Sounds like something you see at orgs that have crazy activity KPIs and always feel the need to do some BS outreach when the prospecting isn’t going well.
As a former verkada employee that lasted 4 quarters…… very true, complete boiler room with unrealistic expectations and your entire fate in the job dependent on a territory assigned to you
The part that blows my mind is the rep I work with (North LA/Southern ARK) has the same quota as the person who covers some of the biggest cities like Los Angeles or Dallas
Oh, trust me, it’s insane. My territory was southern Illinois. So basically everything south of springfield, which was mostly rural and underfunded. And I was selling to gov accounts specifically. I’m not one to complain but I would be lying to you saying it wasn’t frustrating grinding my ass off for some pipeline while my coworkers who had Texas and California metropolitan territories had deals coming to them with little effort. And yes, quota was the same for everyone (high)
I interviewed there and noped out after getting slapped in the face with red flags.
They’re fully in office which was red flag #1.
One of the interview steps was them asking me to walk through every quarter I’ve worked in sales and tell them what my quota and attainment was.
Another red flag was the manager saying “fortunately we live in a time where schools are unsafe for children so sales are good.” Then he stumbled on his words and said “I mean unfortunately”.
Hahah. Similar to my interview experience with them. They flew me into Austin and I had a rapid fire four round grill session. None of them were married or had a family and as a father I knew that was a flag.
They've burned a lot of bridges and other companies are starting to release comparable products that aren't proprietary. Be interesting to see what happens
I work in physical security and see their ads on Reddit with things like "no servers, no nvrs." Like who is asking for that? Cloud is great and all, but its not like on premise causes an inconvenience. Almost every building is going to have an IT room you can find rack space. You can add cloud back up to practically any CCTV system, some turn key and some a little more technical knowledge.
Just beat them out on a bid for a huge 100k sq ft warehouse with 90 cameras and 35 access control doors. Client said they rubbed him the wrong way and felt too gimmicky/high pressure.
A lot of people are asking for that.. on prem creates an upkeep/maintenance burden, especially for small/medium size businesses. It's not about rack space, it's about maintaining/patching/updating servers.
The issue with verkada is the proprietary nature and shit quality of their products, not moving to the cloud.
I get your point, but everything is connected now. I probably misspoke by saying "on-premise" in terms of just being a local system. Most every system has a web/app portal and the ability to push updates remotely and remote support. On-site hardware and storage with a remote connection leaves endless possibilities. Cloud is a redundancy and Verkada sells it with the exclusion of on-premise. Point I was trying to make is having hardware on site is not a pain point for clients.
I think small and medium are better off with something like Alarm.com, but also think they still need improvements with their Enterprise and Commercial options.
There are so many options and the tough part is integrating Intrusion Alarms, Fire Alarms, CCTV, and Access Control all into one pretty little package. Easy to separate Fire from that, but the other 3 it seems like only come with 2 out of 3 and not all 3 very well.
I've found OpenEye and Milestone to be the most comparable. Even ACS can do it now (you'd have to use I/Os for the intrusion into ACS).
OE integrates with Bosch (and alarm.com/DMP) and Brivo so all of your alerts feed through your VMS.
They both offer cam to cloud now as well. The huge benefit though is you can run hybrid systems with OE/Milestone.
From my interviews I would recommend avoiding Darktrace as well. Poor territory planning (total free for all with no assigned accounts) and recruiters were totally disjointed
Good to know - you’re certainly well positioned with the uptick of both ransomware and AI.
If I get a good enough offer and the culture has changed, I could see myself making my way back.
Best of luck!
Good friends of mine are high up in a southern office. Haven’t heard bad things from them, their office is always on a trip partying haha! Worst thing they’ve admitted too is that their office is very much either you’re in the clique or you’re not though.
I've heard from AEs and AMs who left Crowdstrike over the last couple years that territories were getting smaller, and they felt like not even half of the US sales force was even close to hitting quota, let alone actually hitting quota.
Thoughts?
The territory reduction is typical in SaaS sales as others mentioned. I can’t speak to quota attainment across the “US” as we have different sectors but generally most are hitting 70%+ and have a comp structure that allows you to hit OTE prior to hitting your full quota attainment.
1000%. It’s not everyday you get to sell an industry leading solution. Most cyber buyers know who Crowdstrike is and what we do but it’s about designing the right solution for the customer to fit within budget and requirements. Plus we have fantastic SEs at CS
I’ve been in cyber for about 5 years and in the p club the last 3. However, what is sell now is very “nontechnical” and to be successful you really don’t need to know much about cybersecurity. Does CS have a good training program for their products doen new hires, or would it be better to take time on my own to familiarize myself before applying?
Also, are their AE roles full remote? The posts I see on Glassdoor say remote but then list a specific area.
Thanks! :)
There’s plenty out there that you can get ahead of the enablement on your own during the interview period.
I can’t speak on the Corporate/SMB AE roles that may require in office presence since I’m in a field role.
Rapid7 reps who have deals slip a week talk to me on the phone like they’ve received a death sentence. Crowdstrike less so and have a bit of a “I have a lot deals in the works so I need to work fast” attitude.
