Pros: Good first-line managers and good salary/benefits.

Cons: Too much organizational hierarchy and red tape. San Jose headquarter thumbs its nose at other sites. Too difficult to get your opinions heard.

Pros: Bright talent anguishing at the bottom of the company hierarchy.

Cons: Diminishing technical jobs with frequent layoffs due to outsourcing. New tech has become sweatshop culture. The CEO got a huge raise of 80% for cutting jobs. Management had the mindset of Cisco being a hardware company. Failure to make timely acquisitions in software, virtualization, and next-gen technologies has put the company's dominance far behind its competitors.

Pros: I worked at Cisco in RTP for a few years. Over time, it became obvious that my project peers were working other full-time jobs and shouldering me with an unfair amount of project burden. I made management aware of this issue, but they were too busy to effectively look into the matter. It was a complicated issue; management typically doesn't have time to manage staff at Cisco and actually see what's going on. Many managers have too many employees. Some, like mine, have the title of manager but are really too busy working a sales role. This puts them in the place of trusting mid-level employees. If you're under a shady one, there's not much you can do. It got very shady in my exit interview when no HR representative was present. In lieu of that, I was given a web form to fill out. Pros: * Great opportunities do exist. * As with most large companies, it's really a roll of the dice as to who you work for.

Cons: As stated, the cliques and poor ethics that grow in certain areas.