Inclusive, Challenging, and Supportive...but still part of Cisco.
Pros
-Teams are diverse and the caliber of the average engineer at Meraki is extremely high -Hiring emphasizes inclusivity and hiring women and PoC in particular -Management is highly supportive of career growth and intra-company moves -Small-company culture with big-company bankroll courtesy of Cisco -Great product--both fun to work on and great quality and feature set overall (I'm proud to use my Meraki gear at home and show it off to people!) -Highly collaborative environment -The culture encourages sharing your work and developing your presentation skills -Great office space in San Francisco with many perks, e.g. catered lunch (and catered dinner for engineers) -Access to the resources we need as engineers is generally free and easy -Some commuter benefits
Cons
-Meraki's startup legacy is still haunting current employees. Tools are out of sync with Cisco's processes and coordination between Meraki and Cisco is not easy. -Compensation has been improving in recent months, but is still behind as compared to other prestige tech companies in the Bay Area -Meraki shares Cisco's benefit plan (kludgy and limited PTO accrual being the worst part of this) -Mission Bay location is somewhat inconvenient for transit (there's a Muni stop nearby, but for the last couple of years, construction of the new Warriors stadium has made it hard to get to the site) -Cisco proper is intruding into Meraki's small-company culture; for better and for worse, it will be more a part of the giant homogeneous Cisco machine in a year, and even more so the year after that.