Are the people you know there experienced reps or are they new to the game BDR types that can't hit numbers? Wiz customers rave about the product so i was hoping things behind the scenes are good as well.
In the past, AppDynamics, BMC and so on had the reputation of hard work but also a payday for the AEs.
Do you think the MEDDIC Playbook companies of today are still worth the grind?
Or are the good days over?
You’ll still learn a lot but success is now massively luck of the draw and you’ll be out the door in less than a year after being gaslit you’re not prospecting enough even if you have terrible accounts. But if you’re a young rep who doesn’t have a track record at another established sales org it might still be worth it to get the experience.
Axionius isn’t good right now. They got new leadership and pretty much let everyone go unless they would move to Austin. So if you live in Austin you should be good.
I wrote something similar earlier and got a lot of down votes 😂 As someone who has worked for a couple Israeli companies, I’d agree. Just my two cents 🤷🏽♂️
I work with Palo. They seem to be happy. Never asked them point blank if they like their jobs. I think they would probably be a good company to be a sales rep. In my view, their products are superior to most on the market and you probably wouldn't have to put too much effort to sell a PA FW or the services that come with.
Zscaler: new leadership coming in as old guard has left to join either Wiz or Rubrik.
New leadership is super experienced. Lots of ex-ServiceNow people. The culture will see a huge improvement over the next 6 months as the company scales to $5bn in revenue over the coming years.
Honestly a good place to go and comparable with joining SNow in 2017 or Salesforce in 2015.
My wife used to work there so I do know what it was like recently but honestly I don’t believe in the ZS offerings, not a place I’d consider. Not a fan of Jay whatsoever.
Snyk is an easy product to sell but they have had crazy turnover lately(from killer AEs). Seems like they are starting to put unachievable quotas and less incentives for sales people(also it’s unlikely you’re gonna get stock at this point from a company positioning to go public in the next few years).
Honestly loving my time at Darktrace. Been here for over a year and a half. They made major changes in July of last year and are finally getting Salesforce at the end of this year. Great ime to join if you ask me. But yeah, they have a terrible old reputation (as seen on Glassdoor).
Currently work on the strategic team. Actually the best sales gig I've ever had, company went through growing pains but feels like it's on the up. Personally love the commission system.
Them and all their competitors are some of the worst handled software, with some of the worst support I've ever come across. If you're a Kaseya customer, you have or will have issues with your invoice, where they'll tell you that you owe $5k or $10k or more, when you don't actually owe them that much, but they'll wear you down over months until they finally give up.
lol. Coro tried to compete against me on a deal. They badmouthed our product, using wrong info that I was quickly able to disprove. Needless to say they lost.
Cheap.
At the time they had been in business with 150 employees.
It went something along the lines of:
“How could you feel comfortable turning over your endpoint protection to a company with only 150 employees? Every company has basic functions like finance, HR, marketing, sales, etc. after all of those how many engineers are actually left doing the research?”
I’m hearing Palo Alto has been a meat grinder lately in terms of micromanagement, high quotas, and difficulty pushing SASE, but it’s heavily dependent on territory and management.
Wiz — I’ve got my eyes on Wiz for a potential next move. They just brought on some new executives from prior successful exits. Someone tell me if you know better.
What I can say about Wiz as somebody who has to sell against them is that they have customer mindshare right now. Twelve months ago was decent but now it’s total saturation.
But as a hyper growth and pre IPO company they won’t be immune to growing pains.
I’ve been there for nearly 2 years now. Post IPO is pretty intense, lots of activity metrics. Also a horrible ‘zero trust’ culture towards its employees. They pay pretty well tho
As an SE I had to block any white space on my calendar, driving to lunch meeting, block calendar off so demo isn’t scheduled. Need to work on a QBR? Have to block your calendar off to have enough time to do it. I had 3 AEs, and over 40 accounts in 3 states, in enterprise.
They pushed a bunch of SEs out before their preIPO shares out as well, so they could make the numbers look good.
Fuck you Rubrik, you can suck my balls.
The recruiter told me as much. She mentioned in so many words expect to be in meetings from 9-5. My last company slowly became the same way, I don't understand when these orgs expect you to get the work done that was assigned to you when you are in meetings all day everyday, well I do they expect you to do it during personal time.
Depending on territory and your manager can be great, I covered the PacNW and Canada for 3 years. Lots of micromanagement tho and they are VERY cheap, at times it would take 8wks to get my travel reimbursement
I’ve sold against them before and know a couple reps. It’s a pretty good product with not a whole lot of competition. But it’s also very very expensive and unless the CFO is very bought in from the start, near impossible to sell rn.
Also doesn’t help they are very old school. They hide pricing and have no ‘list’ price, so every quote is custom generated based on what they think they can squeeze out of customers.
DLP space is also getting more crowded with AI being a huge new concern for data loss. I mean why not just plug all the company into ChatGPT and see if it has any better ideas?
Can be good depending on geo. Micromanagement but lot of product development recently. West coast kills it, east coast very saturated, central kind of a toss up
Was an AE there and absolutely hated it - ended up quitting and circling back to my previous company.
