How do you get to 95% employee satisfaction in a company growing at meteor speed?
That's a serious question.
We all know that fast growth usually brings problems. Frustrated people. Departures. Morale that dips. The usual story.
But then I met Cyera.
Cyera is a data security company that's been growing at an insane pace. I ran a management workshop for them — and I couldn't believe what I saw.
A group of people scaling a company like a meteor, and somehow staying genuinely warm, positive, and working incredibly hard. At the same time.
The Cyera story is wild
From 50 to 1,000 people in two years. Revenue multiplied 26x. Valuation north of $6 billion.
Numbers that fly through the air.
But what surprised me most? Their engagement survey shows 95% satisfaction.
How?
Because normally in situations like these, you see small and large problems everywhere. Managers who haven't caught up. Culture that gets diluted. People who feel lost.
So how do they grow that fast and keep people that happy?
I invited Sharon Shkedi — Cyera's human capital lead — to explain.
Running a race and still being nice about it
Sharon's answer wasn't what I expected.
It wasn't about free lunches or flexible hours. It was something more structural: they made a deliberate bet that culture doesn't survive fast growth by accident. You have to engineer it.
Every new manager gets coaching. Every quarter there's a culture check. The values aren't on a poster — they're in the hiring decisions, the promotions, the conversations between teams.
The takeaway isn't "be nice to your people." It's that culture at scale requires active maintenance. Like a garden, not a building. You don't build it once and walk away.
And that — weirdly — is the unsexy secret behind impressive numbers.
It's not talent. It's not product-market fit. It's the boring, relentless work of keeping the human part of the machine healthy.
(Makes you think about what you'd find if you ran an honest engagement survey at your own company, doesn't it?)