Cisco

• Well-known name in the telecommunications/networking industry.
• Flexible working hours.
• Generous with employee career development (training & tuition reimbursements, allowing engineers to pursue MBAs, etc.).

• Becoming too large, i.e., too bureaucratic, with too many layers of middle management.
• Turf/territorial fighting for control span in the middle management, which becomes a game of "who do you know, not what do you know or how harder/smarter one works" for one's career.
• The top-level management, i.e., CEO and his staff, lost touch with the employees, especially the individual contributors, hence not knowing exactly what's going on within the organizations (the cause of the turf fighting within the middle management).
• Lack of true leadership.

Look back at the culture of Cisco during the years (late 1990s and early 2000s) that propelled Cisco's growth and fame. The culture truly fostered engineers to be innovative and creative, pushing the envelope, focusing on making things happen instead of fearing or pondering, "What happens if I do this?" or "Should I take this risk?"