Cisco

1. Great learning opportunity: like a university: what you learn depends on how much you want to learn. There are e-courses and classroom training. However, with the downturn and cost-cutting, classroom training is being discouraged.

2. Diversity in terms of gender at the worker bee level. It's refreshing to see so many females as software engineers after coming from a company where I was the only one.

3. Volunteering opportunities within the company and outside. There are employee inclusion and diversity groups which one could join and work for a cause.

4. Flex timing and the ability to work from home at times.

5. Charity: Encourages charity and also matches donations through its I-Give program.

1. First-level and second-level managers are inept. They have no leadership skills at all and do not care about employee growth. It's something to wonder about as to how they are rated.

2. Too much politics in the departments; whether you move up depends on who you know.

3. No transparency in the review process or in compensation.

4. No consistency in work hours: some people work hard for only 3 months in the whole year, whereas there are departments where the midnight oil is burnt almost throughout the year.

5. Officially supposed to encourage movement within the company. However, the reality is that most jobs are filled by someone the manager knows, even before the requisition is officially out.

If possible, please root out the mid-level management. Emphasize communication. Also, there seems to be a gap between vision and execution.