Cisco reviews

4.1

83% would recommend to a friend

(33,573 total reviews)
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Chuck Robbins

79% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

Cisco has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 33,573 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
4.0
Jun 10, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Opportunity to work on great technology. In addition, the executive management is the best I've seen in working for various companies in Silicon Valley. Flexible work hours (though you need to work extremely hard). Varied set of products, so if you get bored doing something, you can move to something completely different without changing jobs.

Cons

Pay is not great: especially if you've been around for some time. Newcomers get paid market rates, while old-timers struggle to get raises. Raises are hard to come by, and are highly dependent on your manager and group. Middle management sucks. The executives are excellent, and their strategic vision has kept Cisco going, however, there's an enormous amount of deadwood, that needs cleaning. Too many directors sit around doing nothing and don;t get fired, in some ways its like getting tenure at Cisco to become a director. A lot of engineering will probably end up being moved to India, so watch out. Has gotten fairly bureaucratic, so getting things done is hard.

3.0
Jun 2, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

They pay well, every two weeks. The medical, dental, and vision package is better than average. The cafeterias are very nice, and they have an excellent gym in building 6. Overall, the benefits package is great. Top management seemed mostly honest, and middle management is less venal than other companies I have worked at. Cisco is very driven by their "VSE" documents (Vision, Strategy, Execution) and takes them very seriously - I found it refreshing to find a company that actually does take Vision and Strategy seriously. They actually measure things, and sometimes make decisions based on those measurements - an idea from an underling with good data can overturn the intent of a VP with an opinion, sometimes.

Cons

They will try to work you to death. Some parts of the company are a lot sharper than others - I was part of a group that was closely aligned to another group, and I was always amazed at how much more organized the other group seemed; we just couldn't seem to make decisions and stick to them. Middle managers (directors) seem so busy with all kinds of activities that they don't seem to have any time to manage. All managers are expected to have "individual contributor" duties, which diminish their effectiveness as managers. Cisco loves routine, procedure, and process; it is very difficult to do anything new there.

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