Cisco Systems Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Cisco Systems full-time

Pros – people,
learning, training,
forgiving, supportive,
good health fund cover

Cons – stressful, can be hard to get ahead because of so many talents

Advice to Senior Management – take care of the employees and promote from within more

Current Employee – been working at Cisco Systems full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – most people are pretty cool. internal CEO birthday chats (although i was never allowed to go somehow when i worked in SJ). global footprint - lots of places to work remotely. awesome remote access policy and flexible work highly encouraged. very cool labs and engineering resources. some really great people developing and doing really great things. global opportunities and good emphasis on career growth.

Cons – lots of middle layers to the company. oodles of inane processes. bad mix of folks who care versus folks who don't. sharply waning amount of time or budget for training (especially in customer support). some places where awful line managers can hide and fester. not everyone buys into "one cisco". many misplaced intentions and forced initiatives.

Advice to Senior Management – be more open about pending changes. invest more everything in your employees. price control of products.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Cisco Systems as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Great innovative products and great online training

Cons – Poor support services to back up sales efforts (in Australia)

Advice to Senior Management – Ramp up ratio of technical support people to sales people

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Cisco Systems full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good work-life balance
Flexible working hours
Good location
Down to earth people
Virtual teams allow for wider collaboration
Dynamic industry

Cons – Too many layers at the top
Decision making is too slow
Can be quite bureaucratic
Very slow to react to market changes
Roles overlap and on occasion duplicate
Can be complacent about its position in the market

Advice to Senior Management – Sort out management levels

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Cisco Systems full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Working for a great organization. Liberty to learn new technology.

Cons – Contractor. Finding hard to find a permanent position.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Cisco Systems

Pros – - good benefits
- lots of great technical people
- If you are self-motivator, you can learn a lot here

Cons – - Business Units far from HQ are treated as insignificant
- tons of politics in the middle management level that could stop opportunities from being distributed equally
- promotion is not based on work results or other effort put in, but thing so-called "certification"
- salary is below average and no market adjustment
- new hire with lower level of knowledge gets paid more money, existing and experienced staff don't get the same pay not even considered for promotion

Advice to Senior Management – The Great John Chambers could have paid more attention to his current staff in the smaller business units and make sure the units are run well by those in the middle management.

Current Employee – been working at Cisco Systems

Pros – Leader in the industry. Very good.

Cons – N/A
Slow in salary increase. But it's still competitive.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep moving forward.
Stay hungry stay foolish.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Cisco Systems

Pros – - Leading-edge web conferencing facilities and systems
- International exposure (work in virtual teams)/ Can have easy access to international expertise
- Diversity and generally very good people to work with

Cons – - Contractors do the bulk of 'full-timers' (FTE) 'dirty work'
- Full timers not wanting to roll up their sleeves. 'Outsources' all the work they didn't want to do.
- Lots of inefficient systems and internal business processes (a simple business process can take 20 steps to complete. Operates like a government. Nobody seems to care how 'difficult' business processes are.)
- Organisational structure is soooo confused (lines of reporting are not very straightforward). Possible to work in the same country with other colleagues but no 'allegiance' to country (field) objectives.
- Lots of budget wastage. Money not going to the right departments. All 'politically distributed' instead of based on ROI.
- Lack of 'accountability' for full time employees on how they spend/invest money

Advice to Senior Management – - I would suggest John Chambers to do an episode of 'Undercover Boss' (to see what happens in the grassroots).

Former Employee – worked at Cisco Systems

Pros – Mostly good people and conditions

Cons – Large organisation - can get lost in the crowd

Advice to Senior Management – Provide clear leadership messaging

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Cisco Systems

Pros – Cisco is still a good company, good starting salary and weekend shift loading, it gave equal opportunity for engineer to make the same amount regardless their grade.

the bonus is ok, better than those promises-but-never-see company.

Training and material is great, you will find lots of stuff to learn and grow you technical skills.

Cons – the rewarding scheme is poor, engineers are working long hours and extra miles to reach the MBO, but not getting rewarded.

the pay raise is non-existent.

very hard to get promotion.

Advice to Senior Management – Need to reward the engineers which work extra hours and miles, the salary is below the market rate almost, people use Cisco as a paid training camp and leave once they get a better offer.

no much employee loyalty if the reward is poor.