Pros
- High quality people. It would be very difficult to find anyone with more than one year experience in the company who is not smart and does not get things done. Add to that a nutty sense of humor, the willingness to lend a helping hand, and a strong of community – and it feels like being inside a university. - Many opportunities for training and development. In addition to the abundance of both classroom and online training courses made available to everyone, people are regularly rotated from one role to another within a project so that they learn different aspects of the business. - The best in tools and technologies. This is not just in the job-specific areas but also in the area of collaboration. For example, Cisco’s MeetingPlace and Telepresence technologies are commonly used to facilitate meetings between people in two or more countries around the globe.
Cons
- Declining work-life balance. This wasn’t the case three years ago – when flextime and offsetting of accumulated overtime hours were allowed. Not only are these options no longer allowed, but the minimum required hours have been increased from 40 hours to 45 hours per week. - Promotion based on forced rankings. The company defines the promotion criteria as performance, role readiness, and business need – but fails to include two other factors which tend to unfairly influence the rankings: seniority or length of time within a project team and relationship with the manager/s. - Process Over People. As talented as the people are in the company, there is a strong tendency to place more value in process and documentation than in people and personal interactions.