects in cisco are asked to work 20-24 hours regularly by the management, like in your daytime you support customers from india , in night time you work for US customers , manager says Cisco globalization means you need to be available 24x7 and handle customer across the world. You are expected to be available at your night time just to answer trivial queries which your manager gets after waking up in midnight just to check whether you are online or not. Consultants are prefered over employee for development projects, employees are made to languish in horrible 24x7 support and sustenance projects until and unless they decide to quit the company Whatever money cisco is saving by laying off people across world are used to acquire new new companies worth billions of dollars.

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