Thank you for all the great input; it's great to hear everyone's different points of view. To answer some of the questions, I'm not married (although most likely will be shortly), have no kids, and do not own a home. My only debt is my car, and I'm hoping to pay for all my ratings on my own as the money shows up from my current job. I know for a fact that I don't want to enter an aviation career in debt...that seems to be the nail in the coffin for most people.
As much as I enjoy being an engineer right now, I can't see myself doing it for the rest of my life. Plus I'm not so keen on having new projects all the time, and a more or less undefined job role. I think I'd be a lot more happy knowing that each time I go to work, I more or less know what I'll be running into. As for $100k being good in CA, I partly agree. Yes it's nice from the standpoint that I can live pretty comfortably, eat out a lot, drive a nice car etc....BUT the housing situation is pretty demoralizing. A typical 1bdrm apartment runs $1800/month anywhere within a 30min commute for me, and any single family home under $600k is borderline on being condemned. Basically I'm stuck being a renter, and paying a ton for it. Plus I really do want a more rural lifestyle with some land and my own place.
I'll have to look into whether Cisco has a flight department, but based on how most of the company is run, I'm doubting it. I would guess they charter flights through another company since they do everything else that way. But yeah....if I could fly for Cisco that would be amazing since it really is a great company.