Palo Alto Networks

RedLock was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in Oct 2018. However, in the following months, we realized it was actually a hostile takeover by CirroSecure.

• There used to be good work.
• And a good team.
• We used to have a nice office and good location.

• lot of politics (stay away for your own good)

• Post-acquisition, a decision was made to move all the good work to the US and leave behind only 2 components/modules in the Bangalore office (a completely political decision, given 85% of the engineers who built Redlock were from the India office).

• The head of this group has his "own people." They get a pass if they do anything wrong and get crazy fast growth/promotions. The rest of the folks are considered worthless. Folks have had performance reviews with this group's head where they were told, "We're keeping you around because you're sort of decent, else we would have chucked you out long back."

• Post-acquisition, many non-technical managers have been hired (a big mistake). Most engineers' time goes into explaining the same damn thing in 4-5 different meetings to managers who don't understand technical stuff.

• Lot of meetings about process, but they still haven't figured anything out after 6 months. Work-life balance is pretty bad right now.

• The office is near Bannerghatta Zoo.

• In a WeWork building. Cramped desks, high frills, zero value offering from WeWork.

• Pay is average. Despite Redlock selling for $200 million, folks in India didn't make anything. Management was extremely shrewd (concocted).

1. Remove this Cirrosecure guy and his pompous clique.
2. Give some decent work to the India office.
3. Hire technically sound managers.

If you're not willing to address the issues, you'll gradually see the India office disintegrate, or worse, mass migration of engineers to competitors.