Cisco

• 401k matching
• Decent gym
• Stable in most business units if you're contributing
• Great if you just want to coast along in your career
• Great CEO who knows how to make money

Cisco was probably the place to be in the 90s, but not today. The work culture and environment are very hierarchical and bureaucratic, and worse, no one seems to care about this. Old-time employees are lackadaisical, out of touch, and downright incompetent as team players.

Another thing I've noticed is the forming of "clans." I came from a company where, despite the office politics, when it came down to "getting it done," everybody worked together as a team. I am absolutely certain that this would never happen here. In fact, other teams would be glad if another team fails to deliver, as this would look good in front of superiors.

Managers here are extremely mediocre, which makes me wonder if they've ever had management training. The development tools for software engineers are from the Jurassic age (all command line), and the usual answer I get is "you'll get used to it." I mean, are you serious? I spend most of my time learning such archaic tools, which has nothing to do with my daily job. This is pathetic. At least recognize that this is 2012, and people shouldn't be wasting time wrestling with command-line utilities to get their job done.

And don't tell me that real programmers use command-line tools. There is a reason why GUI development tools exist, and it is to stop wasting useless cycles jumping from one directory to another and running one script after the other doing trivial tasks.

If you're a new grad, do not consider coming to Cisco. You will have no decent mentors and will be left on your own to fend for yourself. This is extremely sad since the products indeed are class-leading and there is a lot to learn from senior employees, but they are unwilling to share their accumulated knowledge.

Cisco is too big to bring about changes. Cronyism is rampant, and the sad part is everyone knows this, but nothing will change for the good.