Cisco

Good company benefits, decent salary. Allowed telecommuting.

The management and culture is just poisonous. They have no culture of innovation or risk-taking.

The development team is just focused on short-term gains. As an engineer, I was bored out of my mind porting crappy work from other divisions that were favored, even though more than once we had developed a better solution.

Five years later, they relented and let us rework that project to produce better reliability, but it was after the issues that caused them to lose customers.

I worked in a BU that was managed by one culture, and unless you went to the same temple and were part of that dynasty, you were passed up for promotions and good projects.

They cleaned up some house since 2009, but the same issues take place that I discussed earlier. I can tell the issues I raised still remain to this day when I interview unhappy Cisco engineers who sound defeated and frustrated and want to work elsewhere.

My sign should have been when we could not attract college grads to join.

I have to say I learned very little as a development engineer in the 10+ years I worked there. I did learn a lot about networking, however.

You seriously need to clean up house and hire entrepreneurial engineers, allowing them to take risks. Otherwise, you will continue to lose your edge and attract "rest and vest" attitudes that will just bring the company down.