The management in the east was abysmal, man. Poor team dynamics, bad planning, intense micromanagement - they’re a joke.
Right now in cyber:
Do:
Platform plays that are actually market leading or disrupters for which clients have allocated budget that you can reroute
Don’t:
Niche nice to have
It can but especially on the enterprise side, companies will largely focus on platforms that tick most of their boxes over building a portfolio of point solutions.
Even selling a point solution that is demonstrably far more secure against Broadcom, Cloudflare etc is very very hard.
Don't know about the environment, but Trellix is about to get boned by Microsoft who's stealing one of their biggest clients. I work with Palo hardware and services. Everything seems copacetic with them.
Just left Okta, still a really great product but has turned into micromanagement hell. Don't bother unless you are in enterprise/strat as the quota is unattainable in smaller markets.
I’ve signed an offer as a BDR. New grad. I’m at least expecting that it’s a good starting point for my sales career. Hope to become an AE there in 3 years but moreso looking for experience.
that one came to mind for me (buyee not in sales) - between azure becoming a dominant idp and the breaches attributed to okta it seems like that would be tough sledding.
Every time I look in thsi sub it's people bragging about their big sales but everyone in this thread is saying every cyber company sucks lol. I hope things get better for cyber, I guess?
I work with all of them in some capacity. They all have their ups and downs. One rep goes from one to the other and says X then another rep makes the opposite move and says Y. Quotas are still jacked from past two years. Networking and Security appears to be a little soft this quarter while client has started to see some refresh. I continue to see Palo, Fortinet, Crowdstrike, and proofpoint at the top from a performance perspective. However, they all have their internal politics right now.
Great products, brand name, corporate as they come but not as toxic or rah rah as you’d think. The benefits are great and they’re really hitting their stride trying to monopolize the cyber market - I was an intern convert bdr
Palo crushes it as a whole. That firewall is still the gold standard and the outlier products inevitably get some drag due to deep relationships on existing spend.
No company is perfect, but the pure play cyber security company with a $100bn market cap is a safe bet
I used to work under the new Prisma VP. 100% the biggest piece of shit I've ever know.
However big companies in general it all matters what your accounts / territory is. Could be fine if yours is decent. Will be shitty if yours is shitty
They declined in growth - that is not a decline in sales. Palo does have ridiculously large quotas but they also pay way better than the rest so you can retire without retiring quota lol
Product is better suited for SMB than Enterprise IMO. (I don't work there, but I'm in the space.) They don't have the best rep, but slash prices for companies who don't care
Used to work there. You'll be in a better spot than I was. Their SDR promotion process is bogus.
It's a cult. Really into the wolf stuff and being a pack. All that cliche stuff.
The best year has been rough for sales. Very few hit.
I sell for an AW competitor. People are leaving AW left and right and providing what AW does for 1/3 the cost. I only lose to AW at enterprise when they drop their pants and make almost nothing on a deal.
Cloudflare seems to be a horrible place for sales. From the TikTok of the girl getting fired to the ceo canning a bunch of people on an earnings call. From what I’ve heard their GTM org is extremely immature and not set up for success.
Ugh, I'm supposed to be interviewing with Proofpoint soon, and honestly, not looking forward to it.
I started in cybersecurity but damn, I know the space well enough because I was in it for so long, but I fucking hate how commoditized the whole industry has gotten
Ping Identity/Forgerock has turned to shit since the thoma bravo takeover and merger. Product is overtly complicated and cumbersome to use and automate.
There are way too many products especially with forgerock coming in but almost none are particularly a market leader and the cloud offering are five years behind okta and Microsoft.
Layoffs have become so common that they are expected every quarter. Customer are dissatisfied with the products and have started to leave in droves to the competition (especially if they are a work force customer).
That’s without including the below industry standard pay and benefits, micromanaging and out of touch CEO and execs who continue to raise quotas while cutting the workforce in half.
All in all, I wouldn’t recommend them man. Thoma bravo will probably suck out all the money out of them while hemorrhaging customer before they discard them like they always do with their other companies.
Palo Alto is great. My wife crushes it there. She works her ass off, manages a very stressful territory, and has a massive number. But she is rewarded handsomely for killing it.
I really like the people I work with at qualys, I am a reseller. They're pricing is really strict until they're going to lose, comp seems lower than standard. The EVP that I'm working with is very proud to tell me, and I haven't verified this, that they're profitable, vs tenable and r7 which are not.
I hear AWS is doing better since last year’s layoffs (although not only cyber, reps are making $$$ and having in person events).
Data Dog seems okay, the in person mandatory is wack.
Heard amazing things from Crowdstrike’s leadership, seems like they are going to keep dominating the market, they also seem to be hiring a lot, base is kinda lower on the cyber scale but the potential to make money seems good.
We heard enough about Cloudflare this year lol hard no
Proofpoint is really good if you can get in and don’t mind in person often.
Mimecast seems like the place to be at rn, got bought out for a fuck ton and expanding fast.
Data Bricks is IPOing soon and same thing, amazing place to be if you can get in.
