Pros: On paper, this is a decent place to work. The PTO policies in particular are quite generous, and they actually extended pandemic-era bonus days off longer than most of us expected, so there is at least some indication that management prioritizes work-life balance. There is a lot of trust and responsibility put on each individual employee, which helps mitigate the feeling of being just another cog in a wheel. The company has been doing a lot to combat its reputation of being a slow, legacy tech company. I have heard many an employee comment that at times, it feels like working at a startup, and I have to agree, as there have been a number of aggressive deadlines and ambitious product launches in recent years. Many of my coworkers are excellent at what they do and a joy to work with. The company is investing in lots of new tech areas, so I would say it feels a lot less like a legacy tech company than one might assume at first glance. It's certainly worth considering a career here as an alternative to many of the newer, flashier names. The solutions the company provides are valuable to customers, and it really does feel like F5 is making a difference. I don't usually put a ton of weight on buzzwords like diversity and inclusion, but for what it's worth, F5 is a 10/10 in my book when it comes to that stuff. Granted, I can mostly only speak for my own experiences, but I at least never noticed anything even close to resembling discrimination or exclusion, and I do think the company is better for it.

Cons: Unfortunately, there are some notable cons. The company seems to have only gotten stingier when it comes to promotions, raises, market/inflation adjustments, travel budgets, etc. This was already happening before the pandemic, but then accelerated during the early years of the pandemic despite consecutive record quarters, and hasn't really let up. Management always has excuses about business uncertainty or the need to pivot and make acquisitions, as well as promises that things will ease up in the near future. None of those are necessarily untrue, and F5 is certainly not alone in the current economic climate, but after the 100th time of hearing the same tired story, employees recognize that it's just a script on a loop and management has no intention of ever really investing in employee growth. When they do, it's usually out of desperation to keep a few key contributors (I wouldn't even say top performers on net; more on that later). The work-life balance is also somewhat of a double-edged sword. Management likes to talk a big game when it comes to protecting employees, but then they constantly pull in deadlines, come up with crazier and more ambitious business plans, and ask for unpaid overtime, all while cutting resources. So many of my coworkers are constantly maxed out and then some, which is ironic because that was the stated reason behind much of the expansion of pandemic-era PTO benefits. The PR folks love to flaunt all the PTO benefits on social media, but then management turns around and overloads employees the rest of the days, and even sometimes expects work over PTO. When I started, there was a culture of respecting PTO time and avoiding asking people to work while on vacation, but that faded over time, and the company is more than happy to let you work overtime. There is a lot of pressure to compete for very limited compensation increase budget, so many F5 employees are willing to work crazy long hours to stand out, but the rewards never seem to match the excess contribution. I'm all for recognizing and celebrating hard work, but it's important to choose words carefully. In company meetings, managers would often hand out awards to overworked employees, specifically calling out huge amounts of overtime on nights and weekends, which is a slippery slope because it seems to suggest everyone should be doing the same. The rewards were also like $50 gift cards, so the whole thing just felt like corporate grandstanding. I did know a couple of people who stood firm when it came to things like time off and sticking to core job responsibilities, but they were always in conflict with management, and none of them seemed to stay very long. The single biggest problem I have with the company is that there is absolutely no accountability for bad decisions. At other companies, it's said that to advance in title and responsibility, one must become a positive multiplier, in the sense that it's not enough to be a prolific contributor oneself, but one must also help others around them succeed and contribute. If I had to sum up my biggest issue with F5, it's that all too often, the exact opposite seems to be true. A shocking amount of time, energy, and resources gets wasted on absolute garbage that somebody higher up insists is way more important than it really is, and then when you bend over backwards and go above and beyond to deliver it in addition to the stuff that actually needs to get done, they get all the recognition. The insane thing is many of those people then move on to roles elsewhere, both in and out of the company, leaving a complete mess behind, so the company ends up just spending a ton of resources on people who go around making things worse. When anyone brings this up, they're met with complete disdain. This isn't just at the low level; upper management will make huge mistakes with lasting implications, such as with inventory management given all the supply chain issues in recent times, and instead of owning up to their mistakes, they'll drone on about how they're doing everything right and it's on the lower-level contributors to compensate. The culture just reinforces negative contributions way too much because there's no consideration of consequences. Everything in business is a tradeoff, but F5 seems to have forgotten that, so the company just does whatever it thinks it needs at the moment without thinking it through, and it seems to survive off the fact that employees are somehow willing to stick around and put up with it.

Pros: F5 values and respects work/life balance more than other companies I've had experience with. I think the compensation is reasonable for what they demand. The interview process wasn't as frustrating or slow as with other companies, and there is significant opportunity for *some* people to grow their careers within the company. Because the company seeks to aggressively optimize and reduce costs, there isn't a lot of excess headcount, so if you manage to stand out and become a leader, there's significant upside potential.

Cons: I highlighted the word "some" above because I think the biggest problem I've faced while at F5 is the divide between favored and unfavored employees. I don't mean favored as in management simply preferring some employees over others, but rather more in the sense that employees will be funneled into one of two camps over time: 1. Decision makers 2. Contributors with virtually no creative leeway who are expected to churn through JIRA tasks written by the decision makers. This is a consequence of the aforementioned cost-cutting; it leaves absolutely no margin for individual discretion. You either end up being entrusted with all the decisions, or you're stripped of all decision-making ability and forced to just grind through a never-ending Jira backlog that somebody else created for you. There's no room for debating the pros and cons of solutions, reprioritizing tasks mid-sprint, etc. Management swears everything on the list needed to be delivered yesterday, regardless of whether the ask even makes sense from a technical perspective. Upcoming features are "committed" publicly to customers long before low-level contributors ever hear of them, so when a requirement comes in that barely makes any sense or is going to have some unintended negative consequence, the response from management and decision makers is simply to get it done by the arbitrary deadline. It would be one thing if these statuses were doled out based on merit or vision, but I've seen this dynamic play out with everyone from junior coders to senior principal tech leads, several of whom left or retired in part to escape the oppressive decision-making culture. Unfortunately, F5 only exacerbates the divide by celebrating the decision makers and putting them on a pedestal while mostly ignoring the contributors. This has actually been quite harmful at times when high-level decisions had significant rippling consequences to development efficiency across many teams, yet the high visibility of the decisions and the hard work of contributors absorbing the impact still resulted in excessive praise and recognition, despite there clearly being better alternatives. There is minimal accountability for bad decisions, and no recourse for contributors to mitigate their impact other than to work longer hours.

Pros: Good work-life balance. Benefits like 401k and stocks, in a chill environment.

Cons: Some of the old employees should be laid off, as they do not move fast.