Cisco

• Work from home policy is very flexible.
• Possibility to take leaves on very short notice.
• Option available to buy more leaves.
• Any equipment that is needed for work can be ordered without any scrutiny.
• Convenient location if driving from the eastern part of the county.
• Work/life balance is acceptable; there is almost never any pressure to stay beyond normal working hours.
• Great involvement in local community projects and charity organizations.
• People are genuinely very nice and fun to work with.
• The Sports and Social club does a good job organizing events throughout the year; there is, however, a membership fee to participate.
• On top of the above, there is a separate fund to organize team outings every quarter, which are always good fun.
• A lot of attention is given to constantly monitor and improve coffee machines.

Strange location for an IT company, in the middle of an industrial park, outside of town. It's not a very pleasant place to go for a walk with trucks and forklifts roaming around. Oranmore village is at least a 20-minute walk away, which is a bit far if one wants to go out for lunch. That's also where the bus stop is, so it's something to consider if using public transport to get to work.

Canteen is very bad. The catering staff are trying their best but are very limited with what they can do because the kitchen is very badly fitted out, so they can’t prepare any half-decent meals.

Cisco is ultimately a sales, not an engineering company, so while good engineering practices are appreciated by some, it’s not what necessarily gets people promoted.

Salary, promotions, and opportunities are good if one knows how to play the game and gets noticed by the right people.

A somewhat weird/cringy ‘we are an amazing company’ attitude from some people. It’s disheartening how much self-affirmation we received from winning the somewhat irrelevant ‘Great Place to Work’ survey last year while conveniently forgetting that we were competing against some small, insignificant companies. We are unlikely to stand a chance if the top US software companies (i.e., companies we should really be compared with) decided to participate in a survey like that. There was a time when they decided to start giving us a free bowl of fruit every day, which is a great initiative if it wasn't sold to us as the greatest thing ever, i.e., on the same level as getting a free house.

Because we don't really have any real, proper competition in Galway, the company gets settled in the virtual security offered by the ‘we are good enough for Galway’ mindset that hinders any effort or initiative to continuously improve and yet wonders why it is so difficult to attract experienced people in the field to work here.

Read the cons section. Some of the items there can be easily addressed.