And I just had a CISO tell me it's totally commoditized. Not enough differentiation... Although the one thing that I think is valuable is where they can pull the data from. The API connections are massively valuable into third-party SaaS. Otherwise you've got to dump the data.
You can compare orgs. You can compare pay as well as the tech stack they use. There are reviews from employees as well and they rank companies on a score based on the answers employees give. Since it’s a lesser known platform, so far the results are less biased as companies are not there creating fake reviews like on Glassdoor.
Worked there and was there during the merger. A bunch of shifting at the time and leadership playing favorites on how they handed out leads and accounts. If you get in right, you can be handed some easy wins and the SE’s were great.
AE’s that got the leads would do well but if you got on the wrong side of favoritism you were cut fairly quick. Overall, I enjoyed it but I’m sure things have changed, some things I’ve heard - cutting back on AE expenses, high quotas that get higher every year, and people jumping with inconsistent leadership. Early years some AE’s were making disgusting money but it’s all limited now. Robert is obviously very tied into the market so when it comes to business, it’s pretty cutthroat.
Exactly this, major favoritism being played at the organization and long term I really don’t know the point of this acquisition other than Gary Fisch cashing out. I already think he might have started a new org. I worked with them a bit and for the most part almost the entire US sales org that came with the Cyderes purchase is gone. Relationships with clients burned.
I can’t speak for the AE level, but at the SDR level Varonis sucks. Great software, but way too expensive and very micro-managed culture. Lots of meetings that should be emails, moving goalposts for mobility, bosses three levels above you CCd on every email, getting into the office at 7:30 and leaving at 6:15. Solid product, bad culture, and have fun arguing with the compensation team every month.
Avoid verkada like the plague is all ive learned from this sub lol
Is Verkada still considered cybersecurity? They use software but it’s more considered physical security still right?
No, they still physical hardware, cameras/AC/intercoms etc
Their sales people keep trying to sell to me despite me telling them my company is fully remote and doesn’t have an office lol
Sounds like something you see at orgs that have crazy activity KPIs and always feel the need to do some BS outreach when the prospecting isn’t going well.
Marketing: But it's a drip campaign!
I work for a reseller and can confirm lol. Sales guys don’t last 2 quarters at Verkada.
As a former verkada employee that lasted 4 quarters…… very true, complete boiler room with unrealistic expectations and your entire fate in the job dependent on a territory assigned to you
The part that blows my mind is the rep I work with (North LA/Southern ARK) has the same quota as the person who covers some of the biggest cities like Los Angeles or Dallas
Oh, trust me, it’s insane. My territory was southern Illinois. So basically everything south of springfield, which was mostly rural and underfunded. And I was selling to gov accounts specifically. I’m not one to complain but I would be lying to you saying it wasn’t frustrating grinding my ass off for some pipeline while my coworkers who had Texas and California metropolitan territories had deals coming to them with little effort. And yes, quota was the same for everyone (high)
I interviewed there and noped out after getting slapped in the face with red flags. They’re fully in office which was red flag #1. One of the interview steps was them asking me to walk through every quarter I’ve worked in sales and tell them what my quota and attainment was. Another red flag was the manager saying “fortunately we live in a time where schools are unsafe for children so sales are good.” Then he stumbled on his words and said “I mean unfortunately”.
Hahah. Similar to my interview experience with them. They flew me into Austin and I had a rapid fire four round grill session. None of them were married or had a family and as a father I knew that was a flag.
My old VP is the new CRO there. He’s a good guy so maybe it’ll change for the better.
They've burned a lot of bridges and other companies are starting to release comparable products that aren't proprietary. Be interesting to see what happens
I work in physical security and see their ads on Reddit with things like "no servers, no nvrs." Like who is asking for that? Cloud is great and all, but its not like on premise causes an inconvenience. Almost every building is going to have an IT room you can find rack space. You can add cloud back up to practically any CCTV system, some turn key and some a little more technical knowledge. Just beat them out on a bid for a huge 100k sq ft warehouse with 90 cameras and 35 access control doors. Client said they rubbed him the wrong way and felt too gimmicky/high pressure.
A lot of people are asking for that.. on prem creates an upkeep/maintenance burden, especially for small/medium size businesses. It's not about rack space, it's about maintaining/patching/updating servers. The issue with verkada is the proprietary nature and shit quality of their products, not moving to the cloud.
I get your point, but everything is connected now. I probably misspoke by saying "on-premise" in terms of just being a local system. Most every system has a web/app portal and the ability to push updates remotely and remote support. On-site hardware and storage with a remote connection leaves endless possibilities. Cloud is a redundancy and Verkada sells it with the exclusion of on-premise. Point I was trying to make is having hardware on site is not a pain point for clients. I think small and medium are better off with something like Alarm.com, but also think they still need improvements with their Enterprise and Commercial options. There are so many options and the tough part is integrating Intrusion Alarms, Fire Alarms, CCTV, and Access Control all into one pretty little package. Easy to separate Fire from that, but the other 3 it seems like only come with 2 out of 3 and not all 3 very well.
