Cisco

There are a lot of business units in Cisco with a lot of projects. It's possible to move around to find a team and project that suits one the best.

Recently, there is a lot of talk about AI, and some teams are using it; others are exploring options.

Benefits are good:

• Four weeks of vacation
• Accrued PTO (not "unlimited" like in many companies)
• 4.5% match on 401K contributions
• Bonus
• Better health insurance than many companies
• ESPP – you can save up to 10% of salary to buy stock with at least a 15% discount. Cisco gives the lowest price for the last two years (on ESPP buy dates) minus 15%, which is nice.

In most teams, work/life balance is good. It's possible to work on really big projects and products that most startups can't handle.

It's a huge company, so there is more "paperwork" than in startups, reporting hours spent, creating and closing user stories and tickets.

Also, there are slackers. For a long time, those people can get by with doing almost nothing just because they are friends with their manager.

Cisco has quarterly layoffs, usually small. Once a year, in September to November, there's a big one.

Regardless of how much you contribute, you may be let go just because the business unit is not as profitable as some others.

Stop laying off people just to boost the stock price. Instead, keep hard-working people and assign them to other business units. Move faster to become a software company that also has some really good hardware.