In every company that I have ever worked for, my focus has always been advocating for the customer, whether that be in new product development, maintenance of existing products, resolving issues that are encountered, or being available when the customer needed help.
I have had the pleasure/joy over my career of having worked at companies that had this same value set. It was vital that the customer knew that he could trust us to do him right
While at F5, I continued the value set of advocating for the customer, however I soon learned that this was not the value set of F5. I continually encountered strong resistance. Premature release of software, software that was buggy and customer sub cases that were ignored to name a few.
Since my RIF, I have interviewed with many companies and to date haven’t found one that places the customer first. It’s about stock price and revenue. And after F5, I choose not to work in that type of environment again.