A company started with a great agenda and promise, but is slowly getting eaten by viruses of its own creation - Engagement Manager Fractal Employee Review

1.0
Apr 2, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great mission and vision from the founders. - Highly inspirational and motivational leadership quality shown by two remaining founders of the company. - Although very low in volume, but some projects are excellent in nature for folks to work on pure analytics, data science and data engineering fields. - Extremely flexible work environment, where the company always puts trust on its employees - flexible work timing, uncounted leaves, work from home facilities, etc. - Some of the people (read very very few) in the higher management are pure gold, having just sufficient knowledge of cutting edge technologies, basic concepts of math and statistics, etc. This surely helps those freshers a lot. - Client-based projects with a significant portion of focus going into serving clients at the highest level. This provides a great opportunity to showcase talents and skills. - Great onsite opportunities for even junior folks.

Cons

- Terrible middle management. Basically great power is given to some irresponsible and under-qualified people in this company which nowadays is creating enough nuisance for superb talents to quit within very short period of time (not more than 2 years). - Over time both the founders have started to believe in few heads of the company who are literally ruining the opportunity to achieve their goal, purely by practising unnecessary and unethical concepts like favouritism (maybe nepotism a bit) and lying. - ~85% of projects in this company are pure reporting in nature with little to no scope for any ML or AI tools / techniques to apply. In a highly client-focused company policy, even if there is scope, nobody will bother to convince clients to step up and do something good, as long as steady revenue flow is ensured. - Currently, there is no opportunity for anyone within the company to share his/her point-of-view on anything or share some brilliant idea on innovations without jeopardising his/her own career growth. Believe me, if you want to present some cool idea on how to do the job better in this company now, you first get proofs from the client in written that it was your idea, otherwise your manager is just looking forward to screwing you over. - Somehow both the founders of the company have lost their interests in this company (they have their own side ventures to take care of now!). This has created a black hole within the company which indeed is creating chances for some undeserving people to move up and become (horrible) "decision makers". - The Award System in this company is a pure joke. One day you might get awarded as FractElite (which is extremely proud thing to achieve) and the next day you might get fired because you questioned a "decision maker". - In recent years, a very high percentage of tenured people (employees with 5 years or more experience) have left the company because of lack of respects and growth. A significant portion of these employees were very high achievers at Fractal, but failed to tolerate wrong-doings of those "few" people with great power.

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Fractal Response
5y
There's a lot you have written here and I am thankful to you for writing the same. I can assure you that Pranay and I have no side businesses. We are 100% working on building Fractal as an institution that will last a 100 years. I spend 60-65 hours each week building Fractal and nothing else. I have monetarily contributed to the creation of Plaksha University, but it is a not for profit institution and my contribution of money doesn't give me any ownership. It is purely philanthropic in nature. Please feel free to speak with me, I am happy to understand this further and work with you on all aspects you have alluded to. Srikanth Velamakanni

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5.0
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Pros

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Cons

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3.0
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Recommend
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Pros

The company's client centricity is exceptional, with a deeply embedded focus on delivering value, reflected in a strong and loyal client base built on high levels of trust and credibility. There is a significant commitment to AI research and forward looking capabilities, alongside a clear investment in building a people first culture over time. The company is well regarded in the market with a strong foundation for continued growth

Cons

TMT suffers from ineffective leadership at the helm with little visible effort to grow capabilities or drive meaningful outcomes. Exec contribution to growth is largely absent, making the net impact negative. Cultural values are not consistently reflected in day to day execution. It has a pattern of positioning other teams negatively including Growth, Tech, AI, and PA rather than partnering, which creates real friction with them resulting in loss of opportunities. There is genuine talent within the team being held back by leadership that prioritizes internal politics over building real capability, resulting in shallow vertical capabilities. The gap between what the company expects and what leadership enables the team to deliver is significant and consistently unaddressed

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