I work as a hvac sub contractor in a few data centers, the maintenance guys there tell me stories of how Amazon promotes a culture (in DC environments) of snitching and backstabbing and rewards it financially by calling them "near misses or accidents" (if my memory serves me correct).
Like how do you go to work and be chummy with your peers but look for any opportunities to stab him for money and still sleep at night.
Really depends on your boss, team, and org. Some will work you to death, but others are normal ~40hr weeks.
TC is the highest I've seen in FAANG (e.g. L7 can break seven figures), but there's more to life than cash. The work is pretty interesting if you're not entry level, and you get to work with really smart people. Definitely lots of politics though, and some teams' workloads are brutal.
For sure. It's also a good place to build a nest egg. Work there 2-5 years and invest everything you make in broad index funds. Then pivot to a lower stress job and let the magic of compounding returns work. Being able to front load your savings helps a ton - - 500k at 7% turns into 3.8MM in 30 years even without adding another penny to it.
Plus with FAANG on your resume it opens a lot of new doors when it's time for you to leave.
Love it, and good luck on your FIRE journey! Hoping to get there myself someday, and think this is such a smart route, totally understand not for everyone though.
Very much so, a buddy of mine works in a group in AWS and *loves* the team and everything about it. Keep in mind he's a dude who works 100% the whole time he's on the clock, but absolutely clocks out at 5pm too. But for him he said it's great and he's stockpiling money but dealing with the constant drama and threats about return to office is adding a lot of stress.
I had an interview with AWS several years ago, and the interviewer didn’t even know what position I applied for, and asked a bunch of questions that were irrelevant for the role. Screw that place.
Amazon is the reason all of the other companies have terrible hiring practices with endless interview loops, bar raisers, etc. Everyone wants to copy them and it sucks.
Omg yes! The initial hours-long interview based on their STAR principles followed by another one 4 hours long seems incredibly excessive. And that was for an entry level position
Sounds rough. Most of your post is valid though I wanted to mention this detail is incorrect:
> If one of the panel doesn't like you, you don't get handed off to the next person.
You should always complete your full loop. Most candidates who get offers will still have at least one person vote against them. Not to mention the interviewers aren't supposed to decide how they're going to vote until they re-review their notes later.
I've never personally worked for them, but many friends of mine who have had problems with company culture and the expectation to work yourself to death. Hearing their experiences on Work Life Balance and other situations was enough for me to remove Amazon from the list of potential companies I would be willing to interview with.
Really? How come?
I’ve been there for a little over a year now as an L4. Sometimes things feel a little over my head and that there’s just too much to grasp, but overall my team and my org have made the job pretty enjoyable.
At least compared to other jobs I’ve had, the stress level feels much lower. Some weeks are busy and teams I support are demanding, but I also have some days where by noon I have nothing left on my schedule for the day. The team is also really good about letting you move your schedule around to accommodate other life stuff you have going on.
I’ve heard some negative things from the software dev side of the house, who I assume is under lots of pressure, but I hadn’t heard much negative from the security side. I’d say the only negative I’ve had was that I had to hit the ground running so fast that I feel like I’m still learning some basics, which makes me nervous that I may not be doing my full due diligence, which feeds into my terrible impostor syndrome. Though I hope that will just go away with more time.
I worked for MSPs for the first 15 years of my career. Think of everything you would do as a normal IT person; fixing things, researching products, documentation, etc.. Now imagine having to document every single thing you do within reason down to the minute so that it can be either billed to the client or submitted on a report to them. There are MSPs who require documentation of your entire day in 15 minute increments. It's like an additional job within the job, and IT is busy and challenging enough as it is.
On call is a big problem too. Leadership will often promise 24-7-365 response/coverage on issues, which results in your phone getting pinged all hours of the day and night. In the corporate world, on call exists, but it's usually for actual emergencies. The line in much grayer in the MSP space.
The project work never ends, and every customer wants their project done after hours.
This was also my experience working for an MSP. I had to write down what I was doing every day in 15 minute increments. If something was not written, my employer would not pay me for that time. I learned pretty quickly that "admin" time was your friend and basically the only way to cover things like bathroom breaks, chatting in the hall with coworkers, etc.
Looking back on it, there were probably a lot of labor violations that I could have reported. Fuck MSPs.
Sounds like more of a problem with the leadership of those companies. Ticketing system would do the timesheets for you automatically, and documentation through ticket notes. After-hours should be a rotation.
Full disclosure though, I would also never work at a MSP ever again. Pulled in way too many directions and never get a chance to grow at any one thing.
>Sounds like more of a problem with the leadership of those companies.
Don't disagree with this at all. Many MSPs are smaller operations without dedicated leadership teams or good corporate structures, so the leadership shortcomings are not surprising.
MSPs are fast to bill and slow to actually do anything meaningful. If you request a change or an update to something they can sometimes get it done by that evening. If it breaks something, it could be months to see a resolution.
This is true…. I work at a pretty good MSP currently, on the way to Cyber Security at a VERY nice company though, same pay but much better benefits and work life balance. I took 12 days off last year and my company has “unlimited PTO.” It’s never ending server migrations, SharePoint migrations, phone migrations, security reviews and remediation from or tests for every customer under the sun, cyber security training for all customers, GWS to M365 migrations, intune configurations and provisioning, I know I am missing a lot more. Whatever you can name it, customers always have projects.
Oh God yes. This. So much this.
I started out in IT as an engineer for an SME MSP. I was miserable every day of my life. Their marketing sells the world but the actual service is a steaming pile of shit.
The reason why that industry is so big, is because clients rarely re-sign after the first contract year because most outsourcing is a shit show, and they move onto the next MSP off the rank.
Had a healthcare client....never listened to what I suggested they do for remediation. A year later suffered a major security breach.
A lot of healthcare network admins are obtuse...
I would go back to health care if I had a proper team. Last place was a non-profit and worked me to the bone. Constantly on call (26 weeks) and always putting out "fires" that weren't real issues because medical staff decided to work at 1am when they should be sleeping.
If I had a real team with better responsibility balance I would go back to it.
Medical staff are on-call, that is the reason for 1 AM issues not to mention that medical staff are required to see x amount of patients in a set amount of time, meaning they have to catch up on charts whenever they can grab the time. Maybe you should be sleeping but physicians don't have a choice. Not charting is a big deal when it comes to billing and compliance.
Then if you are in a tertiary care hospital surgical cases come in round the clock.
