Software Engineer • Current Employee
Pros: Several reviews have already mentioned the great technology and business model. I'll focus on the people.
As an engineer my interactions with senior company management are limited so it's difficult for me to comment on their performance. I've only talked with our CFO, our CTO, and our CMO a handful of times; they all seem highly capable and I enjoyed our conversations. I interact much more closely with our software engineering managers, for whom I have a lot of respect. They are extremely dedicated and go out of their way to make sure our team has what it needs to succeed, whether that be hardware/software, knowledge, or extra help.
They also have a good sense of integrity. Earlier this year, an engineer came up with a somewhat faulty design and communicated it to the team. The manager who noticed the issue could have used this as a "teaching moment", correcting the engineer publicly and flaunting his superior knowledge to the team. Instead he contacted the engineer offline, walked him through the error, and asked him to send a follow up email to the team on his own -- so that the correction would come from the engineer himself, not the manager. (I am close to the engineer and he later shared the story details with me privately; I was impressed with the way the manager handled the situation.)
I enjoy working for my boss. He has a lot of domain knowledge, understands our customers well, and has a keen sense of Qualys' position in the marketplace. When reviewing our work he pays attention to detail, and while he is very opinionated, he is never overbearing. I appreciate that he has confidence in my abilities to execute, and that he gives me the "space" I need to work; I never feel like I am being micromanaged.
The rest of my peers are equally wonderful to work with. The team is friendly and I felt welcome here from the start. These are all talented individuals, hard workers who care about their work and the impact it has on our product. Working among them is a pleasant experience.
Cons: The yearly review process could use some tweaking. I met with my boss for about 15 minutes this year and that was it. We haven't discussed my performance since, and so it's hard for me to know how I track with his expectations over the rest of the year. He is a very busy guy so I don't take it personally, but it would be helpful to have an informal review every 6 months to follow up on goals, growth, etc.
We've built a lot of cool tech here this past year or two, but the rapid pace of development has at times made it difficult to communicate platform changes to the team effectively and consistently. As a result the learning curve on a new project can be steep. We are also somewhat understaffed at this time.