Upwind Reviews

Note: Positive reviews appear to have increased significantly since the direct pressure started for them from the CEO. Some of the most dishonest and unethical practices I’ve seen in the cybersecurity industry. This includes employees being regularly lied to and misled by management, demos being faked to close deals with prospects, major gaps in coverage being swept under the rug and hidden from customers. The decision making of the executive team has grown more confusing and erratic as time has gone on. The mood in the office has deteriorated badly, and efforts to improve it have been lacklustre. Engineers have been fired at the whim of the executive team, with numerous cases of employees being completely blindsided with no warning before being let go. The complete lack of feedback loops is a major contribution to this, but suggestions for improvement in this area have been ignored. Internal demos consistently devolve into senior management arguing about what the requirements should be, despite projects having been designed and worked on by engineers to the original description. When the demo then doesn’t match the newly invented requirements this is taken out on the engineers. The expectations from the top are to ship features as fast as possible, but also for these features to be “industry leading”, and that everything should work “flawlessly.” This has inevitably led to an insurmountable level of tech debt, an incredibly fragile product, and an excessive among of defects. There is little to no interest in resolving this, and a complete lack of understanding of how this slows down the development process of new features and will continue to compound. Customer experience and security are not a top priority despite the lip service they are paid. Whether the products can actually provide customers real value is less of a concern than appearing like they can. The leadership is completely unprepared for the scaling problems they’re starting to face as they try to grow beyond a small scale startup. The lack of people management experience and organisational strategy is shocking.

"Work-life balance" doesn't exist, but that’s actually the most relaxing part of the job. The real "perk" is a CEO who manages via acoustic trauma (he is actually well known in the market for this trait). the leadership style is a chaotic mix of toxicity and a revolving door of priorities that change faster than the weather. The C-suite primary KPI is successfully dodging the CEO's latest meltdown, leading to a "Hunger Games" environment where executives are fighting over claim of credit for anything that might buy them five minutes of safety rather than actually do something to bring actual value. As for the company culture: it exists, but only if you define "culture" as a collective trauma bond. Any mention of "values" in a meeting is usually treated like a stand-up comedy routine, where everyone laughs because the alternative is crying. Dont beleive all the "hype" you see on LinkedIn, it is about 99% hot air and 1% shouting.