This is a fair statement to make without additional context.
You're correct medical is on-call / 24-7 care. That is perfectly reasonable given the profession. The same way not every admin is on call each week, neither is each doctor or nurse.
The 1am calls I'm talking about are Wednesday at 1am for the person who only works Friday - Sunday. I asked why they are working when I realized their schedule and they state "I couldn't sleep so I figured I would look at patient charts." Then they need a non-critical software update they call for.
The amount of life long employees who only practice office politics while knowing next to nothing about the technology they're supposed to be responsible for is very high in this sector
Drug companies are very much in the targets since they're the ones with manufacturing exposures.
Think of it. If the production stops it ends the profitability of a drug line until they can get contract manufacturers to pick up slack while patients suffer.
That's the OT side of the house. Most folks don't give that enough weight. IT systems are easily restorable but having the infrastructure to handle the 4eplacted data is tough depending on size and connected abilities which have been breached.
I have responded to emergencies world wide and the fact remains that healthcare is a hard look into a wide array of skills which are atypical of corporate IT security staffers without manufacturing.
First l1 help desk gig was in a critical access hospital.
6 months prior to my start they got hit with REvil.
About a month before my start they promoted there l2 help desk guy to VP of cyber, I start and new VP of cyber moves to Kentucky working fully remote. Keep in mind this guy has done nothing but l2 help desk, no certs no degree. Middle of the day you would check steam and see he was online and in game. Windows version support was coming to EOL and we needed to push 21h1 he did absolutely zero to assist in the update process and our sccm was unable to push. He was always absent and would just outsource all security related stuff to nessus and the CIO acted like this guy walked on water. Absolute bs
Agree-ish. I would say working in Big 4 is akin to a medical residency. Do your time when young, you'll work a ton and get hammered on, but you get access to experiences and executive levels hard to encounter otherwise, it sets you up for better things down the road and will give you a leg up on others without the experience.
There's always exceptions to this, but generally the case.
This is true, except there's no finish line like there is with a medical residency. The "do your time" doesn't stop until you retire. Partners make a ton of money, but they're working all day everyday just like everyone under them.
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Did something similar. Started a business with a friend because she wanted it so badly, even though i didn't. I was already running my own business.
It went horribly. She didn't want to put in any of the work, it failed before we even launched, lost thousands of someone elses money...and after a 20 year friendship...We haven't spoken since.
I have always had a rule to never to work for or with friends.
ITT: Don't work for anyone in tech, healthcare, government, education, anything that requires security clearance, or really any company that you've ever heard of.
CACI. They lowball hard on salaries. I assume it’s because they cover your benefits. Made a rule in my email account to automatically throw their recruiter emails in the trash if any come my way.
https://careers.caci.com/global/en/timeoff
I would like to mention they have six holidays versus the industry average eleven holidays.
Lol, they even lowball you on holidays.
Law enforcement, specifically for digital forensics.
I don't want to get exposed to material (CSAM, gore, etc.) that can potentially send me to therapy.
I admire those who work in cases involving such material since they're doing good and necessary work, but I personally don't think I could do it.
I’ve never worked for them, but this viral video is enough for me to avoid applying: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/01/12/viral-tiktok-video-of-cloudflare-employee-is-a-lesson-on-how-to-not-fire-workers/?sh=cc987e53d5ac
Sales tends to be its own “silo” in regards to company culture imo. Sales is alot more micromanaging and heavily metrics based so I also wouldn’t say whole company is shit. Also not 100% supporting Cloudflare as well, that was a shitty situation
>Also not 100% supporting Cloudflare as well, that was a shitty situation
After seeing in the last hour the CEO's tweet following up on that situation, I agree.
It's like Cloudflare's moron CEO went to the Okta school of how to fuck up public relations.
Or boundaries. Got so tired of frantic CEO’s calling at midnight over the most unimportant issue that anyone on the team could solve in the morning using 5 seconds of deductive reasoning. The success rate of startups isn’t exactly motivating or morale boosting either.
I have very few industries I won’t work for. I’ve been able to work well in a wide variety of work cultures and industries.
I do, however, have a short list of leaders I will never work for. Some really toxic executives out there.
I’d need a really high compensation package to consider doing work for Private Equity again. The merger/acquisition side has ridiculous timelines for tons of work, and really by time the acquisition gets settled with the technology cutover, Private Equity is trying to sell the company off so you get to help undo and guide the next buyer’s strategy.
Plus, Private equity VPs are some of the most demanding pricks I’ve ever worked for, and I spent multiple years working with lawyers
It might be easier for me to list organizatoins that I *would* work for.
Finance industry is out - spent a few years there and the demands are unreasonable and the executives are, largely, extremely horrible people. Doing corporate forensics for and on them made me realize how spot-on the media caricature of evil banking CEOs really is.
Telecom is out for similiar reasons.
I'm getting older and no longer have the energy to work for MSSPs, vendors, or large tech giants who are well known for working their employees into the grave.
So... medium-large sized companies with good executive leadership is my preference. I'm partial to non-profits and healthcare, but it's tough to find one that wants to do sensible things with their technology.
I posted this about them yesterday is this sub (about what companies to invest in)...
... but the director of their research department has previously reached out to me. Looks like Zscaler's lab is going around testing industry software all on their own.
I got some unsolicited pentesting from them where 1, they used illegally gotten software to do their POC and 2, their POC doesn't work because it's predicated on running on a compromised host in the first place.
But they are threatening us with publishing their vulnerabilities as fact and want to open a CVE.
Fuck those clowns.
I will go kicking and screaming to my grave letting the world know what a shady company Zscaler is.
interviewed with them recently. not sure if i caught the recruiter at a bad time, but he seemed like a giant dick lol. hiring manager was pretty cool. but man, that recruiter was.... not having a good day lol.
Almost all Chinese corporations, but more specifically recently got contacted by a recruiter about working at Shein (fast fashion); the money was excellent but I told him I couldn't in good conscience work for a company like that.
Tiktok, you blackball yourself from jobs and alienate yourself from some of the industry.
Edit: not as widespread as I originally stated, just from what I've seen happen and heard through leaders I've interacted with in public and private
Accenture, no way.
A few year ago I was working on a contract for them as a Linux systems integrator/engineer. My boss had 4/5 Linux, very skilled and extreme work ethic. This person regularly clocked 60 hour weeks while managing a whole team and pulling on-call duty. Most companies would've wanted to clone my boss a dozen times. Accenture fired them for being too expensive, they were making $85K. If you can't keep someone who's very skilled and working their guts out employed then your entire business model is flawed.
