Sinking Ship - Application Developer FEI Systems Employee Review

2.0
Sep 30, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Solid products, healthy business (as far as from what can be seen 'in the trenches' ) and some really smart people to learn from and work with. Diverse group of people, and almost everyone is extremely friendly. Good amount of opportunity if you are starting your career or stepping into a new role in your field. Company is almost fully remote at this point, and there has been some flexibility given re: hours, however this only applies during the summer months on Fridays. Aside from this, you must be online for 'core hours' (8-4) so there is almost no flexibility in terms of fully taking advantage of being remote.

Cons

The past few months have seen many very high performing employees leave, and there are rumors that no offers are being countered anymore. Almost all new hires have been overseas teams, little effort is being put into finding people, even if remote, that will perform at the same level as those who left. Raises are small, salaries are low, no bonuses (unless you count company-branded bags and water bottles, but even those have seemed to disappear), and constant reorgs mean you're never really sure who's in charge. Zero transparency re: performance reviews and how salary increases/promotions are decided. Peer and supervisor recommendations are seemingly disregarded. It's always a "belt-tightening" year, even while watching contracts roll in and getting more work thrown at us. In general, it feels a little bit leaderless now that the people who had really been steering things are gone, with everyone scrambling to try to fill those voids. Management is more focused on their next big reorg rather than solving the problems by getting the resources we need, banking on the fact that there are people who care about doing good work who will carry everyone else through. Eventually, you will scare all of those people off and be left with a code farm.

Explore other reviews about FEI Systems

5.0
Oct 17, 2024
Recommend
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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