Fidelity Investments reviews

Beyond training you to pass the series 7 and series 63, Fidelity doesn’t really train you for the job you will be performing. Most, if not all jobs, are customer facing phone center jobs. Half your time will be spent dealing with angry customers. Most of the time they were told the wrong way to transfer money, or otherwise service their account, by a poorly trained rep. Other times, a form will be rejected and instead of Fidelity sending an email or making a call, a poorly worded letter will be sent advising the customer to call the general service line instead of the back office group that can actually help with the problem. Prepare to be micromanaged. In an eight hour shift, you will get one paid 30 minute break and one unpaid 30 minute lunch. Other than that, you are expected to be on the phone. You will receive “coaching” from your manager if you spend too much time writing notes on an account, if you don’t enroll enough people in the voice recognition system, if you call the help desk too much because you don’t know how to help the customer, if your calls are longer than ten minutes, if you don’t take at least 6.5 calls in an hour, or if you don’t get enough new business leads. Also, your job performance will be judged based on what customers think of you. Customer surveys must be “top box” for them to count toward your bonus. If you help a customer who was given bad information by a previous rep, even if you resolve the issue, if they’re still unhappy with the overall service Fidelity gave them (which they usually are), you get a poor evaluation. That poor evaluation is then used to assess how much of a bonus you get. After passing the series 7 and 63 you get a retention bonus. Meaning, if you work at Fidelity for less than a year after receiving the bonus, you have to pay it back. This was put into place because of the huge amount of turnover that takes place once reps are done with the training and start the actual job. Additionally, you will be taught how to avoid giving anything that resembles investment advice by directing customers back to the website for almost everything.

If you're looking for a technology position, I would go to a technology company. Fidelity is a financial services company first, and as a result they have some questionable practices. They have their own version of agile which just doesn't work. Be prepared for hour long stand ups in the morning, project managers that are not technical and fail to keep track of meeting minutes. From a salary perspective Fidelity is way behind technology companies. I left a senior position in Fidelity, and joined a junior position in a technology company. My salary went from $74,800 to $120,000. Once you get to senior in Fidelity, the path to principal, manager, director and above is almost non-existant these days. Your promotion path is not based on job performance, it is based on putting the time in with the group you're with. This much was admitted to me in my review meetings. If you join as a senior or get promoted to senior and want to be promoted to principal be prepared to put in more than 5 years before even being considered for it, and chances are the company will use a down turn in the economy as a reason for not giving you the promotion you deserve. If you're near retirement you'll be fired so the company can save money by not giving you a full retirement package. I know a lot of people that this happened to in 2008, and again recently. The company keeps changing direction. When I joined in 2007 teams were organized by function - developers, testers, etc. Recently they re-organized by product. You can be sure in another 6 - 8 years they'll go back to being organized by function after an independent consultant comes in and makes the case for it. Every 8 years the company sheds around 10 - 25% of their staff - most of them are the people it pays the most.