You will learn a lot and likely be underpaid for it - Anonymous employee FEI Systems Employee Review

3.0
Aug 9, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

If you end up on a good team, you can thrive and gain a lot of traction and trust. They also tend to be quite flexible, so it's good if you have a family or outside obligations. I personally didn't have to work crazy hours. There is the option to work from home on occasion or during inclement weather. I really appreciated that. You can learn a lot here. Since the company is broken into teams, you have the ability to work closely with every role. You can experience many different ways to work and learn lots of crazy fun tools to make you more productive. Some of the people here are true gems and can teach you so very much. You will likely make friends here, which is a good thing. There are a lot of fun people of all age ranges.

Cons

They are cheap. Ask anyone who currently works there. Pretty much no one will deny that. It's really unfortunate, but you can't expect any normal perks. No free snacks, no extra drinks, no cups or plates, no company outings, no team events. Apparently they've happened, but not in the tenure I had there. The only events they hold annually(only two) are so far from the headquarters that many people don't go. It's just not a fun culture and having to buy your own office supplies if you want something outside of a plain notepad and a pen is really depressing. They have asked people to pay for printed pages at work. I wish I were kidding. You don't really know if the team you're being placed on is a good one. There are several contracts you could end up on, and let's just say.. there are some that you couldn't pay me A LOT to work on. There is a lot of culture clash here. It's a very diverse work environment, but there are many groups of people who get very clique-ish around the office because they speak the same language. It tends to make it a very non-inclusive workplace and people tend to stick to who they know, which can hurt something as collaborative as software.

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FEI Systems Response
7y
Thank you for taking time to offer your view point of the company. It sounds like you were satisfied for the most part with your time with us. It was unfortunate that you didn't find the right person to help you with supplies that you needed. We are very proud of the fact that we have people from over 20 countries working for our company. It helps us gain a multi-faceted approach to challenges. Your advice to management is well received. We have launched a more service-oriented technical approach that is being centralized throughout the company. Thank you again for your comments.

Explore other reviews about FEI Systems

5.0
Oct 17, 2024
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CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's very stable here. With a lot of opportunity to grow.

Cons

Hard to push for improvement but still doable.

3.0
May 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Solid pay for experience - Mostly friendly team, including most co-workers and supervisors - Good health insurance options - Fully remote - Company paid for the work computer - Minor perks like "points" in the company store, which had some cute items - Big picture work was meaningful

Cons

- Disorganized training and unclear / contradictory instructions at times - Challenging to get in contact with certain people who have information necessary to do the job. - Communication overall could be much clearer. - Information storage was disorganized. - Small scale, an entire day's work on a section of a proposal could be pointless, entirely thrown out. -- Sometimes this was because the original instructions on how to fill out the section were outdated or incomplete. -- In other cases, the assignment turned out to be redundant. -- At least twice in my tenure of just under a year, the team spent over a week on a proposal, only to be told to scrap the whole thing because the company didn't want to bid on it after all. --- Over time this became pretty demoralizing, at least to me. - One or two highly stressful coworkers / supervisors could create conflict that created a bad "vibe" for the whole day (or week!) - Company prioritized shallow means of boosting morale (cookie party, etc) over doing the time-consuming work to truly improve it. --- That is, no one seemed to be taking the time to figure out what systems or which individuals were the frequent source of conflict / demoralization, and address those with real solutions. Unfortunately, the negative experiences with communication and high-stress team members / leaders led me to leave. Ultimately, I took a writing job at a different company that paid less but had a better team atmosphere. It was worth it. Note: For all I know this may be fixed now. Per LinkedIn, many of the people I worked with (both competent, easygoing people and high-conflict stress-adders) seem to have moved on. So, perhaps the culture has changed positively. You'd probably have to ask someone who's worked there more recently, though.

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