Cisco

1. Most of the products I worked on shipped to customers.

2. Lots of opportunity to learn because you are working long hours.

3. You get to work on lots of things because headcount is minimal, so it is like a startup.

4. Most of the people are very intelligent, bright, and quite fun if there is time to get to know them.

5. Cisco has lots of process and systems in place to learn. This is great for new hires to see how a big organization runs things.

6. ITIL is coming and Version 3 can be used to reduce process! HP is big into it and Cisco will get it eventually.

7. Was a great place to work for the first 6 years. We worked hard and got some recognition and rewards. Parties and fun were paid by the company. There were benefits!

8. If you are a great salesperson, you are set. Everyone is always selling themselves and trying to look better than others. It is the look-good company!

9. Oh, you get free bagels and donuts if you go to Chamber's once a month birthday breakfast! Otherwise, there is never a free anything because you work for it.

10. Directors and VPs have it made! Has anyone ever counted them? There are so many, it must be hard. Laying off a few every six months doesn't make a dent. All of a sudden they are gone, and it was as if they were never there.

11. There is lots of work! You have your work, the work of your coworker who is laid off every 12 months, the work to talk to India/China, the initiatives (remember, two each minimum to get your ranking up), the extra work to sell your work, and then the 30 to 50 extra products that Cisco is working on now.

12. Many companies are benefiting from Cisco's focus being so broad. Cisco revenue is going up because there are so many areas to make money, and individual market share is dropping in the plumbing business. The Cisco family is creating opportunities for others!

13. You learn to reward yourself and take pride in your own work.

14. This company is beyond frugal and slightly paranoid. You will be much better with money and able to identify all your work peers as enemies in some way.

15. Webex and Telepresence are cool tools and I miss them.

16. You learn to be very creative by making do with equipment you have or squeezing vendors as part of the collective.

17. You get very good at business justification and spreadsheets because sometimes getting anything requires levels of approval.

I learned a lot at Cisco. Best wishes to all at Cisco!

1. Many of the perks are gone. No more free drinks, the subsidized cafeteria is gone, and you pay for your own DSL at home so you can work most nights. There's no cell phone reimbursement, no parties, and managers must pay for their employee Christmas lunches or events. Potlucks mean buying from the local market, as who has time to cook.

2. When you come in, Cisco folks make it look good for you. Get set for long hours and very little recognition unless you are in the top 20 to 30 percent in ranking. The top >50% might get something; the rest are happy with what they don't know.

3. Work in multiple time zones with jobs moving offshore. Be on the phone from 8 to 10 PM or at 7 AM.

4. Lots of job overhead and development tools seem outdated, but they mostly work.

5. There is much redundancy and product overlap, yet there are feature gaps.

6. Good salary to start and minimal raises after you join. It is very difficult to get promotions.

7. Stock options are for 2nd level managers, directors, and VPs, but not the workers.

8. Constant ranking and rating every 6 months and managers upselling. What a waste of time. What ever happened to leading the people to get more work out of them?

9. Must do your 3 to 5 work projects at the same time and accomplish 2 or 3 initiatives. Initiatives are often a farce because everyone has to have them to get their ranking up. Then they compete for resources to do the initiatives when there is not enough people to do the work. So much wasted effort.

10. My director was often gone, and we never knew what he did for work. Good manager or leader?

1. Focus, focus, focus. Reduce, reduce, reduce overhead.

2. Will you figure out a way to appreciate the people that get the work done who are ranked >10% to 50%?

3. Pay more and give a little back to the employees. All hell is going to break loose when folks realize how many hours they work for low pay. Why not go to a start-up? They say there is more security at a big company. The trick is to keep folks so busy there is no time to look for a job. Oh well, there are not as many jobs, so you are safe.

4. Every team needs someone who sees the big picture, a driver, 2 or 3 helpers, a techie, a process person, a person to reduce process, and a leader, not a manager. The ranking and rating drives out the techies, the leaders, the big picture person, and the process reducers. Guess what? No wonder it is so hard to get things done at Cisco. I guess this is why the ranking system is in place! When all those folks leave, we just hire new college graduates, pay them top dollar, and get new blood and thinking.

5. Either move things to India and China or don't. There is so much overhead and overtime on both sides of the world. Does anyone have time to track the overhead and see if it is really cheaper? This could be an initiative! :)

6. Oh, and by the way... Why are we putting our 10,000 person Cisco center in Bangalore, India? Hello! There are so many other Indian cities. Bangalore has so much traffic you cannot get to work in less than 45 minutes by car for just 5 miles. Everyone has a driver, though, so I guess it helps the drivers. You pay much more for Bangalore engineers, the cost of living is high, and the dollar is devaluing over time. Oh wait, maybe there is hope for all the engineers in the US!

7. Power costs - yes, energy costs are high in India. When you add it all up, it is cheaper to have the equipment here in the US. $.8 a kW/hour on the East Coast and $.16 a kW/hour in India. Now multiply India by "double" to cover cooling costs and the power plant for buildings in India. Oh well, it is just an operational expense and can be hidden.

8. Can Cisco invent a way to rotate the directors and VPs around every 2 or 3 years? It gets old seeing the same ones at the top, doing the re-mix song and dance with the same thought process, over and over again. Make them grow a bit, too! We did this at another company I worked at, and it did wonders for getting rid of the politics. The Directors and VPs will like it, too. They have to be bored doing the same job over and over, but having to keep spinning it differently.