Cisco

Like anywhere else, a person's opinion of a company probably has a great deal to do with their manager and the way their business unit is run. Overall, Cisco is a very well-respected company, and they try to maintain that level of professionalism with respect to the way employees are treated. The management team and Human Resources policies certainly are geared toward rewarding the individuals that offer the highest contributions to the business.

The compensation has been going down in recent years. I say that for several reasons.

First, salaries have not been going up in general, but the cost of living, of course, has.

Second, benefits are slowly getting worse. The primary one being stock options, which have all but been terminated now except for management and the highest-level technical folks. But in addition, the various medical and dental plans offered are covering less and costing more year after year.

Outsourcing is not the answer to every problem. In fact, sometimes it is not a good idea at all. For example, we recently learned that the documentation group would be centralized in San Jose and India. This is a ridiculous idea to me. Also, I am aware of several development teams that had developed projects that were very stable, and then they were transferred to India. These were not the typical "cash cow" kinds of transfers; these were projects still adding major features. The development teams involved were told that they could apply for other jobs at Cisco, but if they could not find other work inside Cisco, they would be terminated. This is not a good way to treat development teams that have been successful. The upper-level management seems to have no understanding of synergy and does not value successful teams as they should.