A tale of two companies - Anonymous employee Center for Internet Security Employee Review

This really depends on what side of the house you are on. Center for Internet Security (CIS) is really two different companies that are acting like a single entity (to the heavy detriment of one of them), CIS and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). Essentially the only thing these two share is the general company support things like HR, finance, or so on. Everything else is pretty much separate. Employees have complained about "siloing," causing the company to be split, but it's been like that since pretty much the start and hasn't changed at all. I might argue it has gotten worse. This is sort of representative of other things in the company. Most problems are either denied, glossed over, or ignored until there is no other choice. There is technically a fourth category, which is that problems are ignored, but considered solved as soon as an employee that was most vocal about them leaves. There have been multiple instances where a phrase such as "Once they leave, the problem will fix itself" has been said, but the employee wasn't the problem, they were just brave enough to actually say something about it (despite the possibility of some petty retaliation due to the supposed slight against management). Email newsletters with "Spanoisms" (long stories written by the COO that mostly seem to just stroke his ego) were meant to try and address some of these issues by keeping the company updated on what is going on and "addressing" issues, but they often do little more than remind people that senior management doesn't care about your problems and your opinion doesn't matter. Having senior management effectively say "the best way to solve an employee morale problem is to ignore it until the people with the problem leave" isn't really confidence inspiring, but it is often the sort of management style that is employed. Some issues that are raised (that deal with the conduct of specific individuals) are dismissed or ignored because they are friends with HR or other higher ups, regardless of it being in direct contradiction to the supposed principles by which people are supposed to adhere. Pretty much the most that has been done to try and alleviate these morale issues (which are heavily weighted toward one of the two parts of the company) is to implement token acknowledgements of adhering to the so-called "leadership principles." You basically get a certificate from an inkjet printer with your name on it and get to choose a random envelope with a $10 gift card to iTunes/Starbucks/Panera or pizza party for your group. The "leadership principles" are also basically what are used to do your annual review. They've altered these annual reviews multiple times over the last few years and it still needs work (which, I believe is at least happening). Due to how raises/whatnot are carried out, there is just about no benefit to being a model, hardworking, give 100% effort employee. Someone that gives their all (and is liked by senior management) will pretty much end up with a very slight amount of money more a month (enjoy your 3 extra Starbucks coffees that you can buy) compared to someone that is only doing enough to not get fired. You might be wondering about promotions and the like, wouldn't the person that works harder get promoted? Up to a point. Despite the artificially inflated size of the org chart (people are given supposedly higher positions than they had previously on the org chart, but it means effectively nothing), the company hierarchy is actually rather flat and most of those in management positions aren't going anywhere. About 3/4 of the management that was in place when I started are still there, but probably only about 30% of the non-management employees haven't left. There used to be "aspiring manager" meetings for people that wanted to eventually become a manager, but they held about 3 of them before giving up the pretense that people could become managers. Once you reach a senior of whatever employee position you're in (which, as mentioned, makes little to no difference in what you do/your responsibilities, it's mostly a token title), you either leave the company or wait for someone to retire (and even then there's not a guarantee they won't just hire outside the company because of how the senior management feels about you personally). Admittedly, there are plenty of opportunities for lateral movement within the company, but this only really helps those that actually have an interest in those other parts of the company, it doesn't really aid your career in any way or give you better chances of advancement. Somewhat related to movement within the company, some divisions have individuals spread out in the building because there just isn't enough space for the number of people they've hired and disparate groups are lumped together in the same room when they don't really interact otherwise (and due to what they do, this may cause other issues. I don't need people shouting across the office when I am on a conference call). The response to this space issue has been very slow and, from what has been shared regarding it, will just delay the physical space issue a bit, while causing additional issues, such as a lack of meeting areas (which is already a problem due to the number of meetings that get held all the time for useless things). This hasn't been the worst place I have worked, at all, but it certainly doesn't rate very high overall.