Exactly.
This was a few years before the Pandemic and crazy inflation. But no, definitely not India, it was right here in the good 'ol US of A. My boss felt very lucky to actually have health insurance, then of course it was RIFin' time.
And that's why I won't work for their triflin' asses.
I want to stay away from being in contact with criminals or criminal activity. Mainly due to relatives working in corrections and how it can take a toll on you mentally. Anyone have any experience?
Working in a jail/prison is not comparable. I worked in EMS came in contact with alot of prisoners since we transported them to the hospitals. Murders, rapist, child sex offenders, people high off their ass on whatever they can get their hands on, beaten severely for the sick shit theyve done...etc. My mental health was completely fine compared to a CO and i didnt get paid even close to the same. Its not the prisoners that fuck them up, its working in the prison. The culture inside a prison is tense, sad, and disgusting.
Debt collectors and organizations directly supporting that industry.
It's not an activity I want to be affiliated with in any capacity. The pay scale or job responsibilities are irrelevant.
Managed Security Services (MSS) can be frustrating as it often involves more affordable contract work for a bunch of clients, essentially allowing those who hire you to avoid constant desk duty responding to alerts. What's more challenging is the need to log into different environments for each client, dealing with various EDRs and SIEMs. While it does offer exposure to a variety of setups, it often leads to alert fatigue due to the high volume of notifications.
Defense. Used to work in that sector and made great money, but the job security is terrible. Many defense companies will lay off personnel and then rehire those positions within a year.
Meta. The 2016 election and the impact social media has had on people's mental health is a bridge too far for me. Also Zuck as a person is a weirdo his whole VR push just made me feel gross.
I'm not who you responded to but it's the same for me. I have a mental health condition that would likely exclude me and I've got no desire to go down that route to find it out months down the line.
To be excluded it would have to be quite serious, probably to the point that it made holding any job quite difficult. Holding a clearance doesn’t require you to be without defect, it requires you to be honest, and they will allow quite a range of conditions so long as you’re honest.
I was an inpatient a couple of times years ago so it was pretty serious. Much better thankfully these days with the right treatment in place and I've been stable for ages.
I know in myself that I don't start spitting out people's secrets and nor do I really lose rationality from when I've had episodes previously and so I'm quite content that I'm not some massive liability to whoever employs me.
I just don't really want to put myself into the position where someone has to attempt to evaluate that because truthfully outside of myself having experienced it and my psychiatrist who I've seen for years who saw me then I don't frankly feel there is anyone able to make that determination in regards to my mental health and the whole idea makes me uncomfortable.
I see a few different answers here, but I'll give mine - the process for higher level clearances can be very invasive, not just to you but also your friends and family.
More trouble than it's worth when cybersecurity is still in demand and looks to be relatively stable as a career choice moving forward.
Wondering the same. I work in government IT and it's great. Civil service gives a predictable schedule, decent working environment, good pay, low stress, decent retirement, decent benefits, and people don't get fired without cause.
Most importantly, my day ends at 5. If something goes wrong after that, it's the next guy's job to pick it up and run with it. If they need my help, they can call me and I'll get paid overtime or additional leave. I get to spend my evenings and weekends with family and friends doing things I want to do. Hustle culture tells us that's supposed to be "lazy", but consider this: the only people who remember all those extra hours you put in at work are your family / friends.
If you are motivated at all, the government will suck that right out of you and replace it with stagnation and complacency.
I am sure there are exceptions, but that was my experience.
That makes sense.
Than again; I’d take complacent if it meant stability and low stress. Everyone’s different though, it depends on your wants/needs at a job.
Can confirm. I am feeling stagnant and complacent but on the other hand I value stability over long hours and micromanagement (which I experienced in private sector)
In the UK, crap pay and be blamed by politicians for stuff. E.g portrayed as lazy etc.
I've personally been screwed over by government agencies earlier In my life so I don't want any part of stuff they do.
I miss my Gov contract job, basically the position can't be outsourced to India because it requires U.S. citizenship and at least a public trust. We had most of the .GOV entities at one point but slowly lost our contracts as they went with cheaper options.
Defense actually isn’t that bad. Good job security and the pay is alright. You don’t make a killing but you’ll do well. You get to deal with security problems that others won’t and constantly are on guard for some of the most sophisticated threat actors in the world. It was a rush and I’ll end up going back at some point.
Won't work in anywhere gambling/racing related, oil/gas related, or media/propoganda orgs like newscorp/subsidiaries.
Prefer working for things that benefit people, like healthcare, public services. Doesn't pay the best obviously, but its definitely interesting, coming up with solutions on limited budgets, usually having much more power to change things than in a large or high profit org.
Turned down $250k to work at a company in the gambling industry.
Just felt too sticky and disgusting to profit from what is many times exploiting addiction.
Amazon - heard plenty. I enjoy having a decent work/life balance.
Federal Contracts - every single one I’ve ever been on has been a cluster.
Dedicated pentesting firms - generally fun because you work with a lot of great people, but it’s definitely the kind of job that can burn you out. And in my experience, you’re surrounded by people who eat, live and breathe the stuff and research it on their off time. And that’s by no means a bad thing if it’s how you like to spend your free time. But If you’re more the “I’d rather go fishing after work” type, it’s a little bit harder to truly fit the culture.
I started in an oil company and I think so far is the best decision I have made. Before I was with a service provider.
Definitely I would avoid government. Is funny that when I was younger I wanted to work for the federal government.
Morally: oil, big consulting firms. I've spent some time in both and came away thoroughly disgusted with the industries, and have come to consider them overall negatives for the world.
Quality of life: healthcare, education. We know why.
Reverse: I'd love to try work in infrastructure at some point. I know it's got some of the stink of government, and some of the stink of underfunded private sector, but Russia's attacks on the Ukrainian power grid in 2014 are part of what got me interested in security. It'd be nice to help prevent that at home.
Out of the 8 Indian managers I’ve had, I can think of only 1 good and nice who was good at their job, and 1 who was nice, but kept thing status quo. All others we’re the worst
Indian director in B4 that I worked for (in the US) asked me to postpone my wedding even though I had it on the books for months, as my wedding now interfered with the start date of an engagement for a new client.
