Cisco

Get a chance to work with smart and stupid people at the same time (you can find this in meetings most of the time).

Flexible hours (you can work from anywhere, toilets or home, as long as you have a phone or Wi-Fi).

Cross-functional working experience (from engineer to VP together).

Super quick promotion/raise you could get if your boss is your buddy or friend.

Good to have a Cisco batch to show (like driving a Volkswagen that is made in Mexico; figure out the quality yourself).

You can choose a MacBook Pro, but if you screw up, there is no IT support.

• Very vague promotion/raise policy and performance review guideline, basically the top management makes the rules here.

• Extremely long hours; at least 8 hours a day would be needed just for meetings, plus 4-6 hours spent daily on emails, reports, projects, and ridiculous last-minute, super-urgent requests from the boss.

• Employee performance is measured mainly based on how close your relationship is with management. If you are not on their buddy list, then you have to have a lot of projects you are working on in order to negotiate the next raise or opportunity within the organization. Otherwise, you cannot expect to get anything exciting from management, even if you stay and work hard on your full-time responsibilities for 100+ years; nothing will change.

• Lack of direction and attention from management. Since the managers are also busy working to make their bosses happy, don't expect them to take good care of individual contributors like engineers.

• Must have super silky smooth, talkative skills like Obama in order to shine your boss's shoes and make them happy to win their trust and get a good impression. Again, this doesn't mean you can get a promotion, but for some reason, you would think that you need to do that.

• A lot of tools you need to learn and use every day, otherwise you will get stuck. Most of the time, the tools are not user-friendly and take a long time to get what you want. Some data integrity issues exist, and at the end, you will end up getting just garbage data.

• Too many different processes you need to be familiar with, and people make changes to the processes very frequently, especially after reorganizations, which happen every year.

• Very competitive in terms of politics, which you want to make sure you play the games right and smart in your role, otherwise you are "screwed." Others can backstab you or give you a hard time right to your face.

• No career advancement opportunity (only for those chosen candidates who are close to their management).

• A 20-year-old coffee maker in the breakroom at this so-called world-class network & communication company.

I suggest you sit in on one of the management staff meetings in each organization and participate in the performance review.