Some advise me to look for a job in a smaller company after being laid off here, while others say that it's a step backwards after working at Cisco. Any thoughts? Perhaps someone has experience to share, I would appreciate it.
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Do you like working at a company where there are processes that you have to follow, and that sometimes will slow you down, but keep the process repeatable? Or do you like being able to do whatever it takes to get something done?
When I left Cisco the branches only completed nightly builds 2-3 times a month and my managers mandated I be on instant messaging so they could send me a new first priority at any time, sometimes as often as every 15 minutes. They offered neither of the options you present.
I've worked at both large and small companies.
Larger companies tend to have more, and better, benefits. Smaller companies tend to have less policies and fly by the seat of their pants.
Do you like working at a company where there are processes that you have to follow, and that sometimes will slow you down, but keep the process repeatable? Or do you like being able to do whatever it takes to get something done?
When I left Cisco back in the mid-teens, I joined a small company of about 400 employees and they were very inconsistent in how they did things and had almost zero documentation on deployments, on-call trouble shooting steps, process or procedures for restarting customer applications, etc. Then they got bought out by a much larger company that was very process driven. The new company didn't give much thought to how their decisions to implement certain policies "across the board" with little-to-no advance notice or planning on how to implement them would impact us, and our customers. It was painful. I got so fed up with it, I left to go back to a large company that had a stable, policy/procedure rich environment where things were not changing every week.
It would help to know what kind of work you do.
If you are a hardware engineer designing some of the most complex chips or some of the largest, deepest, highest frequency boards there aren't many options and they are typically large companies with deep pockets.
If you are a software engineer you are more likely than not to be the cause of Cisco having to keep acquiring technology because they have no ability to deliver in house. While big dinosaurs like Cisco can afford to have programs overrun by factors of dozens creating essentially infinite technical debt, small companies cannot. FAANG has money and prestige but from my experience with the A, A and G parts the code is buggy AF and they're old enough where there is a lot of legacy to maintain. If you want quality work with diverse responsibilities and you're good enough that you can easily tolerate your own mistakes across generations of development a well run (critical clause) small company is the way to go. The value in some time at a big company is learning where things to wrong so as small companies become big you can avoid some of the pitfalls.
Cisco's IT couldn't make Ethernet, Wifi or IP phones work so like most of the software people G-d help you. In a disturbing way I was impressed by the use of bubble gum and wet noodles to make NIS scale to the number of users and groups back in the day.
Everything else from operations to production to marketing to sales and beyond have to be reviewed by people with more contact in those areas.
There are pros and cons to each. Smaller companies lack the red tape and massive hierarchy that Cisco has but larger companies tend to have better compensation and benefits.
Staying or leaving, if Jeff gets his way we will all be working in a smaller company
There is no job security anymore in any company large or small. Stay technically sharp. Market yourself. Follow the money and don't be fooled into thinking you owe loyalty to any employer.
you have no choice. Cannot be picky in this tough job market. Cisco politiks, pen pushing skills irrelevant now in this cloud, devops and security focused world.