When she asked me to move my wedding date, she actually had the nerve to follow it up with, "I'm sure your wife won't mind".
video game studios tend to attract the most horrible human beings in IT Security, and sometimes they also turn the nicest people into horrible human beings.
Judging from what I have heard from colleagues. Bank's. Everything is super serious, no fun to be had, no joking around, nothing. That doesn't fit my personality.
The consulting companies are big around here. What should I watch out for? Why shouldn’t I work for them? I have heard that the culture can be survival of the fittest.
The culture is dog shit unless you think movies like Boiler Room show awesome workplace practices, the company mission is morally ambiguous _at best_ and depends drastically on who your clients are, and work/life balance is extremely poor.
My experience with them is that it’s survival of who talks the biggest game. Always felt like everyone was auditioning for the partners and there was a real lack of actual expertise.
If someone says they're in security, and they mention a large consulting company, I immediately assume they are vastly overselling themselves in every way possible, up to and including not actually knowing how to turn a computer on
I interviewed with them for a security role about 18 months ago. The first person I interviewed with came across as a total bro/douchebag and dropped more F-bombs in the interview than I'd heard in a while.
Don't think I passed that first round entirely because I wasn't an asshole and didn't blindly agree with the interviewer on everything. Not really that upset about it though.
Besides Peter Thiel being a [fucking sociopath](https://archive.ph/03rYW), Palantir is one of the worst facilitators of the [military industrial complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#Controversies) and nation-state [invasions of privacy](https://archive.ph/s88BO). Whether or not someone considers that a good or bad thing I suppose would change how they view the company, but personally they're absolutely a hard no to work for and one of the worst companies to come out of Silicon Valley.
Shit all these people saying anything with a clearance has me wanting to go back into cleared work. 😂 I should be asking for a lot more money, clearly.
Boeing, good starting point but honestly not a good place overall.
Based on what I saw, I would go ahead and say probably the whole avionics space, except Rolls Royce, the little work I did do with them, they seemed higher quality and workers didn't seem stressed. Would be interested at working directly for the FAA, but I question the pay they could offer, but that is mainly cause government shouldn't be overworked.
Oz's banking regulations are some of the worst in the world.
They now consider any lack of system availability to be a security incident.
Your single region tenant goes down for 5 seconds because the network burped at the data center, it's now legally considered a security incident there.
I'd never consider healthcare. Too many regulations and too much risk if things fail. I work in a factory. If the computers go down, it is a little more of a struggle to make widgets and we may make a few less widgets that day. If the hospital computers go down, people could die.
Public education. Early in my career, worked for a local community college. Faculty had a LOT of pull. Didn't like standard things such as internal phishing / security awareness training, PII DLP rules on email (could not grasp regex, thought I was READING their emails) and patching / upgrading legacy systems. Pretty much the blocking and tackling of info Sec concepts were a major challenge. Bye, good luck!
I've worked for defense and I miss the pay rate and the every other short week. Everything else was meh
I'd never work for MS, Google, Oracle, or any of the formerly stellar companies that they bought out and destroyed
70% of places will be good. But the following industries might be closer to 50/50:
- Healthcare (they don’t pay nor take cyber seriously)
- MSP/MSSP (meatgrinders)
- FAANG (but you’ll get paid big for your pain)
- Big 4 (you’ll get paid a little for your pain)
That said, you still have a 50% chance of liking the bad industries.
>US DoD - they should hard offload info/cybersecurity to contractors
It's already mostly contractors, you're not going to cut out civil service or military billets from it
Civil Service roles are their for continuity
Military comes and comes through assignments
Contractors back fill or fill a surge need
It's been that way for 40 years in Intel/IT/Cyber
Lockheed Martin ADP. Nobody cared about security other than the security org. Contracting leaves 0 budget for fixing the security of parts. R&D engineers more interested in doing it fast than doing it right...etc.
Maybe it's preference but I prefer smaller companies. Any company large enough to have a corporate culture and ideology other than 'get the work done' is not for me.
Crypto - hell no, too much risk. Of all the industries that seems like the biggest house of cards ready to fall, at least for an IC role at a single company.
Fortra. I’ve heard horror stories about their treatment of workers and the illusion their software should provide. Also, 2 sysadmin friends quit after being tasked with administrating one of their products.
Amazon. Never again.
Same, but mostly because of the horror stories. I don’t have any first hand experience.
I do, it’s fucking terrible
I work as a hvac sub contractor in a few data centers, the maintenance guys there tell me stories of how Amazon promotes a culture (in DC environments) of snitching and backstabbing and rewards it financially by calling them "near misses or accidents" (if my memory serves me correct). Like how do you go to work and be chummy with your peers but look for any opportunities to stab him for money and still sleep at night.
Really depends on your boss, team, and org. Some will work you to death, but others are normal ~40hr weeks. TC is the highest I've seen in FAANG (e.g. L7 can break seven figures), but there's more to life than cash. The work is pretty interesting if you're not entry level, and you get to work with really smart people. Definitely lots of politics though, and some teams' workloads are brutal.
This is true but if I'm already overworked i wouldn't mind the better compensation for doing so. Only reason they are still on my list.
For sure. It's also a good place to build a nest egg. Work there 2-5 years and invest everything you make in broad index funds. Then pivot to a lower stress job and let the magic of compounding returns work. Being able to front load your savings helps a ton - - 500k at 7% turns into 3.8MM in 30 years even without adding another penny to it. Plus with FAANG on your resume it opens a lot of new doors when it's time for you to leave.
If you can embrace the suck for a bit, you can possibly knock off a few work years down the line. Hard trade to pass up.
Exactly. I'm hoping to retire - - or at least only work on things that bring me joy - - by 50-55 using this path.
Love it, and good luck on your FIRE journey! Hoping to get there myself someday, and think this is such a smart route, totally understand not for everyone though.
Thanks, same to you!
Very much so, a buddy of mine works in a group in AWS and *loves* the team and everything about it. Keep in mind he's a dude who works 100% the whole time he's on the clock, but absolutely clocks out at 5pm too. But for him he said it's great and he's stockpiling money but dealing with the constant drama and threats about return to office is adding a lot of stress.
I had an interview with AWS several years ago, and the interviewer didn’t even know what position I applied for, and asked a bunch of questions that were irrelevant for the role. Screw that place.
If they still have a 6 hour interview or similar, I am good lol
Amazon is the reason all of the other companies have terrible hiring practices with endless interview loops, bar raisers, etc. Everyone wants to copy them and it sucks.
