Cisco

I have been with Cisco for around 10 years, and I feel it's a great place to work.

1. It's a happening environment, and you feel you are up-to-date with the latest innovations and technology.
2. Resources are plenty; there are so many great minds, books, e-material, routers, and simulators where you get to learn whatever you yearn to.
3. Around 80% of the colleagues share their learnings and knowledge with each other.

However, there are some downsides which can be improved.

1. Priorities keep changing, especially when you are growing. Every morning, you prepare yourself for what to do that day, but top management asks for some other urgent data, and your entire plan for the day is screwed up. The next morning, you will not prepare for anything.

2. Productive time to learn or explore something is slowly getting replaced with too many meetings/updates. One hour of everyday update in one forum is far better than updating the same status in multiple forums, meetings, and mails and debating over it.

3. As a result of 2), our actual productivity happens during family time, which results in improper work-life balance, sleeplessness, frustration, and less energy/enthusiasm to explore new things.

1. Invest in new tools for measuring productivity and knowledge.
2. Find better ways to measure progress so that both engineers and managers spend less time on status updates.