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Fitbit Reviews
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Full-time Part-timeApprove of CEO
James Park
109 Ratings
Pros
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I've got kids and both the benefits and work life balance are excellent (in 21 reviews)
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Great people who love the mission of the company and what they do (in 12 reviews)
Cons
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The company can be split down the middle - those who have amazing work/life balance and those who burn the candle at both ends (not by choice) (in 6 reviews)
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Extremely fast pace, sometimes long hours (in 8 reviews)
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"The team is personable and upfront, coudlnt ask for more."
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEOI have been working at Fitbit full-time (Less than a year)
Pros
Im left alone to do my work, my manager is not shy to tell me what he thinks about my progress for better or worse.
Cons
i cant think of any
Advice to Management
keep up the great work
Fitbit 2017-06-08 10:07 PDT -
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Helpful (11)
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"Need to focus on employee success."
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
RecommendsNeutral OutlookDisapproves of CEOI worked at Fitbit full-time (More than 3 years)
Pros
Wonderful health wellness benefits. Such as on-site exercise/wellness classes every day (twice a day on most days). That type of benefit is a HUGE plus and $$ saver if you truly care about taking care of your body, while bending over backwards for a "start-up". You get a "birthday" PTO. Unlimited vacations, (they encourage you to take), stocked kitchen (snacks, drinks, beer). Competitive health plans. Extra allowance for "health" - which I use it on massage therapy and is free to use it on whatever your choosing. Management truly tries to get the stakeholders to sign off on the annual bonus plan. Many free t-shirts, and are encouraged to wear it as your work attire. (I don't remember the last time I wore slacks). No more free catered meals, but still some free delivery due to lunch time meetings. Friday company-wide happy hour is fun to see everyone/meet new people. Everyone are very nice, many sincere where they can truly be your "Fitbit family". The founder and Co-founder are kind and nice people. They may look intense when walking around the office (to many things on their mind) but no egotistical behavior at all. Overall, the work environment is not stuffy or stand-offish at all.
Cons
It breaks my heart that I'm giving the company 3 stars, (rather than 4 or 5). Their mission and their purpose of existence is amazing!! I would carry their purpose for public health with me forever. Sad truth is, some departments are ran/led with either unqualified leaders or leaders who makes short-sighted decisions where it comes bites them back. Other team managers are slave drivers. They do not communicate their plans with their teams. Don't get me wrong, some team has AMAZING leaders but so unfortunate to see employees desperately trying to get on the other "good leaders" teams. The founders speeches are very inspirational during all-hands, but that's as far as it goes. Because many managers would work everyone till breaking point when the end goal is not for the benefit of the company, rather personal managerial/promotional goals. Unfortunately, employee success is not part of the company culture.
Advice to Management
Invest in each and one of your employees. They are some of the most dedicated and hard-working people, who would go over the cliff for the company. Only if the company would care to showed the same investment.
Fitbit 2017-05-12 22:42 PDT -
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Helpful (8)
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"Promising company ruined by incompetent managers and leadership"
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDisapproves of CEOI worked at Fitbit full-time (More than a year)
Pros
The mission of creating products to enable peoples' fitness and health is wonderful and motivating
Generally very nice and highly competent non-managerial colleagues
Very nice office space
Fairly descent compensationCons
Founding CEO/CTO should have stepped aside and brought in professionals a while ago and not pretend to know what they're doing
Inexperienced middle management, especially in research and engineering, has lead to confusing and inefficient development cycles and copious degrees of tech debt
General trend in management to not take responsibility for things and blame people further down the chain (e.g. layoffs earlier in the year)Advice to Management
Recognize that you don't know as much as you think you do and be humble and a bit less machiavellian and all will benefit.
Fitbit 2017-05-15 10:42 PDT -
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Helpful (2)
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"Could be better"
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookApproves of CEOI have been working at Fitbit full-time (More than a year)
Pros
Everyone knows Fitbit and it's exciting to work for a company whose products you can see in public every day. Coworkers are generally good people. Lots of team building activities.
Cons
They slashed the perks. Career opportunities and advancement are limited. Salary is below average for a tech company. The company is slow to adapt.
Advice to Management
Support your employees. Create products that are meant to last.
Fitbit 2017-05-14 23:59 PDT -
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Helpful (18)
![Fitbit Logo]()
"Leaner and meaner"
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
RecommendsNegative OutlookNo opinion of CEOI have been working at Fitbit full-time (More than a year)
Pros
After a pretty bad 2016, Fitbit's CEO laid it to us straight: 2017 is going to be a rebuilding year. We are only at the beginning of our reorg, but it's clear that this is no joke: About 100 people were laid off, and some very high level people were "mutually decided" off. Company structure makes a lot of sense, with more revenue streams being pursued.
+ Can make tough decisions
+ We are still building amazing things that make people healthier
+ Great work/life balance
+ Amazing brandCons
Obviously things are a little more anxiety. 2017 is a make-or-break year. If you can't put in the work, try elsewhere.
