Pros
- The CEO is hands down an amazing CEO and his ability to motivate and lead people is world class. - The growth rates continues to impress, as reflected by the stock price - There are so many people who still believe in the potential of the company, who want to drive positive, meaningful change and believe in the company mission.
Cons
- HR is failing miserably in doing right by the people, right by the company and right by what the culture claims to be: transparent, collaborative, open and honest....it is none of these. - Employee issues are swept under the rug or ignored by HRBP’s who only care to manage up and couldn’t gain employee trust and confidence if they paid for it. - Mosaic Council - Palo Alto Networks’ sad attempt at Inclusion & Diversity. The I&D council is primarily all white, male execs, with some white females added to cover the “diversity” part. If anyone speaks up or expresses concern with the initiative, charter or council, they are labeled “negative”, “not onboard” or brought to leadership as a “concern” or “issue”. - No inclusion & diversity of culture, race and ethnicity at the leadership levels. "I&D" at Palo Alto Networks almost exclusively means "gender" or "women". - Base and bonuses are low and not competitive by industry and geographical standards. Stop using RSU’s as some carrot on a stick. These only matter to exec levels and to those who joined the company 4+ years ago. Yes, you have started looking at those recently but you are moving too slow and losing your best employees to startups who recognize the shortage of talent in our industry and who are willing to pay well for that shortage and experience. - Very few leadership opportunities (Manager, Director and above) go to internal employees who have put in the time and dedication. Many of the current execs have been “homegrown” and were groomed into their leadership positions, yet they have sadly forgotten to pull others up along the way and believe that growing and scaling a company is a skill and experience that only others from outside the company are capable of providing. If that is truly the belief, then there are legacy execs who should be replaced. - A fundamental lack of leadership, skill and experience at some of the highest levels - there are many in senior leadership positions who are failing miserably by all measures: performance, objectives, feedback from their teams and cross-functional partners. What is exec leadership’s and HR’s responsibility for keeping a pulse on this? What is being done to address these swiftly and precisely? - Zero accountability or ownership by exec leadership and/or HR to do anything about the rapidly deteriorating culture and concerns raised by an alarming amount of people in the same organizations. Why are some orgs like Services & Support seeing alarming attrition at all levels compared to others like Product or Engineering? - Not walking the walk, just talking the talk - There is A LOT of discussion being pushed down from the top about an "open, honest, transparent culture". If leadership and HR were actually practicing what they are preaching, then great, but they are not. It's this crazy, Jonestown punch they are trying to convince others to drink and doing everything to the contrary. Accept that fact that Palo Alto Networks is no longer that; stop preaching what you want the employees to believe, take responsibility and accountability for what the culture has become, embrace it and move on.