Pros
Honestly, working at AppDynamics has been quite the rollercoaster. It's definitely not the same company it was in its start up phase, with many of the original senior leadership gone. That has its pros and cons. While the "old AppD" was hard going, with very poor work/life balance, and a culture to be proud of how far and hard you could push yourself, it was pretty much a baptism of fire. You were learning from the best how to be the best, if you were motivated by that then you come out the other side learning an unbelievable amount and having faster and better development into how to successfully and repeatedly run large enterprise software sales cycles. If you give it your all and persevere, management and leadership always have your back to the core. When things aren't working, they look at the data and find actual ways to improve, not empty suggestions to just "try harder". But make no mistakes, it is one of the hardest jobs you'll ever do.
I've never known such a flat hierarchy structure where you're encouraged to engage with the global leadership team for your deals from early on in your career. Growth and development is paramount. That being said, I honestly can't say what it would be like for new hires now i feel the culture and training is very dependent on the individual managers continuing to drive the original culture.
Finally, during Covid and the current uncertainty, AppD & Cisco have really proven themselves that they care. We're working from home, our safety is paramount. If you need to take time with your families it's encouraged. We had budget allocated to buy anything we needed to get our work from home set up . Business is still going well, but they are responding to what's happening in the world not shutting their eyes to it and pushing a business as usual agenda. The flat hierarchy leaves the communication between execs all the way through to new hires open.
Cons
There's definitely uncertainty at the moment in where the business is going with Cisco. I would say if you're still looking for the hard really intense start up culture that AppD used to have then you may have missed the boat. If you're looking for somewhere that still has unparalleled sales training, with more of a corporate culture, and want to learn how to cross sell a platform across an organisation rather than a single tool to specific userbase, then this is the right choice.
