Pros
Cisco is a stable company, lots of money in the bank, nice break rooms with all the free soft drinks you can imbibe, and is the industry leader for networking/communications equipment. People you work with are most of the time the "top ten percent" (which is new hire marketing fluff), and in general, the benefits outweigh the costs and indiginties you must suffer to be a "blue badged" Cisco employee.
Cons
1. Young talent, or the lack thereof it. Cisco is trying to aggressively hire young people, out of college, and that process is highly competitive, and painful for the new hires. Cisco WAS a young company ten years ago, now it's just middle aged or looking towards retirement. No one is retiring yet though, so for the next 10 years, young talent has no where to go without the older folks moving out first. 2. Hiring from outside for management positions. Cisco used to have the top 10% of the workforce, so they said, and wouldn't hire directly from competitors to hurt them. That's a lie we've been living with for some time now at Cisco. Managers are routinely picked off from companies such as Nortel, Avaya, Checkpoint, Juniper, and now Microsoft. Our "culture" at Cisco is turning into the culture of our biggest competitors from middle management down. How is this good? 3. Lack of proper compensation. "you're a salaried employee, now work overtime all the time" mindset. I've had it happen to me, and seen many others put in their fair share, and then work 18 hours days on top of that for months with little or no recognition. $500 bucks doesn't cut it in terms of recognition, it's more like a spit in the face and backhanded compliment. 4. Work life balance... there is none. There are a lot of folks at Cisco who just can't unplug, for fear that they'll get behind. We all know the world will stop spinning if you go home at 5pm, and don't immediately log in to see what you missed in the commute home. The culture pushes a work life balance, but when other coworkers come to you and complain about you taking a Friday off, or going on summer vacation...what the heck? Management claims this is okay as well, but I've been called on weekends, holidays, and vacations for issues others can handle in my absence. Letting the call roll to voicemail on your cisco provided phone doesn't cut it either. 5. Equity Adjustment is just another way to say we don't value your time or money enough to actually pay you at the rate of inflation, so here's another $1k a year to help you with those rising fuel costs. It's insulting how little Cisco compensates people who work their butts of for this company that doesn't give anything truly back to it's employees. Cisco is always giving to the global community, just not to it's employees.
