[gridspy]

I don't know about Cisco specifically, but large companies are plagued with bureaucracy which bogs down engineers from doing what they want to do.

Imagine only the salespeople can set tasks. They set shortsighted tasks which leave no time to actually improve the software fundamentals - always adding new features and abandoning half-baked projects.

This is the way most large companies work their software teams in my experience.

[robocat]

> They set shortsighted tasks which leave no time to actually improve the software fundamentals

Does anyone have anecdotes to share where the software engineers were set free, and they bankrupted the company with irrelevant development?

[solarkraft]

> large companies are plagued with bureaucracy which bogs down engineers from doing what they want to do.

Are there places where engineers can just do what they want to do (Google?)? What comes out of it? Brilliant architecture? A cluster fuck of features a some devs thought were cool? Awesome spin-off products?