Cisco reviews

You can work extremely long hours to get ahead, and even if you do you'll have to wait a long time.

The level and quality of engineering is overall pretty low, lower than many other companies: many people still use the same tools as they used 30 years ago. Other are jealous of what they know and try not to share it with anybody (job security?!?). Process is very very long and frustrating: with 60k employees, it sometimes takes a week to do a 1 hour job. It all explain why many products are coming from acquisitions and are not developed internally. There is no diversity at all in engineering: I would guess 90% is from India (maybe more). Also, from the level of director going up, many are "retired": they are just interested in getting their bonus and consider sending random emails at random hours (with their blackberry and similar) a valid proof that they are working around the clock. There are not many chances to improve your career once you get on board in term of salary or promotion: i.e., negotiate well before signing or you might just get stuck with something that you really do not like. Also, watch out on where you end up going: you might be forced to just do fire fighting and bug fixing and no development (almost at all): that's not good in your resume and it's not good for your mind.