CrowdStrike
Irvine, CA
Grade: A
| Summary: High-profile company – helped link the DNC hack to Russia. Located in a mini tech-hub, the “City of Innovation,” Irvine, CA, just an hour away or so from Silicon Beach. Semi-annual meetings to determine company confidence-level, and teamwork assessment. Career ladder for engineers and others. Competitive benefits for company size and creative meeting places. |
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Intro: CrowdStrike offers a unique technology culture that is all about challenging the status quo, accomplishing the impossible, and pushing the envelope further than anyone else before. We encourage employees to explore interests outside their day-to-day job, and secure a work/life balance to help foster technical creativity. CrowdStrike takes on and stops increasingly sophisticated and stealthy hackers, cybercriminals, and unlawful nation-states. This is a company where we make a real difference – every day – in the lives of millions of people around the world. |
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Impact statements:
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Advancement Opportunities:
CrowdStrike has a unique multi-track career ladder that ensures engineers are able to follow the same career advancement as a Sr. Vice President while still focusing on engineering initiatives.
Medical benefits:
For the size of company we are, we provide competitive benefits as well as a several voluntary benefits like legal help and identity theft protection.
Community service/charitable causes:
CrowdStrike held its first company-wide community service day in May, 2016 where employees around the world volunteered and worked with at-risk kids and local schools, fed the hungry and homeless, cleaned up beaches, took care of animals at rescue shelters, assisted the elderly, sorted food at food banks, and in many other ways that supported local communities and help those in need. Many of our employees continue their community service with flexible work schedules and a company-wide commitment to community.
We also encourage employees to volunteer through our corporate initiative Think Week, where the company sets aside a week for employees to pursue their passions and development opportunities that are not directly tied to their day-to-day responsibilities.
Measuring satisfaction:
Every six months, we conduct what we call a ‘Pulse Survey’. This survey looks at many key areas across many demographics. We measure areas from company confidence, to work-life balance, to teamwork, collaboration, feedback, enablement, engagement and more. We believe that six months allows us to pulse our employees, look at opportunities, create plans, take concrete actions, close the loop, and pulse again.
We often use focus groups in designing companywide programs. For example, we used a focus group together made of employees from different sites, different tenures, and different levels to help us define the framework of our culture statement and program. We also are taking the same collaborative approach as we look to design our current and future workspaces.
We are unique because we have many locations. Each location has its own personality. We ensure that each location gets the same banded items like t-shirts, participates in the same events, and shares in the same fun.
Creative meeting places:
Again, since we have such a large distributed workforce, we work hard to use creative places and ways to hold meetings and events. Every month we fly our new hires to a single location to meet each other, learn about the company, meet our leadership team, and have some fun. Our quarterly company meetings are held in front of a live audience of employees in one location and streamed live to employees around the world and contain a mix of business updates, strategic direction and employee recognition, unfiltered Q&A between employees and leaders, and fun elements. With the use of a CrowdStrike “branded” set for live video segments from other locations and tons of new and important information, the quarterly company meetings achieve participation rates exceeding 90% and favorability ratings exceeding 90% for speakers and usefulness of content.
Perks:
We provide a variety of snacks and drinks in all our locations. We work hard to keep them healthy and rotate them as needed. We make sure that our office locations are near places where employees can take advantage of workout facilities, take walks and get out easily for lunch.
Fun:
We have different online collaboration rooms where employees can chat with each other. We have location rooms, common interests, and others. Employees connect, say hello, share humor, and much more. It allows employees in the same location and other locations to continue to connect with each other. In different locations employees have created walking groups and ping-pong tournaments and other games. Each quarterly company meeting contains a fun or humorous element involving employees and the company’s leaders.
How corporate vision is communicated:
Our founding vision is embedded in most of our communications from our CEO and other leaders to employees. In videos, company meetings, emails, blogs, and postings on the intranet, our leadership team connects our unique vision to the work at hand. For example, at our last All Hands, a key leader spoke inspirationally and aspirationally about our founding vision and how – every day – we protect people from increasingly sophisticated and stealthy hackers, cybercriminals, and unlawful nation-states.
Empowering employees:
We challenge our employees to innovate with no boundaries. CrowdStrike consistently reinforces that learning should be experiential, iterative, and shared to accomplish meaningful organizational impact. As such, we encourage technical leaders to pursue agile methodologies, independent research, and professional development opportunities that ultimately effect change at the company.
We hire experienced employees and empower them to make decision.
We have a flat organization which allow for empowerment at all levels.
We have several company wide recognition programs where employees are nominated by their peers and then recognized at our company wide all hands meetings. Our employee recognition programs honor both individual employees and teams, and our CEO personally announces each honoree and tells the story of their extraordinary efforts.
Ensuring well-being:
We allow employees to make their own schedules as it relates to their goals. We leave it to the leaders and managers and employees to work together to determine what is best for the team. We have standard holidays and we do not have a PTO policy. Employees are encouraged to take time to re-charge and spend time with their families. They do this by working directly with their managers and teams to do what is right.
We have competitive health benefits, and we also have a health fair that focuses on a holistic approach to taking care of yourself. We are flexible on work schedules and flexible on work locations.
Longevity:
We are only a five year old company and have doubled in growth this last year. That being said, all of our original starting members are still with the company. Our average tenure is 1.40 years. For engineering it is 1.76 years.
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Closing company statements: At CrowdStrike, we say that we don’t have a mission, we are on a mission to stop breaches and the team lives and breathes that mission every day by applying their knowledge, skills, and expertise to make a positive impact on our customers, the industry, and the world. Every day, CrowdStrike takes on and stops increasingly sophisticated and stealthy hackers, cybercriminals, and unlawful nation-states. This is a job where you make a real difference in the lives of millions of people around the world. |
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