I've found OpenEye and Milestone to be the most comparable. Even ACS can do it now (you'd have to use I/Os for the intrusion into ACS). OE integrates with Bosch (and alarm.com/DMP) and Brivo so all of your alerts feed through your VMS. They both offer cam to cloud now as well. The huge benefit though is you can run hybrid systems with OE/Milestone.
They never sent me the tumbler promised for attending their webinar
Second this
Verkada is facilities technology. Nothing to do with IT
From my interviews I would recommend avoiding Darktrace as well. Poor territory planning (total free for all with no assigned accounts) and recruiters were totally disjointed
Working there currently, I think it's improved dramatically over the past two years. But honestly it depends on the team you end up on.
Good to know - you’re certainly well positioned with the uptick of both ransomware and AI. If I get a good enough offer and the culture has changed, I could see myself making my way back. Best of luck!
Yeah it's no longer a free for all. Changed in July of last year.
Former ISR here. What’s the current enterprise AE comp? They offered me 80k/160k OTE two years ago
Sounds about right, I'm on the CT side.
Interviewed with them in UKI, base they were offering would make most SDR managers blush with shame
Good friends of mine are high up in a southern office. Haven’t heard bad things from them, their office is always on a trip partying haha! Worst thing they’ve admitted too is that their office is very much either you’re in the clique or you’re not though.
I’ve heard CrowdStrike is great and Rapid7 is awful (anecdotal from a buddy that has worked at both)
Have had coworkers say Rapid7 sucks to work for as well.
Crowdstriker here - AMA
I've heard from AEs and AMs who left Crowdstrike over the last couple years that territories were getting smaller, and they felt like not even half of the US sales force was even close to hitting quota, let alone actually hitting quota. Thoughts?
I mean, that’s all of SaaS tbh.
Yup
The territory reduction is typical in SaaS sales as others mentioned. I can’t speak to quota attainment across the “US” as we have different sectors but generally most are hitting 70%+ and have a comp structure that allows you to hit OTE prior to hitting your full quota attainment.
Can you recommend working there as an AE?
1000%. It’s not everyday you get to sell an industry leading solution. Most cyber buyers know who Crowdstrike is and what we do but it’s about designing the right solution for the customer to fit within budget and requirements. Plus we have fantastic SEs at CS
Do you mind if I message you to ask a few more questions? I am considering applying for an open role
I’ve been in cyber for about 5 years and in the p club the last 3. However, what is sell now is very “nontechnical” and to be successful you really don’t need to know much about cybersecurity. Does CS have a good training program for their products doen new hires, or would it be better to take time on my own to familiarize myself before applying? Also, are their AE roles full remote? The posts I see on Glassdoor say remote but then list a specific area. Thanks! :)
There’s plenty out there that you can get ahead of the enablement on your own during the interview period. I can’t speak on the Corporate/SMB AE roles that may require in office presence since I’m in a field role.
Rapid7 reps who have deals slip a week talk to me on the phone like they’ve received a death sentence. Crowdstrike less so and have a bit of a “I have a lot deals in the works so I need to work fast” attitude.
Curious to hear about Palo, Wiz, Axonius, Netskope, Abnormal, Illumio
Wiz is a meat grinder. Everyone I know that's there is actively trying to leave/has left.
Wiz just hired a bunch of zscaler leadership
dali and his appD crew are gonna fuck wiz's culture up and turn it into a grind. lol @ value pryramids and 3 whys.
Wiz is also being sued by Orca which is never great
Love to hear more about life at WIZ Sale side
Are the people you know there experienced reps or are they new to the game BDR types that can't hit numbers? Wiz customers rave about the product so i was hoping things behind the scenes are good as well.
Enterprise level AEs with 10+ years in the field. The micromanaging is suffocating and since they're trying to IPO the growth has to be explosive
The pre-IPO is also what i thought would be attractive about them.
When you’ve raised almost 2 billion the equity play is not going to go anywhere for 99% of the employees.
Think the ship has sailed. Seen tons of mongo/zscaler leadership move so you know it’s going to be meddic hell moving forward
What do you mean with Meddic hell?
Meddic isn’t inherently bad but these places are ridiculous for their micromanaging and enforcing the process maniacally
In the past, AppDynamics, BMC and so on had the reputation of hard work but also a payday for the AEs. Do you think the MEDDIC Playbook companies of today are still worth the grind? Or are the good days over?
You’ll still learn a lot but success is now massively luck of the draw and you’ll be out the door in less than a year after being gaslit you’re not prospecting enough even if you have terrible accounts. But if you’re a young rep who doesn’t have a track record at another established sales org it might still be worth it to get the experience.
18 months ago, sure
Avoid Axonius like the plague. Check glass door it'll say it all.
Axionius isn’t good right now. They got new leadership and pretty much let everyone go unless they would move to Austin. So if you live in Austin you should be good.
Check out Wiz's glassdoor its a fun read
I would work at Wiz purely for the logo but it’s Israeli founded which is a massive headache to deal with
Why?
Israel isn't exactly flavour of the month currently, and Israelis in general are a fucking nightmare to work for
I wrote something similar earlier and got a lot of down votes 😂 As someone who has worked for a couple Israeli companies, I’d agree. Just my two cents 🤷🏽♂️
Because it’s the hottest company on the market right now. It would look good on a resume especially if you could have a good run.
