Pros
I've been at Pure for a few years and know a thing or two about the state of affairs here. So, let's start with the pros: Products and Company: 1. Reliable and stable products that work. 2 . High customer satisfaction, which means high repeat purchase rates. 3. Innovative business models such as evergreen storage. 4. Good low hanging fruit market opportunity of replacing legacy storage over the next 2-3 years. 5. Competition is largely faltering- HP, NetApp, EMC. Great opportunity for Pure to land grab. 6. Innovative marketing...way ahead of what the products are truly capable of delivering. Benefits: 1. Industry standard benefits- nothing extraordinary 2. Free food - Mon, Wed, Friday 3. Always stocked up with snacks and drinks 4. Lots of parties and events, if those kind of things excite you. Culture: 1. Mostly transparent culture. Dietz is a good cheerleader, but disconnected with the realities at the front line management level. 2. Easy access to senior leadership, but mostly due to the small size of the company.
Cons
The small things- no 401K match, below industry pay structure, no HR processes in place. The elephant in the room..Pure is doing a good job of replacing the legacy storage platforms, however, it is unclear how the company plans to grow once this revenue stream dries up. The differentiation is rapidly shrinking and the market is very crowded already. The legacy players will not give up their estates without a good fight and they have deep pockets. And don't let the marketing fool you- there is no long term strategy to go beyond being a storage player, and there are no real plans for playing in the world of cloud centric IT. The street clearly sees this, and the stock price being nearly 40% below IPO and staying there is a testimony of this. The management team has given several excuses for why they believe the stock price is so low, the latest being, the street wants to see profitability. Frankly, I don't think anyone in management really knows how to truly bring the stock price up. In my opinion, the real reason why the stock is down is not lack of profitability, but it is the management team's lack of ability to paint a long term vision for the company. The world really doesn't need another on-prem infrastructure company- I think it's time everyone needs to accept this reality. And so if you are one of those that is waiting for the company to profitable to make money on your options so you can buy that $2M+house in South Bay or pay for your kids college, perhaps you want to think again? Culture is really starting to become toxic. Someone once called Pure the old boys club, and this is very true. If you are someone who just graduated out of college, Pure can be a great place to work because you'll probably make okay money, will have unlimited access to food and booze, and if you turn out to be semi-decent, you'll probably be able to throw tantrums about what projects you which projects you want to work and which you don't. Let's face it though- the company is building a storage platform. There is nothing sexy or innovative about building data services on a storage platform, no matter what your management tells you. If you are a mid-career level employee, good luck getting a career progression plan in place with your manager. It is practically impossible to get promoted or even begin to have a career planning discussion. The management team apparently thinks this is not important in a publicly traded company. They are still running the business like a startup. However, if you are in the right circles within the company (the old boys club), you will likely make it to a VP title in no time. The company recently promoted dozens of people to VP titles mostly as a motivation to keep them at the company. So at this point, the company has over 50 people (out of ~2000) with at least a VP title, many with no VP level skills, and absolutely zero exec presence. A truly bad example for the rest of the company. Many mid- career level folks especially in products and marketing have recently departed seeing no upside financially and from a career standpoint, and just being tired of the rampant politics.
