Toxicity is an everyday experience at Cisco Systems.
Pros
- Cisco has a great reputation as the industry leader in a lot of areas, particularly networking hardware and datacenter equipment, thus working at Cisco obviously is a good addition to your resume. (However the Cisco reputation is not the same as it used to be) - The offices are pretty amazing with state of the art facilities. You do not get much time to use these facilities though. But they're there. We had a mini cinema hall in the Bangalore office. It doesn't get any better than that. - Work from home option, in some teams, is quite flexible. - A well connected pickup and dropoff cab service in the Bangalore office (Not free, but costs about Rs. 2000 per month)
Cons
Where to begin - There is zero involvement from HR whatsoever. If your director/manager is exploiting you, which by the way is extremely common, you have no one to help you. Only your teammates, who are probably also being exploited. - You are completely at the mercy of your direct and second level bosses. If your team is toxic (my experience), you will suffer a lot. In the many years I have been in Cisco Bangalore, I have seen so many people in a similar situation as me. Helpless, with the only option to look outside Cisco for work. - There is no work-life balance whatsoever. If you have a geolocated team, you are expected to be available for work/meetings in all timezones. 'Night meetings' are ubiquitous and you are expected to work on weekends too. - Layoffs are so frequent that even before the upcoming layoff occurs, rumors of the next layoff are commonplace. Who is going to be laid off doesn't matter at all on the person's merit or capability, but on the relationship they have with their manager and director. - Promotion cycles get cancelled very frequently. Bonuses are more or less always meagre, with a company factor, usually below 100%, which means you get a lower bonus than your bonus target just because the overall company is always under performing. - The CEO is an ex-sales VP, who's only focussed on profits. Since Cisco is losing market share and yearly revenues are always less than $50bn, Chuck Robbins' method for maintaining profits and consequently dividends is to hire execs with the mission to lay off a huge chunk of their teams in the so called 'streamlining' initiatives. All you hear in Cisco is layoffs. - Cisco's policy of internally promoting managers based on years of service rather than capability has filled Cisco's ranks of managers with incompetant managers (and even directors) who are more suited for tech lead or project management positions. They lack vision and foresight, and are only focussed on the present. Something I feel resonates all the way to the top with Chuck Robbins and his team in many regards. - The pay, in comparison to comparable roles in comparable companies, is always low. There is huge attrition which leads to lots of instability. It's been a tremendous challenge planning projects since teams are always transient. - The hiring process for Cisco is to hire people cheap who will be able to 'do the job' rather than 'invent new products'. Getting hired by Cisco is no longer a big deal. Thus there is a huge upsurge of converting red badge employees, who are from vendor companies, to blue badge full Cisco employees. This ensures the business is run... but not changed. Cisco loses innovation and invention, and consequently its leading edge. This problem is spread across almost all teams. - There are so many layers between you and the customer, that you will probably never get the opportunity to talk to a customer directly. Which basically means you slowly lose knowledge of what the market wants. Thus when you apply outside for a new role, you know what your manager/director wants, but not what the customers want.