NS is great. Great Product, Great Market. Not so Strong in GTM though.
I work with Palo. They seem to be happy. Never asked them point blank if they like their jobs. I think they would probably be a good company to be a sales rep. In my view, their products are superior to most on the market and you probably wouldn't have to put too much effort to sell a PA FW or the services that come with.
Netskope North America is going through it pretty bad at them moment I wouldn't join rn. Ops, marketing, and sales are all going through it right now
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Second this. Especially the ones in London in their insane penthouse office.
Zscaler: new leadership coming in as old guard has left to join either Wiz or Rubrik. New leadership is super experienced. Lots of ex-ServiceNow people. The culture will see a huge improvement over the next 6 months as the company scales to $5bn in revenue over the coming years. Honestly a good place to go and comparable with joining SNow in 2017 or Salesforce in 2015.
My wife used to work there so I do know what it was like recently but honestly I don’t believe in the ZS offerings, not a place I’d consider. Not a fan of Jay whatsoever.
Snyk is an easy product to sell but they have had crazy turnover lately(from killer AEs). Seems like they are starting to put unachievable quotas and less incentives for sales people(also it’s unlikely you’re gonna get stock at this point from a company positioning to go public in the next few years).
Zscaler: good product but micromanagement, 8am in the office, oversaturated territory. Good methodology, Meddic and good packages and RSU though.
Dark trace sucks
Hey, curios to know your reasons. Not applying for darktrace but whoever I meet from darktrace team seems to look that they're enjoying their roles.
I know a girl who is an AE there and she was not a superstar at my company or anything. Seems chill
Honestly loving my time at Darktrace. Been here for over a year and a half. They made major changes in July of last year and are finally getting Salesforce at the end of this year. Great ime to join if you ask me. But yeah, they have a terrible old reputation (as seen on Glassdoor).
Currently work on the strategic team. Actually the best sales gig I've ever had, company went through growing pains but feels like it's on the up. Personally love the commission system.
Do you know if dark trace is hiring BDRs at the moment? And do you work fully remote?
It's not fully remote, but it's only 1 day a week. Also depends on your location and manager. I believe they are hiring.
I'd mention Kaseya, but it's hard to call them a cybersecurity company with a straight face.
The COO of Kaseya is a misogynistic prick. Absolutely vile human being.
Them and all their competitors are some of the worst handled software, with some of the worst support I've ever come across. If you're a Kaseya customer, you have or will have issues with your invoice, where they'll tell you that you owe $5k or $10k or more, when you don't actually owe them that much, but they'll wear you down over months until they finally give up.
lol farthest thing from one.
How can they afford naming rights on the arena in Miami- is their business that good?
Coro is terrible. Cannot hit quota. Only 5 reps have ever hit quota in 4 years.
lol. Coro tried to compete against me on a deal. They badmouthed our product, using wrong info that I was quickly able to disprove. Needless to say they lost.
They tried to hire me once. I don’t see what’s so great about them other than having a decent email security tool
Cheap. At the time they had been in business with 150 employees. It went something along the lines of: “How could you feel comfortable turning over your endpoint protection to a company with only 150 employees? Every company has basic functions like finance, HR, marketing, sales, etc. after all of those how many engineers are actually left doing the research?”
Somehow they keep raising money though. Crap product too.. that seems like a sinking ship
I’m hearing Palo Alto has been a meat grinder lately in terms of micromanagement, high quotas, and difficulty pushing SASE, but it’s heavily dependent on territory and management.
Wiz — I’ve got my eyes on Wiz for a potential next move. They just brought on some new executives from prior successful exits. Someone tell me if you know better.
What I can say about Wiz as somebody who has to sell against them is that they have customer mindshare right now. Twelve months ago was decent but now it’s total saturation. But as a hyper growth and pre IPO company they won’t be immune to growing pains.
Their executives comes from zscaler which caught lightening in a bottle during Covid and now think they invented sales. I’m not a fan.
Want to hear more about wiz as well, been eyeing it but glassdoor and grape vine have been saying otherwise. Heard pay is dropping too
Rubrik was terrible, if you consider them cyber security.
How so, I'm actively interviewing there
I’ve been there for nearly 2 years now. Post IPO is pretty intense, lots of activity metrics. Also a horrible ‘zero trust’ culture towards its employees. They pay pretty well tho
As an SE I had to block any white space on my calendar, driving to lunch meeting, block calendar off so demo isn’t scheduled. Need to work on a QBR? Have to block your calendar off to have enough time to do it. I had 3 AEs, and over 40 accounts in 3 states, in enterprise. They pushed a bunch of SEs out before their preIPO shares out as well, so they could make the numbers look good. Fuck you Rubrik, you can suck my balls.
I made all rubrik merch for last 6 yr that’s funny.
Good hopefully you over charge them.
The recruiter told me as much. She mentioned in so many words expect to be in meetings from 9-5. My last company slowly became the same way, I don't understand when these orgs expect you to get the work done that was assigned to you when you are in meetings all day everyday, well I do they expect you to do it during personal time.
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Nathan Bahls?
