Cisco

Good benefits, competitive salaries, flexible working schedules.

Has all the problems that a big company has. The company tried to change this by introducing a CDO college new hire program, hoping the fresh blood could give more momentum to Cisco. But the result was just the opposite of what it was designed for originally. At first, the screening process of the CDO program was too easy. Lots of new hires coming through this program were very highly paid without matching quality. Once they were chosen by the CDO program, they were offered to freely pick any group to work for within Cisco. A lot of managers loved to get them, just because the first-year budget came from the company, not the BU. And in the following years, if you got more people, you got more budgets. But very often the team could not swallow this much from new college grads, and sometimes the group didn’t even have much work for them to do at all. So many of them ended up sitting around, picking up the bad culture of Cisco quickly. This further ruined the culture at Cisco, and as an indirect result, many senior and well-experienced people were leaving Cisco.

The CDO program should be stopped; it just doesn't make sense. Let each group pick and interview their own college new hire. It will be good for both the college new hire and the team.