Cisco

The work environment is beautiful and well-equipped.

Flexibility Stability High Technology

Management simply treats most engineers as replaceable.

Horrible management of the software codebase, with respect to customer releases, results in poor usage of software engineers. Most are getting burned out doing upkeep work, and all new work seems to go to contractors.

Management makes it known that engineers cannot be involved in business and completely shields them from any of it.

Compensate the good engineers and stop trying to align everyone in the middle (like sheep). It is insulting to give baseline raises to those below the curve without any performance base.

Middle management seems to be handpicked to be "yes men" that have no career ambition and thus have no interest in promoting their engineers for extra effort and exceeding expectations.

Take a look around. You cannot keep saying that "you should be happy to have a job in this economy" and use this tactic in suspending salaries and bonuses for three years. We have literally dozens of job openings and we cannot find a soul to fill them.