Fair Isaac Reviews in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Area

Pros

great opportunities to learn industry specific knowledge
employee friendly environment

Cons

lack of formal employee performance compensation/incentive structure.

Advice to Senior Management

need more aggressive strategy to expand overseas

Pros

Flexible work schedule (although telecommuting has been limited for arbitrary reasons)
Reasonable salary
Good 401k
Opportunity to work on new and emerging technologies, gaining skills that are valuable elsewhere.

Cons

Constant in-fighting between business units
Top heavy - far too manager managers, not enough worker bees
IT organization disjointed with extremely low employee morale
Management consistently makes bad decisions without ever consulting the people who will be affected. Communication of these decisions is haphazard and poorly thought out.

Advice to Senior Management

Talent has been haemorrhaging since 2009. Constant re-orgs are not helping. Define a focus for the organization, and stick with it. Improve communication at all levels. Cull management. Listen to and value your employees.

Pros

FICO is a good place to recruit talent that is most likely looking to move on.

Cons

FICO used to be a wonderful place to work and grow but recent cost cutting measures have left the company and rotten shell of its former self. A majority of the skilled and hard working staff have jettison from the company, with more leaving every week.

Advice to Senior Management

If your goal was a higher turnover rate and less loyalty to the FICO name, then your plan was achieved.

Pros

Fair Isaac has a good number of talented, dedicated employees. The Arden Hills location is a pleasant place to work, genrally speaking.

Cons

Employee morale can sometimes suffer due to less than optimal communication from upper management which results in a feeling that the company lacks directional focus.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees. Realize that the level of performance you receive given staffing levels and compensation is outstanding, and that rewarding your exceptional employees is vital to retention.

Pros

Flex time, Nice offices, Public what they do (credit Scoring), co-workers are friendly

Cons

Uneven decision making by senior management, Middle management is not managed thus make very arbitaray decisions and senior management will not step in and correct poor decisions.

Advice to Senior Management

Get out of offices and talk to staff. Provide training to middle managers and follow up on expectations

Pros

Life/Work Balance is solid and reasonable. The team that I work on is kept small and manageable in that everyone knows well what everyone else is doing.

Cons

Salary and upward mobility can be lacking. There is no rhyme or reason to salary increases or promotions. Truly incompetent employees are kept around for seemingly no reason. The company is currently in cost saving mode and some of the personal decisions have been down right baffling. Clearly competent employees have been let go while terrible ones with MUCH higher salaries keep there jobs. The value added ratio does not compute. It is quite an amazing thing to watch. Also, benefits are being slashed and were just so/so to begin with.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to salaries and who is doing good work.

Pros

Excellent customer focus. Great benefits. Great team based on which team you work for. Great balance between work and personal life. Fair Isaac seems to have enough recurring revenue to support a lot of employee initiatives and growth opportunities for the company. However, these opportunities must be chosen carefully.

Cons

It is one of the few profitable companies in this market. Interesting to see management focus on cost cutting even further than to grow. This was my first big company job and I am not used to the bureaucracy of big companies so my comments should be taken with a grain of salt. Individual achivements are lost in the herd, management busy protecting their behinds, and complacency is preferred over an attitude for growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in more outside talents for cost savings and growth. Listen to them, really listen to them.