Toxic culture and stuck in the past - Software Developer Fortinet Employee Review

2.0
Feb 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The only thing this place is good for is to gather number of years on resume or to break the no experience barrier that a lot of new grads face. You will learn a lot about what NOT to do at this compnay and how years and even decades of bad technical decisions lead to bad outcomes. Good learnings on technical debt, dealing with toxic managers, firefighting issues in production. A good chance to learn about Linux System adminstration and Cybersecurity landscape.

Cons

I started my career at fortinet and I was unlucky enough to land in a team with heavy technical debt and severe intertia. The tech stack is largely legacy (Perl, PHP, Bash scripts with some hacked up Python and Go) and there is absolutely no interest in modernization and you are often asked to keep things running as they are. Managers largely do not care about your mental health or growth within the company. Culture of yes men is prevalent and is the way to survive and thrive in the company. Be it benefits, paid time off or any other perks company does the bare minimum required by law. There are some teams where its not as chaotic or toxic but those are hard to get into and are on the other side of the border (United States). The founders and higher management are oblivious to the conditions of the staff in the company and are simply intrested in running a sweatshop. It might not be appearent at first, but there is defintiely a bias towards Chinese nationality in the company and when I was there I heard interviews being offered in Mandarin for some candidates. Although the official policy is "speak english", this is not at all adhered to and people speak Mandarin/Cantonese with each other which can feel exclusionary to people from outside the culture. HR in the company is there to protect the company from you and not the other way around. (as expected). They also practice "corporate honeypotting/loyalty test" for Insider Threat Testing to create fake accounts about Employees at the company acting as whistleblowers to see if you co-operate with them on LinkedIn. If you are a new grad and are not in deep desepration please avoid this compnay at all costs for your own mental health and sanity.

Explore other reviews about Fortinet

5.0
Jun 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great Work life balance. Based on team,got the opportunity to work with multiple firewall vendors.

Cons

No bonus and No ESPP.

5.0
Jun 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- On target OTE and uncapped commissions - Great overall work culture - A lot of cool Field marketing events - Ability to expense dinners, entertainment, gifts for clients - Great company vision and a broad security fabric portfolio with several third party validations for a well-known cybersecurity brand makes it easy to sell and be successful.

Cons

- New business quotas are the same for every seller at least on my team, who all have very different territories, some with more white space heavy accounts that can be much more challenging to hit quota compared to other territories. Quotas went up by 20% from previous year. - Too many internal systems to navigate - processes and sales enablement tools could be more efficient - You can be the top performer in your US sales segment, and still not make it to President's Club because of the way it's structured - competing against different segments and only top 3-4% get to go each year. Rewarding top performers in general is an area needing improvement in my opinion.

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