Fetch reviews

Engineers have gone into survival mode. 3 months of rolling layoffs have left everyone rattled/spooked. People don't raise questions or concerns anymore because they're afraid of drawing attention to themselves that leads to them being let go too. Job stability seems attached to some vague notion of impact. However that impact had better involve AI in some way. The safest way to show impact is to get yourself attached to the CEO's pet project FAST, an LLM powered analytics query engine. Quality/Stability/Maintainability have taken a back seat to flashy new features. The few remaining QA/SDET employees have been let go. Trust in employees have eroded. The new holiday deployment plan includes approval gates from VP level employees before deploying to production. That type of judgement used to be left to the teams maintaining those systems. There are rumors of senior leadership evaluating employee's AI token use to ensure they're following AI mandates. A growing list of respected employees keep turning in resignations. It feels like an exodus is starting, leaving the rest of us high-and-dry. It's heartbreaking. We used to be one of those "best places to work" companies. It's amazing how fast a great culture can turn sour.

My time at Fetch was plagued by feelings of near daily confusion and frustration. Established norms at other companies seemed to be absent at Fetch. These often were the foundational pillars of what makes for a good business. For example, there was almost no onboarding process. The expectation relayed to me was that new hires should “onboard themselves.” It was a sink or swim environment, which several employees praised as a positive value during my time there. In my opinion, it is primarily by the tremendous efforts of the employees that Fetch chugs along and produces a usable product. Impactful, respectful leadership with any realistic vision seemed to me to be nonexistent. Many employees performed enthusiastic company loyalty to retain their jobs or climb the corporate ladder. Authentic dialogue with coworkers felt virtually impossible for this reason. It was hard to know who to trust. From what I saw, you were unlikely to be supported by your peers if you had any feedback whatsoever about how things are done at Fetch. People seemed to continuously choose to protect their jobs over trying to support each other or improve the company processes/culture. It was totally unsurprising to me when the most recent round of layoffs arrived. I personally believe that Fetch is a deeply toxic, fear-based culture at almost every level. I question if it can be saved. It felt like the culture was operating by design during my time there, so I am not sure if leadership thinks any change is necessary. There is no world wherein I would recommend this experience to anyone.