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Cisco will waste your important years of your career. Period

Software Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Cisco for 1 year
March 28, 2018
Bengaluru, Karnataka
1.0
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Absolutely nothing I can think of.

Cons

Primary Cons

  • No development / innovative work
  • Only bug fixing & debugging work
  • Low-level coding standards are used in the codebase
  • You will spend most of your time debugging an error a colleague in the USA office is stuck with
  • You will gradually lose your coding skills due to no application to daily work
  • The software engineering role is more like a DevOps or networking role
  • You will be surrounded by people who don't care about what they work on; basically, people just living for the weekends
  • Not a lot of monetary benefits, very petty hikes & bonuses
  • Hiring standards are very low; they pretty much hire anyone with basic coding / scripting skills
  • Employee strength is huge, which leads to chaos in daily activities
  • No well-defined vision; requirements from your manager keep changing every Monday
  • You may work on code for an idea for a few days, eventually to find that idea has been scrapped by higher management
  • Not one of those companies that shift performing employees to HQ in the USA
  • Flexible work timing is just a trap, which gives them the right to make you work at night or weekends
  • Lots of blame games between teams, just to divert bugs / issues from themselves
  • Not at all suited for people starting their career, as the learning phase is almost nil
  • Innovative or product development ideas are dropped because people are busy debugging build issues
  • Cisco Bangalore does not have any R&D labs as such; it was built for the sole purpose of providing support to the San Jose office
  • Very low-skilled people, not up to date with emerging technologies, nor do they have the zeal to learn
  • In case you joined newly from college, you will be randomly assigned a division, then it's pretty difficult to move to any division of your choice (may take years)

Secondary cons:

  • More than 7000 employees on campus, too crowded
  • Cafeteria food is very bad
  • Located in a dirty and polluted area

To sum up, you will be reduced to a guy who answers queries, solves build issues, and resolves bugs related to the work in San Jose HQ.

Advice to Management
  • Please improve your hiring standards to begin with; I guess quality always prevails over quantity.
  • Improve the quality of work by collaborating with teams in USA HQ.
  • Change the middle-level management structure.

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