Fidelity Investments Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Fidelity Investments full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Fidelity offers a professional environment with lots of competitive and smart folks to work with and gain exposure to all facets of the financial industry. The ability to transfer to different positions is there as well if you seek out the opportunities. Compensation is good but limited to growth due to the bi-annual reviews. Fidelity operates like clockwork on release cycles, so focusing on getting things done by the end of the year is key and learning how to get the impossible done is the biggest thing you'll learn here.

Cons – Although Fidelity offers many oportunties, it is a large organization with lots of overhead. You'll find yourself on projects on lots of meetings with many project managers, VP's or directors each with almost equal amount of say on the project. Consensus building becomes key and learning how to win over folks on your idea becomes an important skill to learn. Politics is also huge at Fidelity, so learning how to work with others and learning to see pitfalls are the skills you up need to develop. Fidelity is a large ship and wanting to implement revolutionary ideas will be an uphill battle.

Advice to Senior Management – Fidelity is a great place but found that most managers on the "business side" had unrealistic expectations on developing projects in terms of what could be built with the given amount of resources.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Fidelity Investments as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Nice benefits for permanent employees, interesting technologies

Cons – Some of the managers lack experience, lots of legacy code.

Advice to Senior Management – I think they would benefit by improving their process for keeping up with technology. They touch the same code over and over without moving to newer technology and methods

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Fidelity Investments as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Summer workshop series was very insightful into the different divisions of Fidelity

Cons – Rigidly structured organization made it difficult to gain broad exposure

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Fidelity Investments full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – The benefits are great.Fantastic insurance.tuition.computer buying compensation.fitness budgets.pay decent.

Cons – There are some bottlenecks when it comes to getting promoted in the regional centers. Everyone tries to funnel through the same career paths.

Advice to Senior Management – Open a few more channels of opportunity.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Fidelity Investments as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Great environment to do design work, very flexible schedule, easy to stay in touch and share documents via conferencing system. Great team to work with.

Cons – Relies too much on contractors that can be disposed of at will.

Advice to Senior Management – Avoid firing contractors days before Christmas even if you need to do budget cuts. It's bad enough to be hired and fired on an ad hoc basis.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Fidelity Investments full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Strong solid company with great reputation. Retirement benefits are fantastic. Management allows for flexibility and awards those who are top performers.

Cons – Since it is such a large company it is becoming more spread out with jobs going to different sites so it makes it more difficult for career advancement.

Advice to Senior Management – Continue to stay focused on growth. The company does a good job taking care of employees but since the company is becoming more spread out, it is harder for existing employees to find opportunities in existing sites. Grow your existing sites first to allow long time employees the opportunity to advance.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Fidelity Investments full-time

Pros – Absolutely great place to start a career. 150+ hours paid study time with top notch resources to get Series 7 and 63 licenses. Roughly three months during first year of 8-5 classroom training to cover securities trading, compliance and investment basics. Profit sharing and 7% 401k match, after vesting get 4 weeks vacation time, 7 sick days, 1 personal day and all market holidays off. Company usually hires good people who are enjoyable to work around. If motivated, intelligent and have a good work ethic and interpersonal skills, it's realistic to go from starting salary to making really good money in 3 - 5 years if you follow the sales path. The work isn't particularly stressful and once you are seasoned there are a lot of different specialty paths to consider. Local senior management approachable and positive. Job security is very high. Company will cover almost the entire cost of an MBA or CFP.

Cons – It is a phone job. How much of a "phone job" it is depends on the choices you make. The first year your pay won't be great and when you aren't in training, you'll be taking call after call from lowest tier customers while you learn the ropes. Service management at this level is hit and miss, and about 25% of the time you'll get a micro-manager with no people skills listening to your customer calls and telling you the "right" way to interact with other human beings. 100% of the time your breaks and lunches will be scheduled for you, your efficiency will be monitored and you'll feel like you are in grade school with bulletin boards to decorate, nonsensical "campaigns", dress down days etc. You can either choose to stay in this spot forever taking these horrible calls (which is the type of employee most of the negative reviews seem to come from) or take the steps to move on to better paying areas where you are treated like a professional adult and largely left alone and trusted to produce.

Advice to Senior Management – Front line representatives consistently left out of the loop when policy or technology changes being considered. There have been dozens of "process improvements" that if asked to comment on ahead of time, representatives would have universally predicted very negative customer response to, and soliciting that early feedback could have saved the company development funds and client goodwill.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Fidelity Investments full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – good benefits, culture, employee feedback allowed

Cons – 1 year fullfillment requirement to move on

Advice to Senior Management – Work from home opportunities

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Fidelity Investments full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Leaned a lot of new technologies

Cons – Constant layoffs for the last two years.

Advice to Senior Management – Think more about your employees

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Fidelity Investments

Pros – Great location, pay, and free beverages. Some miscommunication between management at after locations but overall rather efficient.

Cons – Everything and everyone is cookie cutter material. Everything has to be done a certain way while most employees lack a personality. From my experience most employees have been around for atleast 10 years without expectations of moving up the corporate ladder.

Advice to Senior Management – Get a better understanding of what others do in their departments so communication is more effective.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company