Cisco is a pretty good job.
Cisco is a huge company with hundreds of products, dozens of organizations and tens of thousands employees. For Job satisfaction, the devil is in the details. If you have a good team, a good manager and a good relationship with your customers. it's a good job. The benefits are good. pay is good. so...pretty good.
However, in recent years with the acceleration of LRs, benefits shrinkage (from PTO to "unlimited PTO" for example) and a huge decline in product quality, the job has deteriorated. it was death by 1,000 paper cuts. The more cuts in key support areas, the worse the customer experience. The lower revenue, the less funding to product teams and so on.
But the Splunk acquisition was like being stabbed with the scissors.
$28b for a legacy networking company that is not a good cultural or GTM fit?
Next week, Chuck will announce his departure and the chaos will continue. Q1 is over and was a complete waste. Q2 will be executive power moves.
Whoever is named CEO is will spend the next 6 months spraying his scent all over everything in an attempt to gain control. Sycophants will encourage it and customers will detest it.
The name Cisco will survive, and like DEC and SUN Microsystems, a once great company will wither into obscurity.
As an employee, there is plenty of juice to squeeze from the stone although it's getting harder and harder.