I've been interviewing for a role at Fidelity for a few months now, its in a squad leader role in tech. Is it honestly as bad as this board would suggest, should I run for the hills instead of accepting an offer? Everyone I interviewed with has been with Fido for a decade or more. Curious for this communities feedback!
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@kz exactly! And the nature of a forum like this is that people who enjoy working at the firm won't ( for the most part) be the ones posting here. Human nature.
@kz what should he do instead? take the "good vibes" he's getting from those hiring who are rife with survivorship bias?
Get out when you can. Many have planned their exit to other firms. Your managers are waiting to find an opportunity to get the he-l out and don’t care about your career. Schwab is a great place to work at… well managed teams, benefits and wonderful atmosphere.
It's better than being homeless?
Don’t rock the boat, you will be put on a performance plan. I’ve learned to just let things go as planned and literally only do what you’re asked. If you go above and beyond, your manager will take credit and you’ll be micromanaged since it’s likely your manager will have no idea what they’re talking about or the work they’re doing.
You trust career advice coming from people you have never met, who spend their time on a board discussing layoffs from the company for which they work? Sound strategy.
Squad leads are pretty powerless and are typically just there as a pass thru and to crack the whip occasionally.
If you have good technical background and can manage diverse teams and deal with CLs, you may make a difference.
If you are in a desperate situation, it’s not the worst option. If you have a good gig now & make money that suits you but just interested in a change - I’d keep looking. This place is not what it once was. Folks with a lot of tenure are likely still around chained by golden handcuffs not because they love their work. Highly political, major micromanaging at all levels, very few people left that are happy working here.
Fidelity is a decent enough company, SL seems to be a pretty good role. Compared to other financial institutions in NYC the SDE talent is subpar though.
It’s a fine company if you can separate work from real life. The struggle many have is that their manager is such a micromanager it makes their skin crawl. You will have to just smile and nod when upper management says they care about employees. That used to be true, now it’s just filler words until they can collect their thoughts.
How many Indians in the department?
Despite the rhetoric here, Fidelity is a great place to hunker down for 5-10 years.
That role is going to be really political between other squad leads and higher leadership. There are a ton of changes going on with how plans are made, where the work flows down from, and how quickly things need to get done. I will say you will probably be very frustrated often with our leadership. All that being said I wouldn’t discount the role with what’s said on this site though, fidelity has insane benefits, decent people, but just an ever changing leadership group that can’t make up their minds.
You'll be fine few years if I am completely being honest.
Fidelity tends to / or at least used to hire for long term.
But last 2-3 years has been a nightmare with fear, anxiety as some of the posts echoed.
Fidelity is indeed a great place to be, but the tech stack is outdated, you'll feel like you're being made captain of the sinking ship.
But sometimes a captain needs to rock the boat to get through the storm, so who knows you can be that person to drive change.
Also depends a lot on what team, tech stack you're going to be working on