InfoSec Analyst Perspective
Pros
While this review will be critical of the business, there are certainly positives which can be attractive. First, it's extremely laid back. Jeans and a T-Shirt is no problem. If you want some time off, it's essentially unlimited. Interested in learning new things, other teams have smart and friendly people who are willing to share their trade. If you want to step out for an hour to lift some weights or do some cardio there is a gym onsite. The office is also located in a nice area (Blue Ash) and the new park (Summit Park) is wonderful to walk around and grab lunch in.
Cons
You will be working every other weekend. This is a policy put in place well over a year ago and it was a "temporary solution". No, you will not get days off during the week to make up for it. You will be expected to log into work 12 days in a row before you get two real days off. Most weekend shifts are only an hour or two, but they can and have gone well over 4 hours. Unlimited vacation sounds nice until you realize it will hurt your review. From conversations with the manager, he won't put a definite amount you should take but it feels like anything more than 3 weeks is definitely too much and maybe only 2 is what he expects. Extra work/side projects are expected to be done above your normal duties. This is normal for any job, don't get me wrong. The problem here is that the manager absolutely plays favorites with who he is willing to give extra work to. He has said it's "volunteer only" and he "doesn't assign the work" but it is absolutely assigned. And if you don't get assigned extra work, you will be seen as not pulling your weight by management. No amount of asking the manager will get you extra work. Worse, those that get extra work, seem to get ALL the extra work. 12-16 hour days are essentially expected of the analyst(s) who get "chosen". It is really unfortunate how obviously lopsided the distribution of work is especially considering how negatively it affects everyone from a morale standpoint and from a career standpoint. The manager is friendly, but holds grudges. If you ever push back for any reason, expect to be ostracized and never given side projects again, even if you're his favorite today. Multiple co-workers are in this situation and it's really unfortunate for everyone. People who have been here since before the company was founded have been let go and it's quite apparent those let go were the ostracized ones. The rest of us now feel like we have to play some "House of Cards" level of political games to not be laid off like the others. If you're thinking of coming into the Analyst team to be highly technical and get away from that sales job you had in college/high school you're coming into the wrong company. Everyone is expected, at some level, to be an arm of sales. Monthly reports to customers. Pre-Sales engagements to sell the company. Curating alerts to customers entirely to look good with little to no security benefit. The list goes on. Analysts are "sales lite". You will be spoon feeding customers sales when we should be focused on finding the threats. The analysts are also the phone receptionists for the company. About one in 30 calls is customer related, the others are taking messages and forwarding sales calls to the real receptionist. This wouldn't be so bad but when you're 30 minutes into an investigation and focused on the threat the customer may be facing and you get yet another cold call to the CEO you're going to deflect, it hurts the work. It hurts the analysis. Career opportunities are next to non existent. Morphick is a startup that acts like an established business. Hiring from within happens rarely for new positions. Managers have changed titles quite a few times, but the low level employees here since the beginning are still by and large sitting with entry level titles. Worse, they are currently working to strip all titles and the few Senior level analysts are losing their titles and becoming "Associates". Worse, we're being advised, by our manager and colleagues in other departments to not attempt to become Senior level. We are literally being told not to for the sake of our careers. Apparently it's being setup in such a way that a Senior should expect to get unfavorable reviews. This is all after being pitched this whole "career path" initiative after it was noticed people wanted to actually progress in their careers. To put it bluntly, we were sold a means to grow in our careers while being told we will essentially be punished for trying to utilize it. Morale. Everything above has eaten away at it since before I started. This has been brought up with our manager and with Sr. Management and it hasn't gotten better. I wish I could say things are looking better after people were let go to streamline the business, but it's worse now. A lot of the analysts who are the backbone of the product are looking for opportunities elsewhere.