Lots of ups and downs - a very political organization
Lots of ups and downs - a very political organization
Great sales force, great technology, high visibility within the industry, and ability to drive technology and innovation. Lots of customers. If you build a good product, they sell it.
Lots of politics. To move up the ladder, you need to manage up versus manage down. There's a passive-aggressive culture. Senior management spends a lot more time managing up, unaware of the business. They throw money around indiscriminately looking for success. Senior management is unaware of what is going on. John Chambers is not connected with reality on the ground. He keeps talking about how great everything is, and there are layoffs across the board.
Be real, be honest with yourself and with people and teams.
Reduce politics and focus on execution.
Send SVPs to go back to closer to their teams versus building ten closer to John Chambers.
Create career opportunities for everyone, not just for people who suck up to you.
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Cisco Interview Experiences
Quality Assurance
It was fairly good and well organized. The team was very friendly and interactive. The interview process was smooth and finished the process in a week.
ML/AI Engineer
It was a one-round interview. It was predominantly on data science and large language models. They gave me a repo of an agent framework and asked me to find the code where reward is calculated.
ASIC Design Verification Engineer
The first round was essentially a screening interview with the recruiter. We mostly discussed my resume, past experiences, and had a general conversation about the company and the role. The second round was more technical. It involved a deeper dive
Quality Assurance
San Jose, California, United StatesNovember 14, 2025It was fairly good and well organized. The team was very friendly and interactive. The interview process was smooth and finished the process in a week.
ML/AI Engineer
San Jose, California, United StatesOctober 24, 2025It was a one-round interview. It was predominantly on data science and large language models. They gave me a repo of an agent framework and asked me to find the code where reward is calculated.
ASIC Design Verification Engineer
San Jose, California, United StatesJuly 1, 2025The first round was essentially a screening interview with the recruiter. We mostly discussed my resume, past experiences, and had a general conversation about the company and the role. The second round was more technical. It involved a deeper dive
