Cisco

Financially stable company.

Very smart and hardworking people.

Paycheck every two weeks.

Good benefits.

Some exposure to the latest technology depending on which unit you are.

Good place to build experience.

No innovation or excitement, too many project managers, bean counters.

Lots of infighting, political struggles. Too much drama just to do an execution commit.

Your ideas will or will not be listened to based on what your title is, not based on what they are.

There is very little advancement opportunity.

Employees who started in the early 90s are too cocky and have a grandiose complex.

Cisco was at the right place at the right time, but now the time of high-flying stock is over.

For the last 8 years, there have been no meaningful raises, and bonuses are going down.

Hard to attract new talent.

Engineers who are doing the actual work are not respected or appreciated properly.

Management thinks, "R&D? Oh, someone will do that. If not, we'll have it done in India or China. I'd rather increase my visibility under the label of cross-collaboration and look out for my few trusted tech leads."

I know every department is different, but I feel overall Cisco is on the fast track to becoming another big, fat, boring company like IBM.

The 90s are gone, so wake up. Routing & Switching is not rocket science. Huawei is coming, so watch out.

Once you have serious competition in L2/L3, rest and fast margins go easily.

Get rid of all the deadwood middle management that is doing nothing, killing time in meetings and collecting paychecks till retirement approaches. That will go a long way to bring in new blood to the company.

Stop hiring execs from loser companies such as Nortel or Motorola, who have failed miserably there.