I once said I could work here forever, but that ride is over and I am already looking for a new job that can hopefully be close to what we had. The founders have all left, gone on a permanent sabbatical, or remain in a non-authoritative role. The C-Suite has run into their ivory towers and locked the doors behind them. Managers and directors have no idea what goes on above them (they never did) and had no idea the layoffs were even coming. They had no input as to who was let go and C-Suite had no idea who was most valuable to the company. It was Russian roulette and it left Cobalt with 40 bullet holes and counting. The trust erosion wasn’t just about the layoffs in and of itself. They happen. We’re not idiots, we understand the need for business decisions. Yes, the CEO Chris and CSO Caroline said specifically and in no uncertain terms that they can’t promise it won’t happen. But they said, with emphasis and a smile to assuage our fears, ‘we have ABSOLUTELY NO PLANS for layoffs right now and have many other options we’re going to try first’ only 1-2 business weeks (ie not counting holiday shutdown) before they suddenly had a plan for 15-20% of the company to be terminated with a severance agreement. THAT is where the trust was lost. That, and the fact that absolutely no one in middle management was consulted. Our managers who are there to advocate for us were overridden and ignored, so now we can’t even trust what our own managers say because they may be lied to themselves. How did you go from making those sweet smiles to the extremely drastic decision of letting nearly 20% of your company go in only a couple weeks? What happened to the other options? Nothing in the ‘macroeconomic situation’ changed drastically during that time period. And how could you even plan something like that in such a short time? It didn’t even end there. There have been a few more smaller rounds, where absolute pillars of Cobalt were let go. The kind of firings that make you raise your hands in the air and yell ‘WHAT?!’ Almost everyone I know is interviewing elsewhere. People are scared and even more than that, mad. You took our dream jobs away. Our product was never anything special, it’s a PDF wizard geared towards making vulnerability reports, with a sprinkle of analytics. The communication, a big selling point, is all accomplished by Slack. The only valuable assets Cobalt had was its employees (especially customer success) and pentesters, and the pentesters have been complaining and leaving over low pay too. No surprise that Cobalt’s bottom line is entirely dependent on having a third world country to pay relatively low wages to. So what’s left, at this point? Memories of good times. That’s it. Good job, C-Suite. You forecasted Cobalt’s failure and in your infinite executive wisdom ended up accelerating it like a rocket, but one pointed right at the sun. And now they are trying to write fake 5 star reviews, threatening people if they write reviews, and having the reviews taken down by any means possible. You really think we don’t see the second a new review goes up or goes down? Everyone at Cobalt is monitoring these reviews. I’m sorry to any prospective employees reading this as you truly missed something great. But it’s gone now, and I soon will be too.
