While Cisco is overall a great company, some of their interviewers can be very unknowledgeable, unprofessional, and disrespectful.

The interviewer, an engineer, called in 10 minutes late for a scheduled 30-minute call. They then asked questions totally unrelated to what the group is doing, drilling down on unnecessary details about tools the team is NOT using. Not to mention, they lacked knowledge on even basic data structures/algorithms and jeered and laughed throughout, and this is someone with a 'Principal Software Engineer' title.

This experience was definitely a cut or two below a top-tier company. I sent in my request to withdraw my application right after the interview.