Cisco

Great benefits, very competitive salaries, and a wide range of directions available in a big company. As a well-established high-tech company, Cisco attracts top talent with a great benefits package. On the whole, Cisco looks after its employees and provides good facilities.

Limited opportunity to innovate, corporate politics, and a demoralizing business model. Being head-quartered in the USA, Cisco has a very American approach. It is difficult to influence company direction or progress through the corporate ladder without spending time working in San Jose. Working in the UK often means calls and conferences well into the evening, long hours, and a heavy impact on your personal life. The company acquires businesses with large market shares and then implements cost savings. This results in missed opportunities to grow markets and innovate, and a feeling of not being engaged with the market or end-customer.

Cisco is heavily siloed into the regular corporate domains of finance, HR, sales, and engineering. This gives the "Business Units" (BU) very little authority to do the right thing for their market, ultimately leading to many missed opportunities.

Cisco should give the General Managers, who head the BUs, more authority over the levers of the business to match the accountability they have for Profit and Loss. Since this will weaken inter-BU cohesiveness, upper management should then focus on fostering strategic alliances between Business Units and Technology Groups rather than trying continually to introduce bottom-up changes as it does today.