Rollercoaster of a company - Anonymous employee Recorded Future Employee Review

3.0
31 Jul 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The reputation of the company/product amongst security practitioners is strong, Insikt produces high quality research, and demand in the market for intelligence is pretty solid, even when the macroeconomic environment is iffy. Investors and anyone with more than a paltry equity grant should be happy with the company's growth trajectory. Work/life balance is not terrible. Workloads can be seasonally heavy, but overall leadership tends to respect the idea that employees have lives outside of work. If you can curry favor with the right people, Recorded Future is a good company to hitch your career to, as the growth provides some decent advancement opportunities on most teams, but only if you can hang on and survive a messy day-to-day.

Cons

The executive leadership team is rife with micromanagement, which trickles down to the departments. COT doesn't trust departmental leaders to make decisions of any gravity without input from above. This means any decisions, from those made by ICs all the way up to VPs, require endless approvals, opportunities for input, etc. This contributes to a slow pace of movement that inflicts most teams/projects. Related to this is that important decision making seems to happen in a vacuum at the top without much regard for employee input. Favoritism is pretty blatant. Nearly every con on this review does not apply to anyone who is a favorite with someone higher-up. While the culture at Recorded Future isn't broadly toxic, there are certain individuals who are wildly unprofessional/toxic and get away with it. Compensation has fallen behind industry average, particularly for employees that have stuck around and advanced their careers. External hires are paid much closer to market rate than employees who make moves internally. Increasingly stingy equity grants and bonuses dependent on incredibly ambitious company goals do not pay the bills.

Explore other reviews about Recorded Future

5.0
27 Apr 2026
Anonymous contractor
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great environment, welcoming and friendly culture, lots of opportunities to grow, everyone wants to see others succeed

Cons

I can't think of any

2.0
25 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Good salary, but the benefits could improve, especially 401K.

Cons

Where to begin? Recorded Future has become an absolute mess of a workplace, particularly on the go-to-market side of the business. The sales team lost a huge percentage of its highest performing reps last year and constantly turns over management. Sales/marketing ops has lost so many people it almost doesn't exist at this point. Marketing has lost its best ICs and several key leaders. The GTM org is hobbling along, completely bereft of actual leadership, and with expectations so out of touch with reality, you'll start to wonder if anyone upstairs has ever led a revenue org before. Exec leadership is a mess. Several execs are needlessly, unproductively combative/unkind and provide their departments with little support. For some reason, RF is viewed by leadership less as a software company and more as an unofficial branch of the military/intelligence apparatus, with an unnecessary degree of unsmiling seriousness applied to everything. This culture of beating down employees has resulted in the departure of nearly every top performer that was holding most crumbling teams together, resulting in a pace of movement so glacial, you'd think you actually ARE working for the US government.

3
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