Cisco

It is a great place for older folks with families and mortgages. It's very stable and poor performance will not get you fired unless you are unbelievably bad (but there are exceptions to this as well).

For those with a lack of internship experience, Cisco is a good place to pick up a skill set and move on to another company.

1. Career advancement is non-existent.
2. No increases to salary to keep up with inflation.
3. Little recognition for good work.

Top performers will not stick around at Cisco simply because it's Cisco. You need to accept this and get more competitive in terms of compensation and career growth.

It's much cheaper in the long run to pay one or two good engineers $100K to get a job done than to hire 10 contractors at $50K/year to do the job (if it gets done at all).