Fractal reviews

4.1

86% would recommend to a friend

(2,504 total reviews)
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Srikanth Velamakanni

95% approve of CEO

84% positive business outlook

Fractal has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 2,504 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Fractal employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management & Consulting industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
2.0
Mar 13, 2014

It is on a Downhill Journey....

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1 - People, People and People. Fractal manages to get good people and HAD good culture (which unfortunately is dying). CEO is trying to bring people centric policies but things are yet to mature 2 - CEO is passionate about the company and is trying very hard to keep a good culture going but I feel he is not adequately supported by middle and senior management 3 - HR is changing and it is for good (360 feedback mechanism and other initiatives)

Cons

1 - Hiring Policy: Externalizing the growth is biggest mistake Fractal has made over the last 2 years. It slows down the growth and learning opportunities of existing employees across levels (even the growth at Analyst and SA levels have slowed down). Also, it has made the Fractal Pyramid uneven (Span of control is inconsistent across levels) 2 - Sub par Compensation 3 - Lateral Managers: Many new managers that Fractal have brought in are not able to adjust quickly (they are one of the reasons of dying culture, politics and attrition). Image and perception (like all other big organizations) has become more important than getting actual work done 4 - Mentoring: Since the Fractal outlook has been to externalize the growth, there has been very less focus on grooming and mentoring existing talent pool. Also, trainings if provided are inadequate and not very effective. Managers (who should be the one to coach) are so busy in managing their image and in fire-fighting that they do not see this as important task to spend their time on. This resulted in creating a weak next in line managers 5 - Quality of Work & Staffing: Fractal primarily does reporting work with some good analytics project. You have to blessed to be able to work on such projects. And poor staffing decisions have many time messed up such good projects which almost never came back 6 - High Negativity and Attrition: All the above factors have made the work environment very negative where people just finding nooks in what others are doing and the crab mentality has sunk in. All these dissatisfaction at work place has resulted in unprecedented attritions rates and it needed drastic (like people policy) steps to halt them temporarily (appraisal cycle should revive the flow). Also, Fractal has unable to realize who the key people are and they have not been able to retain them. This will hurt in the long term

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Fractal Response
12y
Very sorry to hear that you feel this way after spending more than 3 years at Fractal. (a) Our growth has been rapid and hence it was necessary to bring people from outside. Yes, many of the lateral hires come from cultures that are not exactly like the company we are trying to build. That's the reason we have made the hiring process so stringent (one "no" means "no" overall) (b) Compensation - Well, at a company level, our compensation costs are more than 50% of our revenues, indicating that our compensations are in line with our pricing. However, this doesn't guarantee any individual's pay being equitable. Also, this doesn't guarantee that the compensation is adequate by market standards. Those benchmarks that we have suggest we are certainly above median in our compensation. Lastly, we are able to attract people from the outside within our compensation parameters, indicating that our compensation may not be sub par at the aggregate level. There could still be issues and you may be perfectly right. (c) Mentoring - Both mentors and mentees would need to make more efforts for this to work. I do agree with you that we need to work on this at Fractal. I would be very happy to discuss in more detail if we can meet in person. Srikanth
5.0
Mar 10, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's addictive, too good to leave..Minimum salary you need to leave this company is exactly double of what you are getting here...even after that you will think twice..Trust me..it happens! People who are leaving they must be getting that much hike!!

Cons

Mid level management sucks (obv not all but 50%)!! People at Director/VP level are too good.(80%) There is no upward feed-back system at al., Because of that a lot of mid level managers are coming in limelight doing nothing. people at Analyst/SA level are good (almost 90%), because of that projects are roaring success, NPS 10 etc.. but real contribution of Mid-level managers is nil, still they get to travel n all...(literally i can name at-least 10 of them). You can imagine, if a lead/Senior consultant is on leave for a month, it hardly impacts the project, but if an analyst is on leave for even 5 days..it becomes a hue and cry situation, he will be contacted almost every day/he might be working from home at odd hours. People at A/SA level can't look up to their immediate next level, they don't get to learn anything from them, either people are learning from peer group or self or they look-up to Some senior guy, i just can't understand this system. And it has not happened to me so it’s not some personal matter which I am uttering here..Thankfully I am reporting to one of the finest VP in Fractal. But it’s a voice of crowd, which people talk but never mention to the right person. Here i saw, Srikanth replying to few of the reviews so though it might reach to senior management.

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Fractal Response
12y
Hi there, Thank you for your note. I agree with the thoughts presented here, especially the following: "I believe people at Lead/SC level should know to technicalities of the projects so that if an analyst/SA is on leave he could provide the backup. In fact 50% of the time he should do hands on work on the project as it happens in lot of successful organization" Also, we will have a two way review system in place for our goal setting and review process starting next week. We have started a 360 degree feedback system for senior people this year. We will extend it to the rest of the organization soon. Thanks for your feedback and constructive suggestions. Happy to discuss this one on one as well. Srikanth
4.0
Mar 4, 2014

Feels like home

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

All new people's principles enabling every member of the company to actually enjoy coming to office

Cons

More reporting projects; staffing/ resource planning

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