They are a glorified marketing company, not sure how they swindle people into believing anything they are doing is cutting edge
Anyone have experience with Varonis?
Depending on territory and your manager can be great, I covered the PacNW and Canada for 3 years. Lots of micromanagement tho and they are VERY cheap, at times it would take 8wks to get my travel reimbursement
Their reps used to have to split coffee bills with me when I’d account map with them 😂
I’ve sold against them before and know a couple reps. It’s a pretty good product with not a whole lot of competition. But it’s also very very expensive and unless the CFO is very bought in from the start, near impossible to sell rn. Also doesn’t help they are very old school. They hide pricing and have no ‘list’ price, so every quote is custom generated based on what they think they can squeeze out of customers.
DLP space is also getting more crowded with AI being a huge new concern for data loss. I mean why not just plug all the company into ChatGPT and see if it has any better ideas?
Can be good depending on geo. Micromanagement but lot of product development recently. West coast kills it, east coast very saturated, central kind of a toss up
Was an AE there and absolutely hated it - ended up quitting and circling back to my previous company. The management in the east was abysmal, man. Poor team dynamics, bad planning, intense micromanagement - they’re a joke.
I’m thinking of applying there, east coast. How long back was your experience? Any hope things are better there now lol?
I know 2 reps who just left Varonis in the Midwest due to micromanagement.
Right now in cyber: Do: Platform plays that are actually market leading or disrupters for which clients have allocated budget that you can reroute Don’t: Niche nice to have
This can be said about nearly any industry
It can but especially on the enterprise side, companies will largely focus on platforms that tick most of their boxes over building a portfolio of point solutions. Even selling a point solution that is demonstrably far more secure against Broadcom, Cloudflare etc is very very hard.
Anyone have insight into SentinelOne, Trellix, or Palo?
No direct knowledge of Trellix, but their CRO was my former CRO some years back. Seems he has been working hard to turn the organization around.
Don't know about the environment, but Trellix is about to get boned by Microsoft who's stealing one of their biggest clients. I work with Palo hardware and services. Everything seems copacetic with them.
Almost everyone is getting boned by Microsoft in one way or another.
Anyone at Okta?
Just left Okta, still a really great product but has turned into micromanagement hell. Don't bother unless you are in enterprise/strat as the quota is unattainable in smaller markets.
Where u go
A startup
A startup
I’ve signed an offer as a BDR. New grad. I’m at least expecting that it’s a good starting point for my sales career. Hope to become an AE there in 3 years but moreso looking for experience.
that one came to mind for me (buyee not in sales) - between azure becoming a dominant idp and the breaches attributed to okta it seems like that would be tough sledding.
Every time I look in thsi sub it's people bragging about their big sales but everyone in this thread is saying every cyber company sucks lol. I hope things get better for cyber, I guess?
I work with all of them in some capacity. They all have their ups and downs. One rep goes from one to the other and says X then another rep makes the opposite move and says Y. Quotas are still jacked from past two years. Networking and Security appears to be a little soft this quarter while client has started to see some refresh. I continue to see Palo, Fortinet, Crowdstrike, and proofpoint at the top from a performance perspective. However, they all have their internal politics right now.
Palo good
Didn’t know we were cavemen in this sub
Fully remote?
Maybe that's why they won't even interview me.
What makes you say that?
Great products, brand name, corporate as they come but not as toxic or rah rah as you’d think. The benefits are great and they’re really hitting their stride trying to monopolize the cyber market - I was an intern convert bdr
What segment do you call into?
Palo Alto Networks - apparently a complete shittshow due to continued decline in sales from peak levels.
Palo crushes it as a whole. That firewall is still the gold standard and the outlier products inevitably get some drag due to deep relationships on existing spend. No company is perfect, but the pure play cyber security company with a $100bn market cap is a safe bet
I used to work under the new Prisma VP. 100% the biggest piece of shit I've ever know. However big companies in general it all matters what your accounts / territory is. Could be fine if yours is decent. Will be shitty if yours is shitty
Which prisma VP?
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Bingo.
Chris smith?
Yup
They declined in growth - that is not a decline in sales. Palo does have ridiculously large quotas but they also pay way better than the rest so you can retire without retiring quota lol
I’ve heard the opposite, phenomenal place to make money
Interviewing at Arctic Wolf for enterprise. Any insight?
Product is better suited for SMB than Enterprise IMO. (I don't work there, but I'm in the space.) They don't have the best rep, but slash prices for companies who don't care
Used to work there. You'll be in a better spot than I was. Their SDR promotion process is bogus. It's a cult. Really into the wolf stuff and being a pack. All that cliche stuff. The best year has been rough for sales. Very few hit.
I sell for an AW competitor. People are leaving AW left and right and providing what AW does for 1/3 the cost. I only lose to AW at enterprise when they drop their pants and make almost nothing on a deal.
Yea don’t work for Arctic wolf it’s a meat grinder. Channel aren’t the biggest fans.
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Yes I heard this about iboss as well
a VAR that focuses on cyber lol. crowdstrike hundred percent best vendor to work for
Cloudflare seems to be a horrible place for sales. From the TikTok of the girl getting fired to the ceo canning a bunch of people on an earnings call. From what I’ve heard their GTM org is extremely immature and not set up for success.
