Fox Interactive Reviews

Pros

1. Great benefits
2. Very dynamic fast paced environment
3. Opportunity to work on some of the most visited web properties in the world

Cons

1. Senior managements lack of vision in creating a sustainable business model
2. Bureaucracy that hiders the company's ability to innovate

Advice to Senior Management

1. Focus on engineering and innovation
2. Create a seamless experience for users
3. Need to increase user awareness and engaement

Pros

FIM is a fast-paced environment. Career opportunities are abundant and employee morale is, generally, pretty good. The company has a good work/life balance as there are flexible work hours and managers are very understanding in regards to responsibilites outside of work. Compensation and benefits are slightly above average. Also, you get to work in Los Angeles.

Cons

The downside to abundant career opportunities is that managment tends to place the wrong people in the wrong jobs. Do not believe anything that HR tells you. You will need to befriend a very high level executive to get accurate information and feedback. Most managers need more management training. Only somewhat competent upper management, and seriously lacks leadership abilities.

Advice to Senior Management

Get your hiring processes and internal communication efforts together.

Pros

Work for some exciting brands and work on some cutting edge technology. Also everyday have the ability to transform how people use the internet is some very powerful stuff.

Cons

Poor leadership at the top ( president)
MySpace, A.K.A 'Kid Nation" executives running amuck.

Advice to Senior Management

take some serious time and effort to Empower.....Inspire.....employees. Right now the company is run on pure ego...and everyone knows what happens to a company long term with that set of principles

Pros

Great brand name in the marketplace, owns premium sites.

Cons

Very political and issues with lack of leadership. Communication is very poor within the company of sharing information and working together.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate the company's vision & goals regularly to all employees. Encourage divisions to work together. Have workable business plans.

Pros

Some interesting and innovative Internet properties, and great energy at MySpace, at least

Cons

Staggeringly miscast senior management, with no technology product or Internet experience, mostly refugees from other parts of Fox like cable, film and television. Zero communications, no discernible product strategy, openly hostile finance/accounting "leadership". Support groups like IT and Facilities are straight out of a Kafka novel. MySpace is wildly disorganized and overspending, don't know how to manage technology development, management don't really report to Peter and don't integrate with rest of FIM.

Advice to Senior Management

You are not a media company, you are an Internet technology company owned by a media company. If you don't start running it that way, with leaders deeply experienced in that field, you will be destroyed by companies that do, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo. Yes, even Yahoo is better run.

Pros

Not many reasons to work here. May make sense if you really "get" MySpace and are passionate about social networking as a phenomenon.

Cons

Top management doesn't seem understand what they want to do. Can't lay all this at the foot of the current CEO since he's relatively new, but there has been a lot of churn at top management. This churn has lead to muddled strategy.

Advice to Senior Management

Too much attention to short term money making, some would say even exploiting the current users. Flashy projects like fancy targeting features and great in the short term, but anyone noticed that MySpace has been shrinking. What about the core product?? Feels like we are losing the product arms race to Facebook. What was the last innovation on the core value proposition to the end user?

Pros

Good location. Good Halloween party.

Cons

It's very corporate and upper management micro-manages their team. It has a very male mentality and upper management having affairs with entry-level young woman is tolerated and somewhat encouraged through a good-for-you attitude.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop thinking like Newscorp and start acting like MySpace. And fire people who sleep with subordinates.

Pros

Overall it's a good brand name with a lot of recognition. Some of the sites on the network have a lot of good content. There is a lot of good talent here in all sectors and a lot of them are excited about working on things. MySpace sure has a lot of potential to be one of the biggest sites on the web if they make the right strategic moves. The best thing about News Corp. backing Fox Interactive Media is that Rupert has deep pockets and can continue funding the company and make the appropriate changes when needed, if needed.

Cons

I think upper management needs to work on communication to the workers. It seems like you don't hear much from them at all about anything. You're mostly in the dark regarding everything here until it happens. There doesn't seem to be many set goals that is made public to those working at FIM properties.

I think the perks and benefits of being a Fox Interactive employee are pretty much a joke compared to comparable companies (Yahoo, Facebook). 2 weeks of vacation doesn't really cut it while other companies are giving out 4 weeks. How can you stay competitive? I guess they don't care to as I see another co-worker leaving.

Salaries are a lot less than what other people are making at other companies.

Advice to Senior Management

Actually let us know what the goals of the company are. There doesn't seem to be any kind of communication whatsoever regarding anything. Does Peter Levinsohn even exist?

Pros

Free lunch and flexible hours. I work for a group that was able to telecommute one, two days a week. Which save me a few hours of traffic to Beverly Hills. I did work with some very smart and competent people, most of them left not for greener pasture, but because of management.

Cons

Lots of overtime and not getting paid or compensate properly. Rigid corporate structure and incompetent management. Before the MySpace acquisition, I worked with a competent boss, but after the acquisition, things changed and from the top to bottom drastically.
My managers left due to higher management from IGN who took over, not understanding the current culture and trying to push for changes. Didn't work out, we were overworked with constant changes and I ran though 4 managers until the last one. Who were overly incompetent, just talking and no action, got no support and respect for the work done since we were constantly putting out fire and it became the norm.

Advice to Senior Management

Get more competent managers in. During my years at FIM, I saw so many good technical people who left for others places. The raise is small and the work and overtime you put it isn't worth it.
The structure lacks transparency, no access to upper management besides my manager. Lacks of communication and direction from Senior management. Lots of money wasted on projects that went nowhere, ideas from upper management who doesn't understand the complexity of the project. Delays one upon another, project scrapped or cut down, people being pressured to get things done when they know it can't be done in time.
I fell bad for the good people they lost and the ones who stayed is too busy fighting fire and ended up in the" I do not really care anymore" mode. Doing patchworks to fix problems and hope that it won't break the next time.

Pros

Benefits. Benefits. Benefits. Benefits. Benefits.

Cons

everything, but the benefits. It is a circus, patch over patch.

Advice to Senior Management

Open your eyes to how the actually successful companies are doing it. Use your talent pool and clear the way to innovate internally. Shift the focus from salesmanship to inherent quality. Build products that sell themselves rather than needing an aggresive sales cycle to move. Act like a NEW MEDIA companay not like you are running a 100 years old newspaper. Also, show up to work more than twice a week.