Cisco Software Engineer reviews

Being a large company, things are slow and old fashioned for the Gen-Y. Cisco is a marketing/sales driven company rather than a engineering driven company which makes things a little slower from technology perspective. Promotions and professional growth is slower as most of the management is made of technical leads who do not know much about managing people.

If the manager is not that technical, its hard to work under them. The manager doesnt understand the complexity of issue. And trivial customer issues are communicated to manager as critical issues and engineers are rewarded for that with promotions and cisco spark awards. The more junk stuff one talks in meetings, the more eligible is he for promotion. Speak non sense and ask same questions in all meetings and one gets visibility for that. And with that visibility promotions are decided. Engineer has to go through emotional trauma when he is given bottom 10% or bottom 5% rating. If one isnt communicating with manager well, give him bottom 10%. An engineer from every team has to be in bottom 10% every year. This is absolute non-sense. -ve work atmosphere , where in all employees are made to find faults with others , highlight that to manage and get themselves rewarded and be in a safe zone during appraisal.