Cisco

Very good place if you are a manager. You do not need to adhere to any software process. You do not need to plan for the project. Just dump the project to engineers and ask them to deliver it in 2-3 months' time. Ask them to work 20-24 hours per day.

Once the project is delivered, there will be hundreds of bugs due to lack of clarity and time. You move most of the engineers to another project and hire one new engineer, asking him to fix all the bugs. If any customer escalation happens, just fire him and inform the customer that you have taken action.

Managers use foul language regularly. They will motivate you by saying if you cannot do it by the end of this month, you will be fired.

Project transitions happen in a day. For example, in a single day, four people working in the US on a project get laid off, and people working in India are asked to handle this extra project as an additional assignment.

You get the work of three people without any knowledge transfer. Since management decided to lay off three people from your project, just a few months later, they will forget you are working day and night on a project that had four people. Your manager will ask you to stretch yourself 20-30% more to take up more work.

If you fix a bug but cannot test it properly due to a lack of infrastructure in your location, but if it comes back from the customer site, you will be fired.

If you complain to higher management about your project managers, you will be removed from your current project and dumped into a more horrible project.

Many Cisco engineers have lost their family, children, etc., as they are forced to spend all their time working for Cisco.

Cisco's work-from-home policy sucks. You work from the office for 12 hours, and the rest of the time, you work from home.

No software processes are followed. I do not understand how Cisco passes its software quality audits.

In a quarter, if there is less profit, 20% of the people are laid off. In the next quarter, if there is good profit, 20% of new people are hired. Your company cannot sustain you even for a quarter.

In a 24x7 call center, there are at least two shifts. However, people working in support and sustenance projects at Cisco are asked to work 20-24 hours regularly by management. For example, during your daytime, you support customers from India, and at night, you work for US customers. Your manager says Cisco globalization means you need to be available 24x7 and handle customers across the world. You are expected to be available during your night time just to answer trivial queries that your manager gets after waking up at midnight, just to check whether you are online or not.

Consultants are preferred over employees for development projects. Employees are made to languish in horrible 24x7 support and sustenance projects until and unless they decide to quit the company.

Whatever money Cisco is saving by laying off people across the world is used to acquire new companies worth billions of dollars.

Dear Cisco managers,

Stop trying too hard to screw your engineers. Do not expect people to work more than 12 hours per day; it does not help your company.

Stop treating employees like slaves. A slave can produce only a slave product. You are winning because there is no competitor, and your product as well as support sucks big time. The simple reason is if you ask people to work more than 12 hours, they will do a shitty job.

Make two 12x7 shifts for engineers and work 24x7.

Take off the "Welcome to the Human Network" advertisement. 90% of your customers do not understand it, and your engineers call it a slave network. Whatever money you save, try to improve employees' work life.

The human resources and software quality teams are invisible at Cisco. Do something so that they are readily available to engineers.