The Scoop

Software engineers at the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike complained about rushed deadlines, excessive workloads, and increasing technical problems to higher-ups for more than a year before a catastrophic failure of its software paralyzed airlines and knocked banking and other services offline for hours.

"Speed was the most important thing," said Jeff Gardner, a senior user experience designer at CrowdStrike who said he was laid off in January 2023 after two years at the company. "Quality control was not really part of our process or our conversation."

The issues were raised during meetings, in emails, and in exit interviews, ex-employees told Semafor. Almost two dozen former software engineers, managers and other staff described a workplace where executives prioritized speed over quality, workers weren't always sufficiently trained, and mistakes around coding and other tasks were rising. One former senior manager said they sat in multiple meetings where staff warned company leaders that CrowdStrike would "fail" its customers by releasing products that couldn't be supported.

Of the 24 former employees who spoke to Semafor, 10 said they were laid off or fired and 14 said they left on their own. One was at the company as recently as this summer. Three former employees disagreed with the accounts of the others. Joey Victorino, who spent a year at the company before leaving in 2023, said CrowdStrike was "meticulous about everything it was doing."

CrowdStrike disputed much of Semafor's reporting and said the information came from "disgruntled former employees, some of whom were terminated for clear violations of company policy." The company told Semafor: "CrowdStrike is committed to ensuring the resiliency of our products through rigorous testing and quality control, and categorically rejects any claim to the contrary."

Founded in 2011, CrowdStrike quickly rose as an industry leader in cybersecurity with the 2013 launch of its Falcon antivirus package. It went public in 2019, kicking off a massive growth spurt, adding thousands of workers and increasing revenue by more than a thousand percent by the end of fiscal year 2024.