ReliaQuest Reviews

I chose to work here based on Glassdoor saying RQ had a 4.8 rating-as I type this now they are down to 3.8, surely headed lower and lower if they don’t get their act together. Read on to why this is the case. Recruiters and Training team are flat out lying about the culture and they know it. Do not know how they convince themselves to come in to work day after day knowing the propaganda they are spreading is just that, propaganda. CEO is exactly what RQ preaches they do not want at the company, a “show dog.” I have never met or worked for someone so in awe and in love with themselves. This feeling has seemed to permeate through most of the Executive team at this point and does not create a successful environment. Most meeting are just the exec team telling us how amazing they are and we should all feel lucky to be in the same room. You are told “At Team RQ, we want you to be open and honest.” If you do accept a job here do not fall for this. As soon as you challenge anything you are black listed (saw one person who I was told to look up to as a great employee during my interview process, slightly challenge Executive team during a company meeting and they were let go a few days later). If you are an experienced professional used to working for sane, well adjusted, normal adults, you will not fit in (this has nothing to do with RQ having a lot of younger employees-for the most part these younger employees are great). This has everything to do with immature, paranoid, and inexperienced leaders who try and lead by intimidation, guilt, and fear (again this is the exact opposite of what I was told the leadership acted like here during interview/on-boarding). You’ll see the sentiment “if you don’t work hard play hard you won’t like it at ReliaQuest and may want to look elsewhere” in many of the 5 star reviews on Glassdoor. This is used by those still in the honeymoon phase (as within first few weeks you are strongly asked to write a review before you realize the truth), those who may actually be brainwashed by the propaganda, or those who this may be their first corporate job and simply do not know that you are actually allowed to work and still have a personal life. Whether you leave, get let go, criticize a leader and get black listed, the first thing those around you are told is “they didn’t work hard play hard. In reality rarely is that actually the case. The real story is most people after a few months realize they were lied to during the interview and recruiting process, they are not valued by the executive team, see it is a toxic environment, and start looking to move on ASAP. This company really made me question how these magazines determine “Best Places to Work,” as RQ has garnered a few of these accolades. I will no longer put any stake in those that put RQ on this list as it is about as far from a “best place” to work as I have seen. If you truly have a passion for cyber security and what RQ is doing I would follow that passion at a competitor.

Before diving into details, there are a couple things to keep in mind: 1. Please understand that my goal is to keep this as truthful as possible and all of this same feedback was actually given to senior leadership several times with no useful actions being taken, only political responses tiptoeing around issues. 2. Skip past politically forced reviews and use the more accurate reviews to give yourself an actual representation of the company before you decide to work at or work with ReliaQuest. To define politically forced reviews, The Senior VPs will directly reach out saying “Would you mind leaving a glassdoor review please?” to counter the low rated, truthful reviews. I firsthand know several current employees that are actively applying for roles at other companies that are unhappy who left fake 5-star reviews after being directly asked to in hopes of keeping themselves off the radar. Actual honest feedback pointing out sore subjects is NOT welcomed no matter how much leadership says it is. 3. Employee retention is not accurately portrayed. The company has been living by a “The first 500” motto that is meant to give pride and honor to those who are part of the first 500 employees at ReliaQuest. Well, we were the first 500 for my entire tenure of nearly 5 years and I must have seen atleast 250-300 employees come in and out through the revolving door that is known as ReliaQuest. The true feat is the number of employees that have left in the past year. Please understand that this next metric is 100% factual…. In the past 12-16 months, over 120 employees have left the company or have been fired. That is nearly 10 employees per month. I come in to work every day expecting someone else to leave which is one of the biggest stresses I never knew I would experience in life. Almost everyone I have interacted with outside of leadership is unhappy. Okay awesome, now let us get to the actual review. First, discussing the company’s response to COVID-19 and mindset when it came to employee health and safety as opposed to the progress made on GreyMatter. The company allowed remote work for a month or two at the beginning of the pandemic which was great at first BUT several issues that arose when it came to the proprietary GreyMatter software that was blamed on the “remote workforce” that negated collaboration and caused us to “fall behind”. I pulled metrics firsthand that proved and increase in productivity for security teams that thrived during the period of remote work. The CEO and senior leadership held a company meeting during the constantly increasing daily peaks of the pandemic telling everyone that they will need to come back to work. If you voiced concerns about being remote you got an extension of a week or so but other than that you were politically forced to comeback otherwise several meetings would be held with leadership, and you would be seen as not been a culture fit. So now for my first opinion in this review so’’ far…. Leadership used the excuses of “Walking up to someone and working on a problem is invaluable”. These claims were used to aggressively suggest employees to come back to work was RIDICULOUS after seeing the state of the workforce when we went back to office. Almost every single SOC employee still held meetings via video conference even if they were 20ft away in the same office. There almost was no increase in person-to-person interaction for collaborative meetings and even worse, employees were constantly testing positive for COVID-19 so some days you would come in to work and half a department would be mystically gone. Concerning because the contact tracing was primal at best, for example, during the 2nd month or so back a few of us walked into office to see almost no one in our area. We found out through the grapevine that someone was diagnosed with covid so those nearest to them in terms of proximity were sent home. Okay that is cool but we literally went to lunch with the person who tested positive a couple days before and heard no communication from leadership that someone even tested positive. The situation when it came to contract tracing and contract tracing was one of the most concerning factors that led to several employees immediately leaving for remote jobs. Working remote is good but there are still many benefits to working with others in office. The tough part is that ReliaQuest primarily hires a very young demographic which ultimately pushes leadership to claim, “We will never be a remote workforce”, not even during a pandemic. The avoidance of even a hybrid work model feels like a lack of trust in the employees as most of the reasoning to come back was blaming remote on a lack of company progress. Trust me, having employees work remote is the least of this company’s problems at this point. Now for some more granular information on employee progression and training. During my entire time at this company various employees have tried and never had any certification or tuition assisted with. SOME were lucky enough to squeeze out a certification or two but there were never any objective qualifications to reach in order to be invested in as an employee to improve yourself. It was always random and very seldom. One of the main selling points of joining ReliaQuest in an entry level technical position WAS the number of technologies you would use and the knowledge you could gain in a short 6-month time frame. This is completely different now. The company has totally shifted to only using GreyMatter and using less and less of the technologies that actually work. This is very difficult because GreyMatter still has several “issues” as compared to other technologies I the industry that work. I will leave it at that.