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Slow-moving company with great benefits. Not ideal for software engineers

Software Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Fidelity Investments for less than 1 year
June 12, 2017
2.0
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookApproves of CEO
Pros

Great work-life balance. Above-average benefits. Good company image and demonstrated success.

Cons

Comparatively low salary. Fidelity claims it is competitive, but it isn't.

Does not understand technology.

Slow moving and not many opportunities to build a resume with marketable skills.

Career advancement can be heavily based on the politics of your team.

Very lax interviews cause many of your fellow teammates to be incompetent and unable.

Lots of offshore contracting going on. This means you'll be getting up early to talk to your offshore team and hating doing it because of the probable communication barrier.

Advice to Management

You are a tech company. Like it or not, everything Fidelity does is tech-related. As a software engineer, going into board meetings and hearing that Fidelity considers itself separate from tech companies is alienating and concerning.

Innovation requires risk. Stop trying to vet every library that projects are trying to use. By the time it is fully vetted, bigger and better technologies will make the thing you vetted inferior.

Software engineers (and quality assurance engineers) should be evaluated based on their ability to engineer software, not on how many administrative tasks they can get done along with their regular development duties.

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