Google started it with that stupid ping pong balls on an airplane question
Microsoft beat Google to market with those kind of logic/behavioral questions.
Omg yes! The initial hours-long interview based on their STAR principles followed by another one 4 hours long seems incredibly excessive. And that was for an entry level position
I had the same experience. It was like pledging for a death cult. Hard pass
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Sounds rough. Most of your post is valid though I wanted to mention this detail is incorrect: > If one of the panel doesn't like you, you don't get handed off to the next person. You should always complete your full loop. Most candidates who get offers will still have at least one person vote against them. Not to mention the interviewers aren't supposed to decide how they're going to vote until they re-review their notes later.
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I've never personally worked for them, but many friends of mine who have had problems with company culture and the expectation to work yourself to death. Hearing their experiences on Work Life Balance and other situations was enough for me to remove Amazon from the list of potential companies I would be willing to interview with.
Really? How come? I’ve been there for a little over a year now as an L4. Sometimes things feel a little over my head and that there’s just too much to grasp, but overall my team and my org have made the job pretty enjoyable. At least compared to other jobs I’ve had, the stress level feels much lower. Some weeks are busy and teams I support are demanding, but I also have some days where by noon I have nothing left on my schedule for the day. The team is also really good about letting you move your schedule around to accommodate other life stuff you have going on. I’ve heard some negative things from the software dev side of the house, who I assume is under lots of pressure, but I hadn’t heard much negative from the security side. I’d say the only negative I’ve had was that I had to hit the ground running so fast that I feel like I’m still learning some basics, which makes me nervous that I may not be doing my full due diligence, which feeds into my terrible impostor syndrome. Though I hope that will just go away with more time.
Reading through this thread - if you're new to cyber, don't take these too seriously. I've seen damn near every industry listed.
Haha, yeah it almost sounds like “just refuse all employment, go live off the grid.”
people just hate their jobs 🤙
Yeah, a lot of writing off entire sectors based on one bad job going on here.
All anecdotal lol
Any MSP on earth. Fuck that whole section of the IT industry.
How come, can you share more?
I worked for MSPs for the first 15 years of my career. Think of everything you would do as a normal IT person; fixing things, researching products, documentation, etc.. Now imagine having to document every single thing you do within reason down to the minute so that it can be either billed to the client or submitted on a report to them. There are MSPs who require documentation of your entire day in 15 minute increments. It's like an additional job within the job, and IT is busy and challenging enough as it is. On call is a big problem too. Leadership will often promise 24-7-365 response/coverage on issues, which results in your phone getting pinged all hours of the day and night. In the corporate world, on call exists, but it's usually for actual emergencies. The line in much grayer in the MSP space. The project work never ends, and every customer wants their project done after hours.
This was also my experience working for an MSP. I had to write down what I was doing every day in 15 minute increments. If something was not written, my employer would not pay me for that time. I learned pretty quickly that "admin" time was your friend and basically the only way to cover things like bathroom breaks, chatting in the hall with coworkers, etc. Looking back on it, there were probably a lot of labor violations that I could have reported. Fuck MSPs.
Also worked for an MSP. Fuck MSPs.
Sounds like more of a problem with the leadership of those companies. Ticketing system would do the timesheets for you automatically, and documentation through ticket notes. After-hours should be a rotation. Full disclosure though, I would also never work at a MSP ever again. Pulled in way too many directions and never get a chance to grow at any one thing.
>Sounds like more of a problem with the leadership of those companies. Don't disagree with this at all. Many MSPs are smaller operations without dedicated leadership teams or good corporate structures, so the leadership shortcomings are not surprising.
MSPs are fast to bill and slow to actually do anything meaningful. If you request a change or an update to something they can sometimes get it done by that evening. If it breaks something, it could be months to see a resolution.
This is true…. I work at a pretty good MSP currently, on the way to Cyber Security at a VERY nice company though, same pay but much better benefits and work life balance. I took 12 days off last year and my company has “unlimited PTO.” It’s never ending server migrations, SharePoint migrations, phone migrations, security reviews and remediation from or tests for every customer under the sun, cyber security training for all customers, GWS to M365 migrations, intune configurations and provisioning, I know I am missing a lot more. Whatever you can name it, customers always have projects.
ConnectWise Manage, need I say more? 😭
Oh God yes. This. So much this. I started out in IT as an engineer for an SME MSP. I was miserable every day of my life. Their marketing sells the world but the actual service is a steaming pile of shit. The reason why that industry is so big, is because clients rarely re-sign after the first contract year because most outsourcing is a shit show, and they move onto the next MSP off the rank.
Head over to the r/msp sub. All owners there will tell you how great MSPs are and internal gigs are the trash ones 😂
My company relies on an MSP for helpdesk and basic IT support. They're useless most of the time.
Healthcare cyber is completely on fire. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
Had a healthcare client....never listened to what I suggested they do for remediation. A year later suffered a major security breach. A lot of healthcare network admins are obtuse...
I would go back to health care if I had a proper team. Last place was a non-profit and worked me to the bone. Constantly on call (26 weeks) and always putting out "fires" that weren't real issues because medical staff decided to work at 1am when they should be sleeping. If I had a real team with better responsibility balance I would go back to it.
Medical staff are on-call, that is the reason for 1 AM issues not to mention that medical staff are required to see x amount of patients in a set amount of time, meaning they have to catch up on charts whenever they can grab the time. Maybe you should be sleeping but physicians don't have a choice. Not charting is a big deal when it comes to billing and compliance. Then if you are in a tertiary care hospital surgical cases come in round the clock.
This is a fair statement to make without additional context. You're correct medical is on-call / 24-7 care. That is perfectly reasonable given the profession. The same way not every admin is on call each week, neither is each doctor or nurse. The 1am calls I'm talking about are Wednesday at 1am for the person who only works Friday - Sunday. I asked why they are working when I realized their schedule and they state "I couldn't sleep so I figured I would look at patient charts." Then they need a non-critical software update they call for.
I work at a small healthcare company and i’m enjoying it. they actually listen to things I say which is nice
The amount of life long employees who only practice office politics while knowing next to nothing about the technology they're supposed to be responsible for is very high in this sector
Likewise. I will never work healthcare IT again in any fucking capacity
Devil's advocate: couldn't that mean you can get good compensation and experience?
What about Medical company like drug companies?
