Forget engineering and join legal. It's dynamic and creative, they are busy but well compensated. Cisco has developed this competency like no other company and this tells you a lot about the direction of the company - extract and protect is the mantra nowadays. Lawyers are not better than engineers, but here at Cisco they can thrive just because that's the game nowadays.
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As a straight white American male
ok thanks for stating your are straight and male ...
god save humanity !! we do not care about cisco.. we are about humanity ..
their caste system to promote their higher classes to managers, directors, sr directors, VPs and SVPs,
i have personally seen Directors being imported on L1 to CSCO and get processed for their Green Cards in express(EB class) and quickly jump to PaloAlto/AWS/Google/Walmart as SrDIRs(if you got b a l l s please investigate). Cisco has become portal for these .. no one cares about cisco products or their quality.
Finally the raging racism is unmasked.
wow!! its not about racism, you d-mb a-s, its about basic integrity of work and fundamental work ethics of those people, those brown clowns cheated their way with bad integrity and destroyed the quality of the products, more over played their caste system to promote their higher classes to managers, directors, sr directors, VPs and SVPs, look around your own orgs.. csco once had great products with highest possible quality.
By that time browing at cisco was at full force...
Finally the raging racism is unmasked. As a straight white American male I worked with software people from all over the world of many countries, ethnicities, s-xes, religions, and so on and on average they all 5uck3d equally.
Dig deep enough and you'll find proposals to replace IOS with some serious reasoning were already actively being circulated internally by 1993 just before Cisco started its endless acquisition spree. That you can't see what everyone else saw just means you are part of the problem.
NX-OS evolved from SAN-OS which released in 2002
As far as I remember XR development started in 1998
By that time browing at cisco was at full force, 25xx cute story is the proof that Cisco IOS was once had its top notch quality. I would only blame last 25 or so years when things started to go really bad, wrapping a rotten potato(ios process/pieces of them) with shiny skin won't suddenly make it taste better, it might make it look better. Same story with NXOS once it was good now its not so much.
...25xx series...
Oh you're so cute! Look at the high end routers that customers spent well over a year testing and they still had to roll back images within days of fielding. As a customer I saw this for decades.
Over the past 25 years I've also had to deal with routers and switches where whole subsystems DIDN'T EVEN COME UP on released images.
Then there are the code bases. Code is cut and pasted, sometimes a function or file at a time dozens of times, sometimes whole directories at a time, and then forked out endlessly to other branches. Cut and paste an error 20 times and fork them out onto 500 release branches and one bug becomes 10,000.
Don't forget the ultra long functions where no one really knew what they were supposed to do so even after a decade of "bug fixes" they were still failing in the field.
God help customers without power cyclers on equipment because Cisco shipped bugs which locked up a system so badly the watchdog timers couldn't regain control.
Then there was the time when Cisco used KLOCs as the quality metric where more code to do the same task was considered better. Many a minivan were written because of this.
I know you will next talk about static analysis errors right.
The list above barely scratches the surface. Static analysis is the freebee for identifying some potentially significant errors before they end up in the customer's hands and no one cared enough to leverage knowledge for which Cisco already paid because "we can't boil the ocean!"
( also your listed items got released in the middle or tail end of that decade.)
So? It doesn't change the fact that the code on all these systems are objectively poor by many metrics, none of which Cisco had the ability to measure, and have been since their origin.
As far as I remember XR development started in 1998. Plenty of products released years after they were supposed to go out the door because software couldn't get their act together. NX-OS evolved from SAN-OS which released in 2002. IOS-XE ran IOS images as processes so a substantial amount of code goes much further back.
what does ""over the past 40 years"" mean?
Because the current year is 2026, this phrase specifically refers to the entire time frame stretching from 1986 to 2026.
"over the past 40 years" does not mean only 40 years ago. IOS-XR, IOS-XE and NX-OS were released in the 2000s.
apparently you excluded all good years of cisco quality in above response, all the things listed above were after browning .. and degraded quality., i remember cisco celebrating 25xx series routers with uptime north of 15years doing software based packet routing without crashing. I know you will next talk about static analysis errors right.. ( also your listed items got released in the middle or tail end of that decade.)
holi sh-t...
"over the past 40 years" does not mean only 40 years ago. IOS-XR, IOS-XE and NX-OS were released in the 2000s.
For people who wonder about working at Cisco, too many can't even understand stuff at this level. RUN!
Legal was one of the best organizations at Cisco for many years but a place to avoid under current leadership.
looked at the code on any branch at Cisco over the past 40 years ?
holi sh-t... who are you morgridge ? cisco is desi caste system company.. you are veggie, you are promoted to SVP... you eat beef..you are just engineer ...
sorry those are taken by AI(you know, that top talent)
Obviously you haven't looked at the code on any branch at Cisco over the past 40 years, long before AI got involved.
@10h sorry those are taken by AI(you know, that top talent)
@kw For Cisco I vote for "Bug Creator" and "Bug Perpetuator."
@f8 nah, they ("lawyers") don't do thorough background checks on former employees who file wrongful dismissal suits. You can be an literal convicted felon (true story) and they will give you 1/4 million $.
@f8 engineering? Hmmm
Where are the real P.Engs? Oh yes they just use the title of "engineer" (or even "architect") for fu-k sakes vs something less risky or a role title less protected. These fraudulent terms are hopefully deemed to be used unlawfully soon.
Let the actu engineers and architects be real engineers and architects. Use different terms - designer? coordinator? developer? None of these examples are protected titles.
(Almost all actual ones do not work in tech nor for companies encouraging the fraudulent use of these terms.)
What's next, a software "doctors" ?
sure, go back in time and get a law degree instead of engineering or computer science. Those roles, personalities, and degree plans are so similar, just do a little switch-a-roo.