A long and wild ride, but grateful for the opportunity
Pros
FWI leadership made a commitment to support me across the globe, and kept their promise. FWI kept it’s word, and I am eternally grateful for this. FWI has always employed fun, intelligent & positive staff. Many are still there. I appreciated the culture as it was a few years ago the most, and hopefully it can return or improve to something similar once the world settles down. Some of the changes were because of Covid, some were effects of investment, some of it is was growing beyond a startup-type company. I appreciate many of the people who have been there through the whole journey. Most are great; I’ll miss the people the most. FWI has truly evolved enormously in the time I was there. Growth is good. FWI has always treated me with respect, trusted me to make decisions and let me lead my part of the team.
Cons
New leadership came in needing to make changes and show impact. Some ideas were good and necessary. Others neglected FWI’s true strengths. When new leaders came in, it was difficult to get answers and hence, discern priorities. Were the priorities: •Onboarding new parts of FWI core products in a part of the business that still has lots of “legacy” built-in? •Integrating entirely new products, process and teams as consecutively merging two (now three) companies and working teams, or: •Stability (maintenance, support and improvement of current customer footprint) in a time of global crisis? Ideally, it’s obviously all three (simultaneously)… but support, follow-up, or answers (on anything: new process & products, historic stuff, accounting or contract challenges, technical escalations, growth opps, client or partner queries, etc) took an unreasonable amount of time (if acknowledged at all). As someone who had been a remote employee for nine years, in 2021, FWI felt even more opaque than I had come to expect. We needed clear goals and responses to queries with defined ownership for who should be getting them to us. Numerous leadership changes contributed to my departure, along with a general lack of opportunity for growth. Integration of three companies has meant combining three leadership structures in to one. We were told there would be new opportunities as the org combined. My team and I were then placed in a random part of the org. We spent some time trying to adapt, but I didn’t have faith that things would improve in the short-term with further changes in leadership that were made late last year.
