I am convinced more and more each day that Trellix is the Fyre Festival of cybersecurity vendors - Customer Success Manager Trellix Employee Review

1. Understanding the history of how Trellix came to be is important for prospective employees because history will likely repeat itself. Previously, this company was made to appear as profitable as possible so that it could be sold to new investors. a. I have worked at Trellix since it was owned by Intel and was called Intel Security. Intel sold McAfee to a private investment firm in 2017 and it became McAfee LLC. b. The previous CEO, Chris Young, had everyone buy-in on the company goal of eventually becoming publicly traded again. The milestones were met, and McAfee had an IPO in October of 2020. c. In March of 2021, McAfee announced that it would be divesting the business. The consumer products in the portfolio would remain with the publicly traded namesake while the enterprise products would be sold to yet another private investment firm, Symphony Technology Group (STG). d. At the same time, STG announced that it would be purchasing the FireEye suite of products from Mandiant/FireEye in June of 2021. e. The McAfee divestiture completed in July 2021. ‘McAfee Enterprise’ was created as a temporary name under the holding company Musarubra. f. In October of 2021, the investment firm announced plans to combine the FireEye and McAfee Enterprise companies and completed the acquisition of FireEye. g. In January 2022, STG announced the launch of Trellix which combines the McAfee Enterprise and FireEye products with some massive exceptions. The CASB, Web Gateway, and SaaS DLP solutions were to remain separate. h. Those products are now with Skyhigh Security which was launched in March 2022. Due to the overlap of systems, processes, business units, support, etc… SkyHigh Security and Trellix still work very closely though. For similar reasons, FireEye and McAfee Enterprise systems and processes are lacking synergy and meaningful collaboration currently. i. It seems highly likely that SkyHigh Security will be sold by STG before Trellix. Trellix is likely going to be sold again at some point based on the hot potato-like transitions that have occurred and the decisions that are being made now. 2. There have been significant layoffs in January every year I have worked here. a. The layoffs in 2021 were by far the worst ever. b. It was very clear that Peter Leav (current McAfee CEO) was instructed by the board of directors to make the enterprise portfolio appear as profitable as possible. The archaic business practice of pruning and stretching the organization was used to achieve this. c. Entire office locations were shut down and dozens of employees from each business unit were laid off. d. This led to massive gaps in capabilities and functionality for every area of the business. e. Every concern that customers had previously were made exponentially worse with the sheer quantity and indiscriminatory nature of the culling. f. The processes and gaps have never been repaired. Employees have had to adapt to all the changes with little to no training or explanation. 3. There is no growth potential for most positions. This company has not created new positions or split roles up to expand the number of available management positions in several years. a. There has only been role cannibalization as the company employs the “stretching-out” business tactic by forcing employees to take on roles and responsibilities of their colleagues that have been laid off or left the company. b. The company utilizes a grade-level structure for determining compensation. A lot of positions fall within the same grade levels, so a lot of “promotions” don’t feel like a promotion. c. The grade level system is also used to justify (in the favor of HR) the salaries of top-tier employees when a compensation review has been requested. 4. The company has hired contractors to help clear the massive backlog of cases that have been spooling more and more every day. 5. The company has been hiring a lot of interns to facilitate the progression of the company. I believe this is an indication that the company wants cheap labor to get us through the business merging process. 6. The leadership is very difficult to gauge in terms of competency. It is challenging to judge them as genuine people because their messaging and transparency doesn’t line up with the actual day-to-day operations and customer experience. a. The CEO, CFO, and VP would all make excellent politicians. They speak very eloquently and seem to know what they are talking about. They are very skilled at architecting and delivering pitches for things even when those things may never come to fruition. They would perform extremely well in the eyes of shareholders for any business in most industries. b. They make a lot of promises and respond to most of the employees’ questions during a bi-weekly all-hands meeting (Pulse). They have yet to respond to the more challenging questions such as how the company is addressing long-standing customer concerns and complaints. c. They provide just enough information to make it appear that the company is headed in the right direction. However, the company has gotten worse since I began working here several years ago. It has become worse every year as the more senior employees have been laid off or left. d. They are well aware that we have attrition issues in all sectors of the business because it gets brought up at every Pulse meeting. They keep stating that they are reviewing salaries for top talent on a case-by-case basis. e. I can assure anyone reading this and may be interested in joining the Trellix team, with an extremely high degree of confidence, that you will be frustrated/disappointed with your compensation and pay raises more and more each year you work here. 7. Compensation can start out great and competitive. However, expect pay raises to lag behind new hire starting salaries. a. Yearly pay raises (Focal) are done after performance reviews (M:Reflect) with managers in February/March. The pay raise will be retroactively set to the beginning of the year and paid on the next paycheck. *These terms will likely be rebranded next year. b. This company does not reward loyalty, so salaries have fallen behind inflation and new hire competitive market wages. c. Starting salaries are mostly competitive. Grade 8-10 and below get quarterly and annual bonuses. d. Trellix is a privately-owned company so there are no stock options. Allegedly, leadership is working on a plan to provide equity to employees. However, I would take that information in with a grain of salt. We’ve been promised a lot for years and nothing has ever come to fruition. We weren’t even given stocks or stock options when McAfee had become a publicly traded company again… but Peter Leav and the executive staff did. e. If you’re trying to get into the IT/cybersecurity industry, Trellix is a solid place to begin your career or as a secondary position if your current company is terrible. Trellix isn’t an awful company, it just leaves a lot to be desired. Your experience here will suit you extremely well for a company that deserves you. f. There isn’t a way to phrase this without sounding full of myself, but I am a unicorn employee. I give 100% to everything I ever do. I do whatever it takes to get the job done and I deliver well beyond what is expected. Consider this review as an example of anything I deliver for my role. I put this much effort into everything I do. I am utterly confused at some of the decisions, or lack thereof, made by the leadership. I couldn’t get the company to budge on compensating me what was promised, let alone conduct a fair salary review. 8. Misery loves company: Nearly all conversations pertaining to experience I’ve had with managers and individual contributors across the organization have had a consistent consensus; everyone’s workload is unsustainable, our ability to execute our duties are severely hindered by poor management decisions, and we all question the future of the company. a. Everyone is either approaching their breaking point or have gone past it. There is no shortage of work that needs to be done. Whenever an employee leaves or is laid off, someone has had to take on that person’s workload. This has happened so much over the past couple years that everyone is having to go 100% all the time just to constantly try to catch up. b. I’ll explain it this way: At a properly functioning company, If I come up with a way to do something in 6 hours in which everyone else needs 8 hours, then I would have 2 extra hours to do what I want. At Trellix, when I complete an 8-hour task in 6 hours, it just gives me two more hours to complete the never-ending workload. The workload is never-ending because each employee needs to compensate for the lack of personnel that would normally be carrying out those other tasks. c. Most employees fear openly discussing the things that need to be improved because this company is the type that will retaliate instead of working towards correcting it.