Fidelity Investments

Experience varies widely based on groups. On the tech side, PI is one of the most modern, whereas FI is stuck in the early 1990s. My group is excellent, and for Fidelity, we are on the cutting edge.

Work-life balance is great; in general, the management is very flexible. There are politics, but a good manager will shield the developer from this. If you can prove you're valuable by innovating, Fidelity will take notice. If you do nothing new, then you will stagnate.

Base compensation is on the lower end of what a developer could make elsewhere, but the wide array of benefits, especially the contributions to 401k (7% match and generally 10% profit sharing), are unheard of.

Senior management seems to have a clear vision of what they want, but the execution on it by middle management is variable.

So much of Fidelity's tech is old, and maintaining and enhancing the existing systems, along with building new capabilities, requires lots of investment. Up until recently, the company had been pouring money into this. In my opinion, some of this money was wasted on buying expensive vendor products from the likes of IBM and Oracle, which could have been done without paying for a license.

Another issue is Fidelity still hires too many useless contractors and unnecessary project managers.

Fidelity hawks active management too much, when the world is turning rightfully towards passive management. We need to focus on passive and let go of active.