Pros
I worked at Veracode for a really long time and have seen an increasing number of negative reviews on Glassdoor recently. Having left the company last year and with a clear head I wanted to give as clear and unbiased review as possible. Sales training: Veracode has a culture of always learning and improving and the sales training is key to that philosophy. Everybody goes through sales training and are taught to listen to the customer requirements, establish the true needs of the customer and action accordingly. This runs through everybody who interacts with the customer, giving a common internal language and framework to provide service. Training is regularly updated and continuously applied. Culture: Veracode is a good sized organisation for it to feel big but also for team members to know who they need to speak with internally to get a job done, not simply sending emails to anonymous team addresses. The founder/CTO of the company, Chris Wysopal and CEO Sam King are accessible when needed for guidance or help and this flows down through senior management. Nobody is left to struggle without help at Veracode. CEO Sam King: I have seen a number of recent reviews on Glassdoor calling out Sam for being out of her depth or even not caring about Veracode anymore. This is a falsehood. Sam King is an extraordinary woman who has led Veracode through some difficult and unpredictable events. Notable moments in her time so far have included picking up the torch from Bob Brennan, the still very popular ex-CEO, and running with it through the CA acquisition; the sale of Veracode from CA Technologies, a time when very many employees like myself feared for our jobs; guiding Veracode through the early pandemic with clear leadership, publicly explained decision making and inspirational words. Despite her position as CEO, Sam was never above joining a customer meeting or providing 121 guidance, something she did for me several times in my career at Veracode and for which I will always be grateful. Veracode is lucky to have Sam and hopefully more former employees will see that with the passage of time. Technology: Veracode's technology is top of the market and employees are used to seeing their name at the top of the magic quadrant. There is constant emphasis on improvement and the team can be proud of their achievements in creating such great toolsets.
Cons
Planet Veracode: Veracode is proud of providing a unified platform that provides all of the different forms of scanning a customer could need. Once criticism I would have for this approach is that a lot of the time the more peripheral technologies can be neglected or left in development hell for years at a time (RASP anyone?) where competitors are more prone to partnering where they struggle with particular areas. This caused issues in several bakeoffs and it wouldn't hurt the product team to look for outside help once in a while. Management/team ratio: God save us from middle management. The management pyramid at this company is very high with continuing layers added on from time to time for seemingly no reason other than to reduce the number of people senior management need to speak with to get progress reports. It would be fine and understandable if these were tenured people who had worked at Veracode and earned their way up but they are invariably outside hires, which brings me to my last point: Career progression: This is the big one. As much as Veracode used to be a big believer in internal promotions they are now as likely to go to market for any new manager, product leader, supervisor, you name it. Careers are stalled very easily at Veracode and I saw too many good people leave simply because they hit a ceiling. There is more than enough talent at Veracode to hire only at lower level and promote to senior management as and when they are required, but I didn't see that changing any time soon which was a key reason in my own decision to leave.
