MAD Security Reviews

This section of the review, I am mincing as best as possible to avoid potential retaliation or hand-waving away the very real problems MAD Security faces/likely continues to face at the time of my separation. - Leadership. From the top line, there is a pervasive and very real problem that leadership faces, while in my tenure was never addressed. Sometime in 2021, three directors of the company exited. I will elaborate on the impact of this further in my review. Of course, MAD Security would not want its employees to leave, but to their credit, sometimes it is advantageous for both parties to part ways. I believe this was the case for the three directors, but the impact left by their departure is where this issue lay. - Potential Astroturfing. Many of the reviews on here are extremely positive. With turnover in 2021/2022 alone (22 people) for various reasons (again, I will elaborate further in its own section) there is doubt the rainbows and butterflies portrayed here and the positive reviews that pop up shortly after a negative one are legitimate. - Culture. Culture is something MAD Security prides itself upon and is spoken as a holy body of text to abide by, yet the culture has changed drastically with leadership not adapting appropriately. A culture of "always on" and "winning" (read: Startup culture) works if there is buy-in. There is no stock option, no real give and take for feedback, and no way for the employees to actually safely and positively give honest, transparent feedback. This does not even mention the blatant sexist, casually racist, homophobic, and ageist remarks that occur in the business. (To sound like a broken record, again, I will revisit the culture aspect in another section.) - Feedback welcome, but also not really. When an employee attempts to give open and honest feedback, leadership falls victim to the very thing that causes most issues in communication. There is little to no active listening - almost every piece of feedback is met with an innocuous "What do you mean by that?" When you attempt to explain, you are seldom heard, as the leadership is comprised of "fixers" (a good thing for a leadership team!) They will say something akin to, "Okay, just so I understand, you really mean x." After a few rounds of this back and forth, it becomes so exhausting that there is little use in continuing the conversation. I am separating this one out because I am not intending to dissuade anyone from joining MAD Security. I am writing this review to help genuinely inform and potentially provide transparent feedback without a filter which I did not have an option to do in my tenure. The biggest problems facing MAD Security are Turnover and Pay. - Turnover. Of the 22 mentioned, 3 were directors, 1 was a consultant, 3 were security engineers, 1 was an accountant, 1 was an operations person, 11 were sales staff (to MAD's credit, I believe sales in general typically has high turnover in any business.) The company at its largest was 32-35 people. That's a 62% turnover rate against the maximum size of the business at any given point. - Pay. The pay is simply noncompetitive. The benefits changed when mid-year, MAD Security changed PEO providers. On average, healthcare costs went up, 401k matching went down. At some point, the company attempted (read: Successfully did so) to change several positions to hourly, presumably as a punitive measure for utilizing the benefits bragging point: Unlimited PTO. Unlimited PTO was an enormous burden when taken and there was no guarantee PTO would be respected as you would likely still receive calls, texts, and emails that needed an urgent reply. In general, PTO was discouraged, and was an inconvenience. Before I get into the "Why," I must first address what I am CERTAIN is forthcoming in a comment reply from the company. The company operates on something called "EOS." For those unfamiliar, this is the "Entrepreneurial Operating System." There is a moment where this is supposed to happen, when a company is maturing. They speak to "right butt, right seat." I am unsure how specifically this will be utilized in a reply, but there's a definitive possibility it's used to hand-wave away the turnover. Do not let it. In order to grow, there must be accountability and discomfort. I am hopeful this review will do just that. In late 2021, all three directors quit. This marked an important tipping point in the MAD Security culture. There was a quarterly business review that, as I understand it, resulted in a significant falling out with leadership, and as a result, all directors quit. There is likely something that comes to discredit this, but the long and short of the ultimate quitting of these directors started there. The rest of the MAD Staff, obviously shaken, enquired about the directors quitting. The response given, at almost every level, was "Oh, well, they all hit their ceilings for potential." That would be fair, if it had not been back to back to back in the span of about a month. Another thing said was "Oh, they couldn't handle the stress of the job." I will let the reader do with this what they wish, as I will not tell you how to interpret these events or the double sided explanations. Never having a clear answer, it became almost "taboo" to talk about them. There was an obvious shift that if the company had been honest and upfront about the directors leaving, likely would not have happened. Now, it may be claimed their replacements are rockstars or are really "right butt, right seat." I am not disagreeing. It is not the story I am trying to tell. Three directors left, and then the revolving door kept swinging. Many of the individuals that kept the "MAD culture" going are now gone. Again, do with this what you will. All in all, the company has lost at least 24 years of professional knowledge from the directors, and possibly 3 or 4 decades worth from the rest. Finally: - The Retribution. No good deed goes unpunished. I am aware that when a review is posted, internally, the company attempts to figure out who left the review, contact them, potentially ask them to remove the review, and ask to "talk it out." I am not interested in that. I am interested in saying my piece in a manner where a narrative cannot be constructed about my words and where I can be honest, transparent, and comfortable with my feedback without worrying about an impending call from leadership.