Fast Enterprises reviews

If you're like me and came from a very formal and technical CS background I would really advise against taking a position here as an Implementation Consultant. It's one of the main reasons I left the company. As others have mentioned, it isn't as much of a development role, as it more of learning there own software package and how to configure that. You won't be challenged on a day-to-day basis, which makes it very hard to do fulfilling work. I would say about 5% - 10% of your time would be coding in VB .NET and another 5% - 10% working with SQL. The rest is working with their software and changing some rows in their tables here and there, among other non-interesting tasks. In addition to that, the work mostly deals with taxes, which can be very dis-interesting and unexciting. If you were to stick with the position for a while, you would essentially lose any desirable skill set outside of this company, which can really limit your career long term. There is little to no opportunity to grow your skill set outside of VB .NET and SQL, which again, compounds to doing unfulfilling work. Long story short, if you want a career that challenges you and provides new opportunities to grow as a developer or software engineer, hold out for something else.

- Fast is going BACKWARDS in terms of remote work. They just mandated a 4-day in office work week for every site. Previously, some sites at least had a hybrid schedule of 2 or 3 days in office. I believe the company will eventually return to a 5-day in office work week for all sites. - The work is proprietary, and it is not transferrable. Yes, Fast has mostly converted their code into C#, but that does not change the fact that most of the code is almost entirely based on existing Fast data structures and classes. Also, no semblance of version control like Git. - Flat structure. You can get "promoted" to team lead but then you don't even get a pay raise. And if you want to be PM, you'll need to devote 7+ years. - Opportunity cost. You can make a good initial salary for the first 3 years, but you will probably be surpassed by non-Fastie peers once they start to use their transferrable skills to job hop or actually promote. - No room for innovation or creativity. You pretty much have to code things in a very certain way to conform to the very rigid coding standards, and government products can be boring. - Lack of diversity. - Relocation, and lack of transparency for each subsequent relocation. - Fasties can be cliquey, and there is more drama than usual. This is because relocation isolates Fasties in a new state, so they tend to just become friends with one another. This can lead to way too much personal life intertwining with work. - Mandatory overtime for active rollouts. Mandatory overtime is a product of either poor management or terrible staffing issues; just because the overtime is paid does not mean it's justified. - Fasties are mostly new graduates that do not know what healthy boundaries with a job are. - Ridiculously small HR team. I believe there are 3-4 HR employees for 2000 employees. This is an issue, especially since we have so many young graduates who do not know what professionalism and respect looks like in the workplace. - Lack of passion and ambition in your coworkers. Unfortunately, many of the Fasties who choose to stay simply don't have passion or ambition for what they do. They stay for the money only. It's a bit demotivating to be around.