Fossil - A Sinking Ship - Software Engineer Fossil Group Employee Review

Was a good work environment. Wasn't too stressful.

Horrible repetitive music. Working during holidays was a mad house.

Company events are always fun. (Halloween is insane in the best way.) On-site gym, Starbucks, cafeteria with pretty good food. The employee sales and deep-discounts are really nice. Central Station is a really nice, pretty building with a parking garage.

Lots of micromanagement and unnecessary approval steps before anything can move forward; resulting in any changes moving at a glacial pace and often stalling for months and even years. Fossil manages and designs by committee and the HiPPO in the room always wins with little regard to facts and data. There's little communication at all levels of the company. Teams are extremely siloed and there's a complete lack of direction. It's also not unusual for leadership or stakeholders to flip-flop on their decisions. One meeting, they'll approve something; then turn around and claim they never saw or approved it. Then suddenly they liked the way it was, which they had been claiming never to have seen before. It's frustrating and defeating. Advancement and growth opportunities are very limited and often based on favoritism. There's almost zero recognition or metrics to demonstrate your worth. "Restructuring" and staff reductions happen regularly throughout the year and always in small batches to fly under the WARN act. They usually don't even acknowledge or comment on the layoffs internally either. It's as if they hope they did it quietly enough that no one will notice. Meanwhile, morale is practically nonexistent as everyone is always waiting for the next layoff and spends most of their time with their heads down. If they acknowledge the layoffs at all, they'll assure the company that they're "right-sized now" or that they're "done with layoffs" and then do it again.