Fidelity Investments

• Good compensation and benefits.
• A somewhat stable company that has been in business for a long time.

-Politics, politics, politics! You will be dragged into it every day, even if you are not the kind of employee who wants to indulge in it. Management favors people who play politics.

-Lot of bureaucracy and red tape everywhere. Even minor things need to move through various channels, thus eating up time.

-The company is male-dominated. There is definitely gender bias. It is subtle, but again, hard to miss.

-Technology-wise, they are ages behind the rest of the industry. They are "set in their ways," and change is very hard for the company to accommodate, which again is a result of the unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape everywhere.

-There is very little coordination among the various teams within the organization. It is quite common here for emails to be ignored or not replied to, which is quite frustrating when you are waiting for information from a team that is in a different location from yours.

-Most of the employees that work here are only focused on collecting their paychecks and bonuses. They lack interest in the company's progress (which could be common to all big/well-established companies) or in making processes/projects better. Engineers are quite content doing the same thing over and over, again and again, despite knowing its disadvantages, which is depressing. Most of them have been there for several years, and they simply don't care as long as they are getting paid. Management also doesn't seem to care about innovation or making things better as long as the deliverables are being met somehow. This is definitely not the right place for a smart, innovative, free-thinking engineer. And to have to put up with all the bureaucracy and politics on top of all this!

-There is always this lingering fear that the company may move the team to either North Carolina or Texas, which they have already done in the past.

On top of all of the above, my personal experience at this company was horrible because I had to work with a manipulative, egoistic, and sexist control freak. Management was fully aware of what was going on, but they turned a blind eye towards it and chose to dismiss it as a mere "personality clash," thus making me feel disrespected and worthless. I decided to quit for my own sanity's sake and have been very happy with my decision. To think that the company makes every new employee go through 40 hours of ethics training that emphasizes providing respect and equality to its employees! Talk about hypocrisy!

• Be true to yourself. Do not hire people just for the sake of hiring by making false promises to lure them. It is a waste of time for you and the employee because sooner or later a smart person will figure out the truth and leave.

• Don't just talk the talk, walk the talk, please! Do not encourage disrespectful and biased behavior in a professional work environment by turning a blind eye to it when you have actually used this as a selling point for the company during the interview process. This is hypocrisy at its best.

I understand that there are deadlines to be met and you have concerns about them; however, the loss that the company has to endure over the long run due to employees leaving, low employee morale, and unhappy employees all due to manipulative coworkers is gradual and much worse than the temporary loss that a project incurs by getting rid of such manipulative employees.

Keep in mind that no employee with integrity, dignity, and self-respect would like to work in a place that doesn't treat them with the respect that they deserve, which is a great loss to the company as a whole.