Great place for consultants. Terrible for externally hired Sr consultants & Managers
Pros
1) Flexible work timings and work from home. 2) Regular town halls where senior leadership shares updates and answers employee questions. 3) Enabling teams – IT, FAA, & Admin are super. 4) Free food.
Cons
1) Recruitment hacks – They can lie to get people onboard. They will tell that you will be eligible for promotion in next cycle (in a year) but then you will be told that you cannot be considered because of less tenure in the company. I have met at least 6 other people who have been hired this way in last 2 years. 2) Sluggish growth – First, one will not be considered for promotion ONLY because of tenure for ~2 years. Then reasons on revenue handled are given, basis the target given to current managers. Many of the current managers are themselves not able to meet their revenue targets, but a senior consultant should meet that target even to be considered for a promotion, how does this make sense? Assume you exceed the revenue target as well – Oh well, now what? NO promotions companywide for a year. Yes, this is what has been announced in Oct'19. Imagine a company claiming to grow at 30% YoY, announcing no promotions for a year! Avg hike is around 8-9%. 3) Difficult to survive for lateral hires – Homegrown people who have been in the organization for last 6+ years are powerful and biased. More opportunities will float within this pool (which is understandable), but as a lateral hire in mid-management: SC or manager, it becomes quiet tough to grow and get opportunities. a) With excessive focus on revenues for personal growth – it naturally depends on opportunities/accounts one gets to work on, and you will only get the leftover, irrespective of capabilities. As a lateral, you will have little visibility on what’s happening at the top. Don’t be surprised if you end up reporting to your 2-year college junior, ONLY because he/she has been at Fractal for 5+ years. b) It is extremely difficult to get out of a project assigned. You will be stuck. c) When one needs new consultants on project, you don’t get the experienced ones. >50% of the time you will get freshers and will have to train them as well during the project. Hiring has been cost-sensitive with not as smart people joining lately, training new people on short projects is draining. 4) Hypocrisy galore in last 2 years – Currently leadership says that there are too many Sr Consultants, hence promotions are limited across company, at the same time there is hiring going on for these positions. The same happened for manager position before promotions were banned for a year. CEO has said to employees in a meeting that people should be driven by growth at Fractal, and that this growth should not be measured in money. So, if your motivations include either career progression or monetary growth, please be 100% sure on why you would like to join Fractal.
