Empowering environment with steep learning curve and poor balance - werkgeversreview SDE 1 bij Safe Security

Genuinely category-defining work in cyber risk - from CRQ, TPRM to CTEM — not marketing fluff, real outcomes for CISOs. Fast-paced, intellectually stimulating environment where good ideas win regardless of who they come from. Leadership is accessible, decisive, and transparent about where the company is headed and why.

Moving fast means priorities can shift; comfort with ambiguity is a real requirement, not a cliché. The bar is high and the pace is relentless; not the right fit for someone looking to coast.

Some individual engineers/other employees were genuinely helpful and kind.

The company somehow has both heavy processes and constant urgency, which produces chaos instead of structure. Leadership frequently calls the organization a “family” and claims to be transparent, but communication is selective and decisions happen behind closed doors. Engineering culture is defined by constant overwork and subtle pressure to offload tasks onto others just to stay afloat. You spend as much time defending your workload and deadlines as you do actually building anything. The CEO’s mindset feels stuck in 2015—there are frequent “Ferrari” metaphors, “work harder” rhetoric, and at one point, even a story shared in a surprisingly celebratory tone about a former employee who worked himself into a heart attack. This fits a broader pattern: a strong emphasis on minimizing short-term costs rather than making decisions with long-term stability or scalability in mind, which raises questions about the company’s longer-term direction. A significant number of US engineers had already been quitting because the workload and expectations were identical across regions while the compensation didn’t come close to matching US cost of living; unlike in India, labor protections and broader opportunities made leaving a more realistic option. The US engineering layoffs were ultimately explained as a reaction to several managers quitting, yet they came directly on the heels of this wave of voluntary departures. This also matters when reading reviews, since employee experiences and incentives can differ significantly by region.