Cisco reviews

4.1

81% would recommend to a friend

(33,652 total reviews)
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Chuck Robbins

78% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

Cisco has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 33,652 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Cisco employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

34K reviews
5.0
Feb 23, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Speaking from a finance org. perpsective, those rotational opportunities can be abroad, to completely different functions and even into a completely different org. (e.g. operations, legal). There is a remarkably strong sense of community here given the wide geographic swath that Cisco covers. There's a strong push to improve your skillset and expertise. Certainly not a place for someone who wants to cruise. There is the everpresent corporate "shmooze game" here to move up the ladder but I feel that career advancement opportunities here are still more merit based than in other Fortune 500 companies I've worked at. You can make a huge impact in big dollar impacting processes even if you're a jr. analyst.

Cons

Based on HR's ivory tower benchmarking of total compensation, Cisco is competitive in the industry. But I'd say it's far from a leader given the flight we've seen in talent to both competitors and all the hot names in tech right now. Proof is in the pudding. No "little perks to show we care" here like free meals and the like. People are still seething over the loss of free sodas and juice from a couple three years back. The ambiance here is now fully corporate versus fun startup. Not a sexy place to work but a solid one.

4.0
Oct 2, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Good management. Much better people skills than most tech companies. - Executive leadership you can respect. - Good starting salaries, generous cash bonuses, good ESPP. - Stability, many employees make a career of working here through retirement; unique in this field. - By far the most accepting work environment for employees of diverse backgrounds; in my personal experience (comparing to Microsoft, Bank of America, Intel, Government, and some smaller techs.).

Cons

- Benefits are weak. Insurance portion you pay is higher than other are companies. No sick days. - Unlike most techs, stock awards and options are limited to a select few high-level folks. - 70's sweatshop work environment: cubicles, no offices. Bad for engineering; maybe ok for...?? - Infrastructure is clunky. Patchwork of Oracle/Unix stuff from the '90, inefficient internal tools. - Cisco IT sucks (sounds mean, but I'm understating.) Product teams outsource for reliable IT. - Promotion path is fuzzy, many employees give up in frustration and advance through leaving. - 4 weeks PTO sounds good, but they force to use one for annual company shut-down, so it's really only 3. And, you get no sick days, so people tend to work when ill rather than blow the family vacation, which in turn infects more people. (Contrast with 2 sick weeks, all holidays, plus 5 weeks vacation for senior people at Microsoft and other companies.)

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