FDM Group reviews

Pay, the way they split up your pay, you will constantly have to check them on their word, you won't be able to afford breaking your contract, did not get an offer from the company FDM placed me at following my FDM stint, lied about our contract length, they pay you less than they make off of you. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS JOB UNLESS IT IS YOUR LAST HOPE. I had read a bunch of Glassdoor reviews and the bad ones are pretty factual. I needed a job so I took the job but you should know you are basically a slave to the company for the next 27 months. For starters, they give you good training but it cost you so much more than it would anywhere else. We got about 2 months of training but they double charge you for it. 1) They say you can't leave the company unless you pay them $30K and you only make about $45 or $50K a year so it is impossible to leave if you want a place to live and food to eat. 2) You will get paid well below your colleagues once you are on site. I kid you not, I took a job doing the exact same thing with less work for a new company and instantly over doubled my salary. They made us come to NYC for training (which is actually pretty cool) but then they pay you as if you live with your mom down the street! For training you get a bonus that will not cover a place to stay while you are in NYC and you get minimum wage for your training time, which if you have ever been to NYC means you might be lucky to eat PB&Js the whole time you are there and spend less than you make. Anything you want to do while in NYC is not coming from the money you make from FDM. Once we finished training, and were on-site, you quickly realize that the people who do your exact job make twice as much as you, and I am not exaggerating about that. What the client company pays FDM for you to work for them is over twice your salary so FDM makes more off of you than you actually make. Multiple times we had to recheck our paychecks because multiple times they were not correct when we got them. They purposely split up your pay in many ways just to confuse you so be ready to do some math every time you get a paycheck just to make sure you are getting that super low amount they are required to pay you by their contract! You won't be paid for holidays and likely you will be forced to use all of your vacation days when you don't want to (but that is dependent on the client you end up working for as well as FDM). We were told our contract would be 2 years, but that only includes your time on site, your contract is actually 2-3 months of minimum wage for training, plus 2 more years on top of that. We were also told we would have a month of training once onsite and THEN our 2 year contract would start. So you are basically stuck with them for longer than you thought. We also had our contract end a month before we were told it was, which you would think would be a good thing but we found out a month before that when a team member tried to get vacation time from our client and the client told us we actually weren't employed on that date even though FDM told us we would be. So all of us had one less month to search for a job or start getting half of what we thought we would get paid because FDM flat out lied to us about our end date. All I will say is be prepared to constantly check this company at their word. It was a miserable 2 years full of surprises. They do offer some helpful things but they come at a VERY expensive cost to you the employee.

Having given them all that praise, I can say confidently that FDM are a joke. Let's do the rundown on flaws: - Unpaid training, unless you're Irish or ex-forces. The training is absolutely awful, it is 100% a pretext for that dodgy contract. Its fun! Don't get me wrong, but its simply not worth 20k! You'd learn more watching YouTube for 6 months. One of the classes was the funniest, literally on how to tie ties and shake hands. Not even joking, come get your 20K handshake! FDM brings networking to the table, nothing else. - You have practically no control over your first client, which can make a MASSIVE difference to the course of your life. A lot of the industries are 'No experience, no entry', if you want to get into investment banking and your first client is Virgin Media, good luck to you! This also applies to location, I was sent from Glasgow to London. Its not just a detail on the contract. Sometimes the Salespeople even have the temerity to put you forward for roles that have nothing to do with your training! I've heard horror stories of people interviewing for dev roles and end up being application support on site, not writing a single line of code! And until your 2 years are up, its quite hard to turn down interviews, getting strong armed into roles you don't want is not unheard of in FDM. Its a lottery, a lottery I won big time, but its still a lottery. - After entry level positions, ie after your two years, there's practically no chance of you getting placed with a client again. The salesteam avoid you like the plague, as it is likely you will leave after a few months and their commission is based on how many months you are on site. For me, this was perfect, as I could sit around writing external CVs all day, read or study French, chat to people and play chess. Its a paid holiday really. But forget about long term career development. - For a self-proclaimed IT consultancy, its really not a tech savvy place. The computers are 'pre the dot com bubble,' 'pre Alan Turing' maybe, you can't do any serious development in that office, as what the hardware limits, the IT Software security policy strangles. - Speaking of IT policy, one of the things that annoyed me the most was that all your passwords for all the different systems in FDM, including email, get reset every 6 weeks, which sounds great from a security perspective but it means that when you’re on site and want to use anything you’re always locked out and have to spend a week emailing IT Support trying to get back in. Its unbelievably painful. - Ah the salary. For those of you weak at heart, look away now. FDM's business model is genius really, they get desperate grads and lease them out to roles they're totally unqualified for, charge them 20K if they try leave and charge the client 3-6 times what they would pay for a normal grad. Its vaguely impressive. I'm not joking though, you get a third or a quarter of what the client is actually paying. FDM will never tell you this but you'll find out later. The overtime is tear inducing, they literally pay you the exact same rate as your normal hourly rate, and they take home your overtime bonus that the client pays. This is how they can afford to have consultants sitting around on bench for months on end, its pocket change to how much they make when they’re on site. The third year salary is also far below average, I doubled my salary when I left. - There's quite a strong chance you won't even be working! I was lucky and I got a continuous 2 year contract. Some people are back on the bench every 3 months and end up there for ages doing nothing, getting paid half salary. - FDM don’t care about their employees so long as FDM get paid. One story I heard was that a girl’s manager on site was overworking and bullying her. For months she begged FDM to take her back but they kept putting it off and delaying it, ‘see what the next month is like’. It continued until the girl eventually got clinical depression and had to leave the client. My advice to you is ONLY join FDM if you want to become a developer for a blue chip, having come from a non IT background. When in, assert your right to manage your own destiny with the salesteam, making sure the role is something you actually want to do.