CrowdStrike

Market leader.

Interesting technology and field.

Stock continues to do well.

Vanishing culture and perks

Slaves to the CoGS

Outsourcing

Someone please fire all the woke HR drones.

There was a time when I would have said senior and mid-level management was strong. These days, I think the top execs still have a pretty good long-term vision for the company, but man, there is a lot of middle management sort of taking up space and cashing a paycheck.

Company values, culture, and morale seem to have eroded since IPO. I'm sure RTO and the latest layoffs didn't help. Over-hiring was a mistake that needed to be corrected. But at the same time, the relentless 2020-2023 drive for box-checking and virtue-signaling DEI initiatives in a company that was already quite diverse and representative of the areas in which they do business was a big turnoff. Nothing sucks like working hard for a few months just to be ushered into a mandatory company meeting where people extoll the virtues of systematically discriminating against men, heterosexuals, and white/Asian/Indian people in our hiring and promotion strategies. No company is without some kind of BS, but man, they were piling this stuff on hard and thick there for a while. Big part of the reason I eventually bailed.

In general, though, the company is product and customer-focused and has found some deserved success in the marketplace. My advice to management is to keep focusing on the mission and the product and don't get distracted by hype and nonsense.