Fast Enterprises FAQ

Pros

Great company and benefits package

Cons

Have to relocate every few years

Pros

-Very supported and amazing team members. Almost everyone is incredibly hardworking and dedicated. -Good perks (parties, swag, team building, lots of free meals, paid sabbatical) -AMAZING health insurance for employee and dependents -Decent pay (not equal for all roles though) -Focused on results and not just doing things the way they've always been done or how other companies do things -A lot of autonomy to do your own work, they place a lot of trust on employees, even new hires. -Making a difference and impact on government -Secure work, never had any layoffs that I know of -Paid bonus time in addition to salary, so you get paid for all the hours you work.

Cons

-Not able to adapt to remote work (not sure how this is fixed though with their business model) -Your experience is greatly dependent on who your project manager is. -Not all roles are equal: people in certain roles are valued much more than others. -Way below average parental leave for the tech industry -If you aren't on a project you can feel dispensable. The impression is that they don't want to hire people for the long term, instead purposely don't have promotion or growth opportunities or pay increases for non-project roles because they expect people to move on and this is a way to encourage turnover in those roles. -Horrible bonus structure. Your bonuses will go down before they go up. -Performance ratings and how you can get money added to bonus is not clear, there is no transparency to why you were rewarded one way or another. -A lot is expected of you, so you have to put a lot of long hours in, can be pretty draining to your personal life. There are some flaws that are mostly role specific or project dependent but all things considered they treat employees well and it is a great company to work for. You get out of it what you put in!

Advice to Management

Value all roles/positions equally or make it clear from the beginning what you can offer or what someone should expect in the role.

Pros

- Easy interviews and easy to get hired. - Government contracts and revenues from them are quite reliable and last multiple years. This makes the business stable and minimally affected by economic downturns, which in turn provides great job stability. - Work is easy and you can coast after the first year without having to put in much effort upskilling. - Okay benefits. Health, dental, vision insurance are on par with tech companies and fully paid for (including dependents). - A 4 week paid sabbatical every 4 years. - 10 days of sick leave per year. 6 weeks of paid maternity leave. Only a measly 1 week for paternity leave though. - 10 days of PTO per year for the first 5 years and 15 days thereafter. Additionally, first 40 hours (= 5 days) of overtime worked every year can be banked to use as PTO instead of cashing it out. - 401k matched 50% up to 6% of salary. Mega backdoor Roth available. - Pay is pretty great for the places 80% of employees end up in.

Cons

- 80% of employees end up in places that have no semblance of a tech industry. Good luck getting interview calls (during non-COVID times) from tech companies in other regions if you end up in one of these cities. - Pay is below average for the remaining 20% compared to what real tech companies pay their employees in the regions that actually have a tech industry. - Minimal say/control over which city/project one gets assigned to. Plus most people are moved to a new site every 2-4 years. Exceptions are rarely made, the most common one being you are allowed to stay on your current site/project with a pay cut. - The work is not intellectually challenging after the first year during which you pick up most of the skills and knowledge needed to do the job. Work gets mind numbingly boring after that and it's just lather, rinse, repeat the same things over and over with different clients, users, and subsystems. - There are no transferrable skills one picks up to help grow their career. The consulting skills gained are elementary at best and nothing to write home about. The same and more can be gained at any real tech company worth its salt. - Tons of implementation consultants (ICs) that have zero education/training in CS or anything technical. That's how menial the technical work is. In fact, 70% of it is actually just configuration of the product. - Any code that you do write is not complex or complicated by any measure and is mostly just simple if-else statements and while loops. A high school or college freshmen level education would suffice to be trained to do the technical work. - Most ICs can't write even fizz buzz code to save their lives. Most architects are incapable of clearing the bar to land an internship at FAANG or tier 2/3 tech companies. Some of them are probably reading this right now and wondering what that acronym is. - Tech stack is outdated and anything technical is proprietary (right down to the data structure most commonly used!) and does not translate to career opportunities at any other company. Even the version control is proprietary. Facepalm. The longer you stay the more your technical skills deteriorate. - Crazy hours on active implementation projects. Work from home is frowned upon and you're regularly expected to work long hours in the office. This was pre-COVID, but fully expect this to resume once things are back to normal. Hourly equivalent of regular pay for the overtime worked, but that's peanuts for having to give up your life for the company. - Frustrating to be surrounded by people that either don't know or just don't care that they're throwing away their careers. This is further exacerbated by the fact that many ICs have no technical background but think they're software engineers now.

Advice to Management

Stop misleading people (especially new grads that don't know any better) by selling IC positions as software engineering roles. As of this very moment, there are 7 "software engineer" positions advertised on LI when in fact these are just IC roles which involve no real software engineering. Make this abundantly clear to all applicants so they know what they are getting into.

Pros

Many perks, high pay, health and dental benefits fully covered, they welcome feedback, opportunities to travel, opportunities to participate

Cons

Can be stressful, sometimes have to work extra hours, eventually will probably have to move

Advice to Management

Just keep caring

Pros

Great company - good pay, good benefits, lots of perks. Generally I find myself surrounded with outgoing, like minded individuals and haven't had many issues with managers.

Cons

Moving is generally expected to some degree, outside of limited development center roles. This was an attraction early in my career but depending on your situation can be less stable than being tied to a given location.