Pros
The perks of working in the corporate office cannot be beat. My favorites include: Fully equipped gym with group workout classes and clean and spacious locker room for a small monthly fee Cafeteria and Starbucks onsite Employee store onsite with great discounts Employee depot with discounted shipping, dry cleaning, car washes, and tickets to events Plenty of parking and a parking garage Company culture is excellent: Lots of young people with great positive energy So much creativity going on in the building Corporate parties and events are fun and inspiring Recharge Wednesday - special treats and socialization at the Starbucks once a week Benefits are good: Nice health insurance plans 401K with employer match
Cons
Very high turnover - about 40+ people I worked with left within about a year. Various departments, but almost all had the same criticisms. Work-life balance is low for some positions. Due to layoffs and high turnover, many employees will find themselves covering for 2-3 positions while still meeting the same deadlines fairly often. Base pay is fairly low across the board for different positions. Myself and others found that our first outside position offered a lot more in base pay. Not a lot of room within the company to grow in your career. Many higher level positions are filled by outside candidates rather than inside promotions. In my own department, my boss liked to have many of us cover much higher positions where the other employee left, many of us for over a year and doing well, but without the title and pay of the work we were doing. Our boss would brag about looking for outside people with a lot more experience and stating that he would have to pay them much more to attract them from out of state. Later, he would replace one of us in the role without bothering to tell us, and when it was brought up would mention our lack of experience (despite having done it for x amount of time), and that we would always be needed back in data entry. This has happened on multiple occasions. We had a lot of maternity leaves, as well, all of which I had to cover. Sometimes, there isn't a position to go back to. Transferring between departments or position after a couple of years can be difficult, since your supervisor has to approve before you can be considered. Many choose to keep you in your current, even if you don't want to stay in their department. Some colleagues of mine had to resign and leave, only to be hired back into the other desired department later. Upper management needs a lot of work. Most are only concerned with their own promotions. Many also have no idea what is going on with their team at any given time, or sometimes who is performing what task (even major tasks). Our department head in particular liked to make a ton promises that were rarely kept and constantly speak of values and priorities that were considered most important, and then go against those with most decisions that he made. We lost several great employees in a short period of time, due to this. I have heard many similar stories from other former employees who left other departments. Many bosses, since they are so detached from their low-level employees, also don't understand how many employees are needed for the workload - either hiring too many or too few and not diving tasks up well. You have groups where some people have the same title and pay, but half of them have not much to do and the other half are so busy that they come in early (sometimes 5 or 6 am), or stay late (sometimes until 9pm or later) and rarely take lunches or breaks. Overall, there are some good departments within Fossil that are collaborative and functional, but if you aren't in one, you probably won't want to stay long despite the perks of the building.