20 years @ the company voted the best place to work in the world

On September 20th this year, I finished 20 years at Cisco, which was voted as the best place to work in the world across all the sites. Having spent 10 years at San Jose and the next 10 in Bangalore, I totally get why employees all across the globe considered Cisco to be the best! I personally know many who’re in the same boat, only they’ve continued even longer than 20 years at this great company. There are many things that keeps me going in Cisco -it’s also why Cisco is the first and only company I’ve worked for after I finished my masters in Kansas (yes, I am a proud Jayhawk). I’d like to talk about five reasons…

The thing I love most in Cisco is our relentless focus on innovation -it is at the heart of everything we do here. This unbridled passion for innovation is what helps us explore new market opportunities for Cisco, and in the process, understand and address customer problems. Innovation is not possible if there is a constant fear of failure. I’ve driven multiple tech fund projects –some have been productized (like the pioneer award winning encrypted traffic analytics) and some had to be paused (like LiFi) because the market was not fully mature yet. At Cisco, failure is seen as a learning opportunity, and I’ve always been encouraged to continue our pursuit of innovation

The second aspect that keeps me here is the importance that is importance given to people. I wanted to call out a few key tenets in this context that in my opinion make this the best company to work for -mentoring, diversity and attention to physical and mental well-being. I’ve had the opportunity to mentor a diverse pool of engineers who are early in their career, and it truly motivated me to see the energy and the hunger that they have to prove themselves. There can’t be anything more gratifying than to help them progress in their careers by helping them pick up new technical and non-technical skill sets. I’ve personally benefited from this too, because I’ve had some awesome mentors over the years, and I see this as my opportunity to help others progress in their careers, and help Cisco in the process. I’ve also seen so many successful initiatives on diversity over the years

I am particularly proud of the efforts of the Cisco Pride initiative. The attention to mental and physical health clearly shows the interest that Cisco takes in employees’ welfare. In the Bangalore campus, we’ve seen our HR teams organize several events to promote a health lifestyle -I’ve participated in several of these mini-team-marathons…it’s really an awesome opportunity for team building as well! -Cisco’s ability to navigate the challenging times in the market and re-invent itself is something I’ve noticed multiple times over these last twenty years. Our ability to be big, yet flexible and nimble is the third pillar which keeps me rooted to Cisco. It’s because of this that we continue to stay successful and relevant, and yes, become the best place to work in the world. I’ve been part of many of these transitions, but none make me prouder that the recent launch of the intent based networking solution. IBN enabled Cisco to pivot from being a predominately hardware company to a software company with recurring revenue. We would not have succeeded in this effort, if it were not for our unwavering commitment to customer success. Through several events like Cisco Live, ETAB, customer forums etc, we listened very carefully to our customers’ problems -the digitization journey that they had embarked on required us to evolve our solutions and our business models, and evolve we did! The fact that the market is recognizing this transition speaks to the confidence that our customers and investors have in our solutions.

Cisco’s commitment to the community makes me say with confidence and pride that it’s a company with a really big heart. Be it the blood donation camps, helping protect Rhinos in Africa, helping the local schools with time and material, matching contributions to any NGO of our choice, mentoring children who’ve been through challenging situations at time, helping build homes for the less privileged community, we’ve done it all and we do it together as a team. In the recent times, we’re also allowed to take paid time off to help the community. This is a testament to the fact that Cisco indeed takes its commitment to be the bridge between hope and possible very seriously. -The last, and perhaps the most important one that keeps me here, is my team! I’m surrounded by among the smartest minds in the industry, and yet they are the most humble leaders. Together, we’ve launched some of the most amazing solutions for our customers, and I always know that I can count on them for any help. For my 20th anniversary, there was a surprise celebration and I was truly touched by the gesture.

As I reflect on these 20 years at Cisco, it seemed like time just flew by very quickly. That I have been able to grow from a Software Engineer to a Distinguished Engineer during this time, across two countries, is a testament to the immense opportunities available in Cisco. I would do it all over again if I had to…Cisco is truly the company that helped me bridge my aspirations to my success.