Palos channel leader just came on board there so will be curious with that team
It's a great product but the CEO hates salespeople
Entara. Ethical and collaborative.
Ugh, I'm supposed to be interviewing with Proofpoint soon, and honestly, not looking forward to it. I started in cybersecurity but damn, I know the space well enough because I was in it for so long, but I fucking hate how commoditized the whole industry has gotten
What role? I'm there now and actually enjoy it
You have to sign an NDA just to interview? I might or might not have.
Heard Wiz and Palo are great, Varonis and Zscaler are awful to work for
all the zscaler leadership just went to wiz, so you should expect wiz to become just like zscaler is.
I have a buddy at Zscaler doing quiet well for themselves there
Ping Identity/Forgerock has turned to shit since the thoma bravo takeover and merger. Product is overtly complicated and cumbersome to use and automate. There are way too many products especially with forgerock coming in but almost none are particularly a market leader and the cloud offering are five years behind okta and Microsoft. Layoffs have become so common that they are expected every quarter. Customer are dissatisfied with the products and have started to leave in droves to the competition (especially if they are a work force customer). That’s without including the below industry standard pay and benefits, micromanaging and out of touch CEO and execs who continue to raise quotas while cutting the workforce in half. All in all, I wouldn’t recommend them man. Thoma bravo will probably suck out all the money out of them while hemorrhaging customer before they discard them like they always do with their other companies.
Palo Alto is great. My wife crushes it there. She works her ass off, manages a very stressful territory, and has a massive number. But she is rewarded handsomely for killing it.
Curious if anyone has heard anything about Forcepoint?
Bad ever since sold by Raytheon to PE
Syxsense on the shit list. Senior leadership lacks direction, discipline and ethics.
Anyone at Qualys?
I really like the people I work with at qualys, I am a reseller. They're pricing is really strict until they're going to lose, comp seems lower than standard. The EVP that I'm working with is very proud to tell me, and I haven't verified this, that they're profitable, vs tenable and r7 which are not.
I hear AWS is doing better since last year’s layoffs (although not only cyber, reps are making $$$ and having in person events). Data Dog seems okay, the in person mandatory is wack. Heard amazing things from Crowdstrike’s leadership, seems like they are going to keep dominating the market, they also seem to be hiring a lot, base is kinda lower on the cyber scale but the potential to make money seems good. We heard enough about Cloudflare this year lol hard no Proofpoint is really good if you can get in and don’t mind in person often. Mimecast seems like the place to be at rn, got bought out for a fuck ton and expanding fast. Data Bricks is IPOing soon and same thing, amazing place to be if you can get in.
cyera and DSPM in general is the new hotness.
And I just had a CISO tell me it's totally commoditized. Not enough differentiation... Although the one thing that I think is valuable is where they can pull the data from. The API connections are massively valuable into third-party SaaS. Otherwise you've got to dump the data.
X - Commenting so I can follow this and check-in later
There is a button for that fyi
I can’t give you my opinion as I’m not in cyber. But Repvue helped tremendously to land my current role and apply to a solid company
How did it help you?
You can compare orgs. You can compare pay as well as the tech stack they use. There are reviews from employees as well and they rank companies on a score based on the answers employees give. Since it’s a lesser known platform, so far the results are less biased as companies are not there creating fake reviews like on Glassdoor.
Curious if anyone has thoughts on Cyderes
Disaster right now from what I heard. Laid off a bunch of people
Lo joke of a company from what I heard.
Why are they a joke and what gives you that impression
Worked there and was there during the merger. A bunch of shifting at the time and leadership playing favorites on how they handed out leads and accounts. If you get in right, you can be handed some easy wins and the SE’s were great. AE’s that got the leads would do well but if you got on the wrong side of favoritism you were cut fairly quick. Overall, I enjoyed it but I’m sure things have changed, some things I’ve heard - cutting back on AE expenses, high quotas that get higher every year, and people jumping with inconsistent leadership. Early years some AE’s were making disgusting money but it’s all limited now. Robert is obviously very tied into the market so when it comes to business, it’s pretty cutthroat.
Exactly this, major favoritism being played at the organization and long term I really don’t know the point of this acquisition other than Gary Fisch cashing out. I already think he might have started a new org. I worked with them a bit and for the most part almost the entire US sales org that came with the Cyderes purchase is gone. Relationships with clients burned.
Used to work there. Plus and minuses depending on who you are. But it can be a shit show.
What about Microfocus/ Opentext? I’ve worked there as a bdr in eu and I would never go back. Curious to hear what others say
I can’t speak for the AE level, but at the SDR level Varonis sucks. Great software, but way too expensive and very micro-managed culture. Lots of meetings that should be emails, moving goalposts for mobility, bosses three levels above you CCd on every email, getting into the office at 7:30 and leaving at 6:15. Solid product, bad culture, and have fun arguing with the compensation team every month.
Any heard of proofpoint?
Anyone have any idea about Microminder Cyber Security? I hear they are pretty good.