Qualys

I worked for Qualys for many years before abruptly leaving after I could no longer handle the stress fostered by poor senior management decisions, lazily thought out technical decisions, and the abundance of the half-baked "proof of concept" features inevitably being forced into production.

That said, in the beginning things were great. When I started with Qualys there was a great sense of opportunity and excitement about new products. My managers were some of the best that I ever worked with and seemed very concerned with my growth and morale. I always felt appreciated for my contributions and was offered great incentives to continue performing at a high level. I was with the company during the IPO and received great options, and was, like many others, focused on doing the best I could to help the company grow and keep the stock price on the uptrend.

This is when I started seeing things change for the worse.

Slowly, after the IPO, the culture shifted to one where the only thing that mattered was delivery dates and getting fragile, hacked-together code out the door.

Technical debt began to accumulate at a ridiculous rate. Those aforementioned managers that I enjoyed working with started leaving and were replaced with much less experienced and less capable people. Regular 45-50 hour weeks gradually increased to 70+, with people reaching out at all hours.

In the end, I felt like my job was to put out fires rather than to proactively do any meaningful work. There was no change in sight and morale was at an all-time low. It was truly sad to see a company I loved working for change into a place I dreaded working.

Respect your employees and work to build in a healthy work-life balance.

Use metrics other than the current stock price to guide your company.

The current management style (I think others mentioned "slave-driving") is not sustainable, nor is maintaining unrealistic timelines which force shortcuts to get products out the door, only to come back as huge pain points later in production.

There are other companies in this business who do a much better job at all of this, and while they may not be a threat to you now, they will undoubtedly be in the future.