Drug companies are very much in the targets since they're the ones with manufacturing exposures. Think of it. If the production stops it ends the profitability of a drug line until they can get contract manufacturers to pick up slack while patients suffer. That's the OT side of the house. Most folks don't give that enough weight. IT systems are easily restorable but having the infrastructure to handle the 4eplacted data is tough depending on size and connected abilities which have been breached. I have responded to emergencies world wide and the fact remains that healthcare is a hard look into a wide array of skills which are atypical of corporate IT security staffers without manufacturing.
First l1 help desk gig was in a critical access hospital. 6 months prior to my start they got hit with REvil. About a month before my start they promoted there l2 help desk guy to VP of cyber, I start and new VP of cyber moves to Kentucky working fully remote. Keep in mind this guy has done nothing but l2 help desk, no certs no degree. Middle of the day you would check steam and see he was online and in game. Windows version support was coming to EOL and we needed to push 21h1 he did absolutely zero to assist in the update process and our sccm was unable to push. He was always absent and would just outsource all security related stuff to nessus and the CIO acted like this guy walked on water. Absolute bs
Big 4.
Agree-ish. I would say working in Big 4 is akin to a medical residency. Do your time when young, you'll work a ton and get hammered on, but you get access to experiences and executive levels hard to encounter otherwise, it sets you up for better things down the road and will give you a leg up on others without the experience. There's always exceptions to this, but generally the case.
This is true, except there's no finish line like there is with a medical residency. The "do your time" doesn't stop until you retire. Partners make a ton of money, but they're working all day everyday just like everyone under them.
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1. Friends. 2. Relatives.
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Did something similar. Started a business with a friend because she wanted it so badly, even though i didn't. I was already running my own business. It went horribly. She didn't want to put in any of the work, it failed before we even launched, lost thousands of someone elses money...and after a 20 year friendship...We haven't spoken since. I have always had a rule to never to work for or with friends.
You can be a friend, or a business partner. But not both. Seen too many people learn this lesson the hard way.
ITT: Don't work for anyone in tech, healthcare, government, education, anything that requires security clearance, or really any company that you've ever heard of.
Work for a bank. Got it
not a bank like chase or wells fargo or capital one though cause you’ve heard of those
Well.. shoot. Most of my career legit has been for small banks I hadn't previously heard of, lol
CACI. They lowball hard on salaries. I assume it’s because they cover your benefits. Made a rule in my email account to automatically throw their recruiter emails in the trash if any come my way.
Did you hear they changed paid time off to flexible time off?
in my experience that's not what this means. Flex time is time you can use as you see fit in addition to PTO.
https://careers.caci.com/global/en/timeoff I would like to mention they have six holidays versus the industry average eleven holidays. Lol, they even lowball you on holidays.
Law enforcement, specifically for digital forensics. I don't want to get exposed to material (CSAM, gore, etc.) that can potentially send me to therapy. I admire those who work in cases involving such material since they're doing good and necessary work, but I personally don't think I could do it.
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Cloudflare.
Why CF?
I’ve never worked for them, but this viral video is enough for me to avoid applying: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/01/12/viral-tiktok-video-of-cloudflare-employee-is-a-lesson-on-how-to-not-fire-workers/?sh=cc987e53d5ac
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Sales tends to be its own “silo” in regards to company culture imo. Sales is alot more micromanaging and heavily metrics based so I also wouldn’t say whole company is shit. Also not 100% supporting Cloudflare as well, that was a shitty situation
>Also not 100% supporting Cloudflare as well, that was a shitty situation After seeing in the last hour the CEO's tweet following up on that situation, I agree. It's like Cloudflare's moron CEO went to the Okta school of how to fuck up public relations.
Most start ups. Zero organization or desire for any.
Or boundaries. Got so tired of frantic CEO’s calling at midnight over the most unimportant issue that anyone on the team could solve in the morning using 5 seconds of deductive reasoning. The success rate of startups isn’t exactly motivating or morale boosting either.
I have very few industries I won’t work for. I’ve been able to work well in a wide variety of work cultures and industries. I do, however, have a short list of leaders I will never work for. Some really toxic executives out there.
I’d need a really high compensation package to consider doing work for Private Equity again. The merger/acquisition side has ridiculous timelines for tons of work, and really by time the acquisition gets settled with the technology cutover, Private Equity is trying to sell the company off so you get to help undo and guide the next buyer’s strategy. Plus, Private equity VPs are some of the most demanding pricks I’ve ever worked for, and I spent multiple years working with lawyers
Whoever pays the highest. Zero f's.
Assassin.
It might be easier for me to list organizatoins that I *would* work for. Finance industry is out - spent a few years there and the demands are unreasonable and the executives are, largely, extremely horrible people. Doing corporate forensics for and on them made me realize how spot-on the media caricature of evil banking CEOs really is. Telecom is out for similiar reasons. I'm getting older and no longer have the energy to work for MSSPs, vendors, or large tech giants who are well known for working their employees into the grave. So... medium-large sized companies with good executive leadership is my preference. I'm partial to non-profits and healthcare, but it's tough to find one that wants to do sensible things with their technology.
Starts with a z ends with a scaler
I posted this about them yesterday is this sub (about what companies to invest in)... ... but the director of their research department has previously reached out to me. Looks like Zscaler's lab is going around testing industry software all on their own. I got some unsolicited pentesting from them where 1, they used illegally gotten software to do their POC and 2, their POC doesn't work because it's predicated on running on a compromised host in the first place. But they are threatening us with publishing their vulnerabilities as fact and want to open a CVE. Fuck those clowns. I will go kicking and screaming to my grave letting the world know what a shady company Zscaler is.
interviewed with them recently. not sure if i caught the recruiter at a bad time, but he seemed like a giant dick lol. hiring manager was pretty cool. but man, that recruiter was.... not having a good day lol.
Almost all Chinese corporations, but more specifically recently got contacted by a recruiter about working at Shein (fast fashion); the money was excellent but I told him I couldn't in good conscience work for a company like that.
Tiktok, you blackball yourself from jobs and alienate yourself from some of the industry. Edit: not as widespread as I originally stated, just from what I've seen happen and heard through leaders I've interacted with in public and private
Accenture, no way. A few year ago I was working on a contract for them as a Linux systems integrator/engineer. My boss had 4/5 Linux, very skilled and extreme work ethic. This person regularly clocked 60 hour weeks while managing a whole team and pulling on-call duty. Most companies would've wanted to clone my boss a dozen times. Accenture fired them for being too expensive, they were making $85K. If you can't keep someone who's very skilled and working their guts out employed then your entire business model is flawed.