- Product team can be slow
- CTO is more disruptive than helpful
- About a year behind marketAdvice to Management
Stop paying attention to the people that led us to this point. Rally the troops on the ground. Invest in your people.
Fitbit 2017-03-13 23:10 PDT -
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Helpful (4)
![Fitbit Logo]()
"Avoid the Void"
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDisapproves of CEOPros
The Research team remains very friendly, comprised of smart people, and has great work-life balance (basically borderline irresponsibly lax work culture).
Recently the Research leadership has attempted to crack down on useless projects and finally acknowledged the widespread dissatisfaction with career develop as an actual problem.
Hiring is now happening again, mostly because lots of talent either got fired or left.Cons
The biggest con, in both my own personal experience (largely validated from my conversation with colleagues), is the lack of leadership material from the Research management.
What makes a great leadership? Here were the top characteristics that were aggregated during a company wide survey of Facebook employees (a company with happy people) and my own experience of whether management met this.
1. Show and demonstrate interest in what is most important for EACH person’s work experience in the team?
Nope. Manager never approach me to ask me specifically what I wanted professionally or helped plan my career path.
2. Support people in finding opportunities to develop base on areas of strength and interest.
Nope. Although leadership knows what my strengths are, they do not care to find out what my interests are, let alone align my strengths with them. In fact I have to actively search for my own opportunities with no support.
3. Set CLEAR expectations for individuals and team
Nope. While we do have a goal setting system, it's viewed as overhead and not treated with much respect. Each team and manager engages with the system differently, yet we've come to find out that it was actually used to determine who got fired. Also people get promoted out of the blue with NO published/defined set of guidelines as to why they were chosen. If the leadership thinks they are making the right promotions, then why can't they have the guts to announce to the team what metrics they used to determine this? Answer: subjective and political
4. Give clear, actionable, feedback on a timely basis
How can you give feedback when are no set expectations of different levels with in the team? It continues to be an excuse for managers to shy away from giving real feedback.
5. Hold people and team accountable for impact
Yep. Not enough impact -> fired
6. Recognize people and teams for outstanding impact
My manager has only recognized me with "good jobs" about 1-3 times in my life.Advice to Management
Get audited by HR professionals. Isolate managers who need to be put into regular leadership training. Don't just make managers out of great technical people.
Fitbit 2017-05-24 10:55 PDT -
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![Fitbit Logo]()
"Marketing"
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookApproves of CEOI have been working at Fitbit full-time (More than a year)
Pros
Fun people, happy hours and career development opportunity.
Cons
Loss of perks, disorganization, loss of resources
Fitbit 2017-05-04 17:31 PDT -
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Helpful (2)
![Fitbit Logo]()
"Electrical Engineer"
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDisapproves of CEOI have been working at Fitbit full-time (More than a year)
Pros
Interesting technology and cool products. Smart co-workers
Cons
Poor management. Managers promoted with no management experience. As a result steep learning curve, no employee development, no growth opportunity, very low morale in engineering as a whole.
Advice to Management
Need management that cares about employees development and growth.
Fitbit 2017-05-05 09:42 PDT -
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Helpful (2)
![Fitbit Logo]()
"Great people, not great decision making"
Star Star Star Star StarNo opinion of CEOI have been working at Fitbit full-time (More than 3 years)
Pros
- Great people to work with
- The brand and products are widely recognized by people in a positive way
- Work life balance can be okay depending on your group and managerCons
- Key decisions are often by a committee of executives and if everyone doesn't agree than decisions will get stalled... but your ship date is supposed to stay the same
- Recently morale has been low because the low stock price means your equity has little value and there's a wave of attrition with a lot of the long-time employeesAdvice to Management
Give employees more confidence in the vision for the company
Fitbit 2017-04-06 10:54 PDT -
Helpful (3)
![Fitbit Logo]()
"Great Company, Bright Future"
Star Star Star Star Star- Work/Life Balance
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
- Comp & Benefits
- Senior Management
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEOI have been working at Fitbit full-time (More than 3 years)
Pros
Strong talent pool. Sales have picked up in a meaningful way. We should be profitable again this year (at least by internal projections). Releasing a new form factor watch this year. The company's is headed in the right direction. Stock hasn't done too well, but most employees are pretty optimistic still. Management has become very proactive in acquiring new partners. Some complaints here and there from employees about cuts in "perks", but honestly, I most of SF employees are spoiled. A public company should be operating lean and mean. At the end of the day, I'd much rather sacrifice free daily lunches for helping to create a strong company of the future. Lots of opportunity in this space. We are actively trying to push into the global market where wearables have performed much stronger. US seems to be too saturated. Global markets have performed well and seem to be getting stronger.
Cons
Management team needs to be trimmed. We've let go a lot of upper "pre IPO" management. They didn't seem to have the sense of urgency needed to success as a public company. Everyone kept deferring for the "long term", but neglected to realize that the "long term" depends on the "short term".
Advice to Management
I believe more upper management from "pre IPO" needs to be replaced by people who have led at other public companies. This is the tough transition required to success at a public company. We've done a pretty good job so far, but I think more can be done here.
Fitbit 2017-03-16 06:08 PDT -
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