Odious contract, crummy PTO policy - Anonymous employee Fortinet Employee Review

The Fortinet employment contract contained a lot of paragraphs that were designed to squash Fortinet's competition in the labor market and in the marketplace of ideas. Also, the contract was designed to ensure that Fortinet prevailed in any disagreement or misunderstanding. The intellectual property assignment was over-broad. The anti-poaching paragraphs could easily work to the employee's disadvantage. The mandatory arbitration agreement was immoral. The subtext of the contract was that you were not respected. The effect of the contract was that you were dispirited from day one. Don't sign the employment contract without asking a lawyer to go over it with you. Demand changes and see how badly they want you. If you are a contractor/consultant, do not under any circumstances accept the Master Services Agreement as-is: oh my god. Fortinet could put you out of business quickly! Fortinet was one of those companies that lumps together sick leave and vacation as PTO, and as I recall, you had to have a few years of service before you got more than 15 days. So if you had a prolonged illness, that would deplete your vacation days, and if you took a long vacation, you had better hope you didn't get sick. While I was at Fortinet, I saw evidence of the clubby executive atmosphere that other reviews mentioned. Some Fortinet products are terrible. I was expected to use one of those products in the course of my employment, even though it wasn't really fit for purpose. Now you know. Fortinet did not seem to have strong design thinkers or user advocates in a position to influence the culture, and their products were worse for it. There was little opportunity for a technical person to advance. The internal IT systems were not very reliable. Fortunately, one could avoid most contact with the IT systems except for when your passwords expired(!); then it was necessary to spend 10-15 minutes changing your password in more than one place. There did not seem to be any global source control system. Rather, sources were shared with archive files. Internal websites were rife with spelling/grammar errors, which underscored the fact that there was little emphasis on or pride in quality in the whole organization.