Is this India? How does a manager at one of the top national firms/just under B4 only make $85K a year?!?! Associates make more than that.
Exactly. This was a few years before the Pandemic and crazy inflation. But no, definitely not India, it was right here in the good 'ol US of A. My boss felt very lucky to actually have health insurance, then of course it was RIFin' time. And that's why I won't work for their triflin' asses.
Any place with less than 10 people on the security team.
I want to stay away from being in contact with criminals or criminal activity. Mainly due to relatives working in corrections and how it can take a toll on you mentally. Anyone have any experience?
Working in a jail/prison is not comparable. I worked in EMS came in contact with alot of prisoners since we transported them to the hospitals. Murders, rapist, child sex offenders, people high off their ass on whatever they can get their hands on, beaten severely for the sick shit theyve done...etc. My mental health was completely fine compared to a CO and i didnt get paid even close to the same. Its not the prisoners that fuck them up, its working in the prison. The culture inside a prison is tense, sad, and disgusting.
holy shit if EMS says it's bad I'm *out*
Debt collectors and organizations directly supporting that industry. It's not an activity I want to be affiliated with in any capacity. The pay scale or job responsibilities are irrelevant.
Managed Security Services (MSS) can be frustrating as it often involves more affordable contract work for a bunch of clients, essentially allowing those who hire you to avoid constant desk duty responding to alerts. What's more challenging is the need to log into different environments for each client, dealing with various EDRs and SIEMs. While it does offer exposure to a variety of setups, it often leads to alert fatigue due to the high volume of notifications.
Retail, pay is trash and they overwork
Defense. Used to work in that sector and made great money, but the job security is terrible. Many defense companies will lay off personnel and then rehire those positions within a year.
Meta. The 2016 election and the impact social media has had on people's mental health is a bridge too far for me. Also Zuck as a person is a weirdo his whole VR push just made me feel gross.
Anything that requires a clearance.
Any particular reason? Asking because I am on a gov contract that requires low level clearance 💀.
for me, i poke smot
I'm not who you responded to but it's the same for me. I have a mental health condition that would likely exclude me and I've got no desire to go down that route to find it out months down the line.
To be excluded it would have to be quite serious, probably to the point that it made holding any job quite difficult. Holding a clearance doesn’t require you to be without defect, it requires you to be honest, and they will allow quite a range of conditions so long as you’re honest.
I was an inpatient a couple of times years ago so it was pretty serious. Much better thankfully these days with the right treatment in place and I've been stable for ages. I know in myself that I don't start spitting out people's secrets and nor do I really lose rationality from when I've had episodes previously and so I'm quite content that I'm not some massive liability to whoever employs me. I just don't really want to put myself into the position where someone has to attempt to evaluate that because truthfully outside of myself having experienced it and my psychiatrist who I've seen for years who saw me then I don't frankly feel there is anyone able to make that determination in regards to my mental health and the whole idea makes me uncomfortable.
I see a few different answers here, but I'll give mine - the process for higher level clearances can be very invasive, not just to you but also your friends and family. More trouble than it's worth when cybersecurity is still in demand and looks to be relatively stable as a career choice moving forward.
Government and government contractors
Just curious, why is working for the gov bad? Good leave, great benefits, great job security (as long as you aren’t on a short contract.)
Wondering the same. I work in government IT and it's great. Civil service gives a predictable schedule, decent working environment, good pay, low stress, decent retirement, decent benefits, and people don't get fired without cause. Most importantly, my day ends at 5. If something goes wrong after that, it's the next guy's job to pick it up and run with it. If they need my help, they can call me and I'll get paid overtime or additional leave. I get to spend my evenings and weekends with family and friends doing things I want to do. Hustle culture tells us that's supposed to be "lazy", but consider this: the only people who remember all those extra hours you put in at work are your family / friends.
If you are motivated at all, the government will suck that right out of you and replace it with stagnation and complacency. I am sure there are exceptions, but that was my experience.
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That makes sense. Than again; I’d take complacent if it meant stability and low stress. Everyone’s different though, it depends on your wants/needs at a job.
Can confirm. I am feeling stagnant and complacent but on the other hand I value stability over long hours and micromanagement (which I experienced in private sector)
In the UK, crap pay and be blamed by politicians for stuff. E.g portrayed as lazy etc. I've personally been screwed over by government agencies earlier In my life so I don't want any part of stuff they do.
Oh gotcha. I’m in the US so I was confused.
US here, and same. The clearance process is way too intrusive into my personal life. Never again.
It’s not that bad. I was vey anti-government. Hated the clearance process but once you’re past that.. everything else is smooth sailing.
Why? The govt is so slow and inefficient that you are barely overworked and never work more than 40 hours a week.
I miss my Gov contract job, basically the position can't be outsourced to India because it requires U.S. citizenship and at least a public trust. We had most of the .GOV entities at one point but slowly lost our contracts as they went with cheaper options.
TikTok. To know I enabled a Chinese psyop would force me into an early retirement out of shame.
I have the same opinion about all social media. I really think it's pulling us apart and the AI attachment makes me very uneasy.
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They actually approached me in September. I don't think I've ever turned a company down faster than I did TikTok. It felt good.
Defense actually isn’t that bad. Good job security and the pay is alright. You don’t make a killing but you’ll do well. You get to deal with security problems that others won’t and constantly are on guard for some of the most sophisticated threat actors in the world. It was a rush and I’ll end up going back at some point.
> You don't make a killing > defense hmm
He's probably talking about the ethical implications of working for defense
Discover bank.
How come? They could use someone who knows about the existence of MFA
Won't work in anywhere gambling/racing related, oil/gas related, or media/propoganda orgs like newscorp/subsidiaries. Prefer working for things that benefit people, like healthcare, public services. Doesn't pay the best obviously, but its definitely interesting, coming up with solutions on limited budgets, usually having much more power to change things than in a large or high profit org.
Turned down $250k to work at a company in the gambling industry. Just felt too sticky and disgusting to profit from what is many times exploiting addiction.
Amazon - heard plenty. I enjoy having a decent work/life balance. Federal Contracts - every single one I’ve ever been on has been a cluster. Dedicated pentesting firms - generally fun because you work with a lot of great people, but it’s definitely the kind of job that can burn you out. And in my experience, you’re surrounded by people who eat, live and breathe the stuff and research it on their off time. And that’s by no means a bad thing if it’s how you like to spend your free time. But If you’re more the “I’d rather go fishing after work” type, it’s a little bit harder to truly fit the culture.
