Vantaggi
You get to put SOC experience on your resume. If you are a self learner it’s good to go in and experience a bunch of different SIEMs and analyze different alarms. But you’ll need to augment it with your own study because this is not true SOC Analyst role. Got to work with some good people in my office.
Svantaggi
Oh where to begin. The start I suppose. Training was basically non-existent. They have you watch a couple LogRhythm videos and then just throw you into the fire. They have started a big overhaul for it but there wasn’t really any half-decent training for new employees. You get taught about one SIEM but you use 7 different ones in a day. Promotions are based solely on if management likes you. Nothing to do with qualifications, time at the company, overall experience, etc. The girlfriend of a manager was promoted to higher position in a matter of months with no qualifications or experience. If you aren’t in the Wichita office you are at a severe disadvantage for getting promoted. A bunch of the SOC specialists, SOC 2, or SOC Lead’s did not know what they were doing and a lot of them didn’t care at all about their job and would rarely do anything to improve customer environments or make SOC 1’s life any easier. They get paid the most but don’t have to do much. I know a lot would “work from home” and just hang out in discord and play games all day. They wouldn’t respond to messages and some wouldn’t answer their phones when needed for escalations or issues with customer environments. Others would be pissed you called them as well, or act annoyed if you asked questions. Mad when they actually have to do their job. Eventually I was moved to a specific group of clients to monitor. I was put on nights monitoring these clients by myself. These were their high paying clients that have strict SLA’s and SOP’s. So being by myself I couldn’t take lunch or have breaks due to the chance of breaching SLA and costing the company money. This went on for months before they finally got someone else on with me. I was on for 12 hours straight with no help or any kind of break. I’m not the only one this has happened to. I told my manager about a route in the company I wanted to take and a certain position I wanted to move into. He said my name would be in consideration and I would be notified if the position was opening up. Went out and got certifications to be better suited for the role and had been with the company for quite some time. Got passed up multiple times without even knowing the position was opening up because they’d already given it to people without qualifications and much less time/experience with the company. My last 3 months with the company I heard from my manager 1 time, and it was to pick up a shift. The last 1 on 1 I had before this 3 month span, all my manager said was how much he didn’t want to have the 1 on 1 and just wanted to go home and they ended it early (about 2 minutes long in whole) so they could leave. As well I had no offboarding of any kind. When I explained I was leaving I never heard from management or HR, nobody said a word to me. They simply do not care. They don’t pay you well, they don’t train you, management is unfair and/or doesn’t care. They don't train you because they know when you learn and get experience you'll want to move on and actually get paid. But then they will turn around and act surprised and bitter that employees want to leave and they have such a high turnover rate. They don’t understand that they are the bottom of the barrel and if they want people to stay they need to give them a reason to.