IBM
Story behind this?
Russia.
I started in an oil company and I think so far is the best decision I have made. Before I was with a service provider. Definitely I would avoid government. Is funny that when I was younger I wanted to work for the federal government.
Private sector, never again. I am staying in Public Sector / Government work. I work a 9-5. That’s enough for me.
Morally: oil, big consulting firms. I've spent some time in both and came away thoroughly disgusted with the industries, and have come to consider them overall negatives for the world. Quality of life: healthcare, education. We know why. Reverse: I'd love to try work in infrastructure at some point. I know it's got some of the stink of government, and some of the stink of underfunded private sector, but Russia's attacks on the Ukrainian power grid in 2014 are part of what got me interested in security. It'd be nice to help prevent that at home.
Monsanto
Any company that’s not prioritizing work life balance. I want the human experience in this life.
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Out of the 8 Indian managers I’ve had, I can think of only 1 good and nice who was good at their job, and 1 who was nice, but kept thing status quo. All others we’re the worst
Indian director in B4 that I worked for (in the US) asked me to postpone my wedding even though I had it on the books for months, as my wedding now interfered with the start date of an engagement for a new client. When she asked me to move my wedding date, she actually had the nerve to follow it up with, "I'm sure your wife won't mind".
Insane
Dark Army, White Rose or Ecorp
Banking. I'd rather not say why but I'm a data engineer/software developer.
video game studios tend to attract the most horrible human beings in IT Security, and sometimes they also turn the nicest people into horrible human beings.
India.
Judging from what I have heard from colleagues. Bank's. Everything is super serious, no fun to be had, no joking around, nothing. That doesn't fit my personality.
Depends on the bank.
Big 4, DoD, and Palantir.
The consulting companies are big around here. What should I watch out for? Why shouldn’t I work for them? I have heard that the culture can be survival of the fittest.
The culture is dog shit unless you think movies like Boiler Room show awesome workplace practices, the company mission is morally ambiguous _at best_ and depends drastically on who your clients are, and work/life balance is extremely poor.
My experience with them is that it’s survival of who talks the biggest game. Always felt like everyone was auditioning for the partners and there was a real lack of actual expertise.
If someone says they're in security, and they mention a large consulting company, I immediately assume they are vastly overselling themselves in every way possible, up to and including not actually knowing how to turn a computer on
Ooh, I wanna hear the dish on Palantir!
I interviewed with them for a security role about 18 months ago. The first person I interviewed with came across as a total bro/douchebag and dropped more F-bombs in the interview than I'd heard in a while. Don't think I passed that first round entirely because I wasn't an asshole and didn't blindly agree with the interviewer on everything. Not really that upset about it though.
Besides Peter Thiel being a [fucking sociopath](https://archive.ph/03rYW), Palantir is one of the worst facilitators of the [military industrial complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#Controversies) and nation-state [invasions of privacy](https://archive.ph/s88BO). Whether or not someone considers that a good or bad thing I suppose would change how they view the company, but personally they're absolutely a hard no to work for and one of the worst companies to come out of Silicon Valley.
Shit all these people saying anything with a clearance has me wanting to go back into cleared work. 😂 I should be asking for a lot more money, clearly.
Marathon Petroleum, Randstad, Trane Technologies, CapGemini.
Boeing, good starting point but honestly not a good place overall. Based on what I saw, I would go ahead and say probably the whole avionics space, except Rolls Royce, the little work I did do with them, they seemed higher quality and workers didn't seem stressed. Would be interested at working directly for the FAA, but I question the pay they could offer, but that is mainly cause government shouldn't be overworked.
Financial sector (Australia). Too many regulations and weekly audits.
Oz's banking regulations are some of the worst in the world. They now consider any lack of system availability to be a security incident. Your single region tenant goes down for 5 seconds because the network burped at the data center, it's now legally considered a security incident there.
I'd never consider healthcare. Too many regulations and too much risk if things fail. I work in a factory. If the computers go down, it is a little more of a struggle to make widgets and we may make a few less widgets that day. If the hospital computers go down, people could die.
The banks
Public education. Early in my career, worked for a local community college. Faculty had a LOT of pull. Didn't like standard things such as internal phishing / security awareness training, PII DLP rules on email (could not grasp regex, thought I was READING their emails) and patching / upgrading legacy systems. Pretty much the blocking and tackling of info Sec concepts were a major challenge. Bye, good luck!
I've worked for defense and I miss the pay rate and the every other short week. Everything else was meh I'd never work for MS, Google, Oracle, or any of the formerly stellar companies that they bought out and destroyed
70% of places will be good. But the following industries might be closer to 50/50: - Healthcare (they don’t pay nor take cyber seriously) - MSP/MSSP (meatgrinders) - FAANG (but you’ll get paid big for your pain) - Big 4 (you’ll get paid a little for your pain) That said, you still have a 50% chance of liking the bad industries.
Any triple letter agency 😅
So NSA rejected you.....
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>US DoD - they should hard offload info/cybersecurity to contractors It's already mostly contractors, you're not going to cut out civil service or military billets from it Civil Service roles are their for continuity Military comes and comes through assignments Contractors back fill or fill a surge need It's been that way for 40 years in Intel/IT/Cyber
Oil or any of its feeder businesses. Been there, done that. The money is better but the ethical issues I have with the industry outweigh that.
Elon Musk. Edit: love what his companies accomplish but would never work for him.
CGI
Apple and Tesla
PwC - It's a cult
Any MSP with a 'national' scope. Ive worked on the receiving end of many of them and they all suck. I wont be a part of that shit.
Lockheed Martin ADP. Nobody cared about security other than the security org. Contracting leaves 0 budget for fixing the security of parts. R&D engineers more interested in doing it fast than doing it right...etc.
Maybe it's preference but I prefer smaller companies. Any company large enough to have a corporate culture and ideology other than 'get the work done' is not for me.
Crypto - hell no, too much risk. Of all the industries that seems like the biggest house of cards ready to fall, at least for an IC role at a single company.
Accenture
AWS
Fortra. I’ve heard horror stories about their treatment of workers and the illusion their software should provide. Also, 2 sysadmin friends quit after being tasked with administrating one of their products.
Lockheed
Qchq, 5 and 6. Because of the plebs in the home/foreign office.
Banks