Pros
Will start with few things which have been mentioned time and again in almost all reviews: A. Awesome CEO. Everything Else: 1. Flexible working hours. 2. No leaves tracking 3. No entry-exit timings 4. No specific dress code 5. Flat organisation, anyone can approach anyone directly 6. Higher work-life balance compared to others in the same field 7. Good compensation 8. Once a Fractalite, always a Fractalite. 9. Easy Exit Policy. 10.Analysts and Senior Analysts: for being the pillars of Fractal.
Cons
Some of them have been mentioned before but I will stress on it yet again. And I am explaining each point in detail. The intent isn’t to malign the company but to highlight points on which corrective action can be taken. End of the day, it’s my company and I love it. I hope Srikanth is reading this. A. Middle Management: If you compare the quality of AL/SCs who have been hired in the past 1-2 years to AL/SCs who are home grown, you can see the difference. While Srikanth emphasizes on the fact that everyone should be Analyst first and their current Role next, it hardly happens. Lack of technical knowledge is often exposed in front of clients, and it doesn't present a rosy picture of Fractal. Why do we need managers of big projects who don't know anything technical about what’s happening with the project. And this happens in all client-relationships. People management and all (what they claim) is okay, but everything is secondary right? B. Project Change: What we know is quite in contrast to what reality is. Changing projects is difficult; often managers not ready to let people go. They may site thousand reasons, but yes the intent is clear. C. Quality of work: This has to come up. People are sticking to Fractal because they love Fractal and its culture. But ask them about the quality of work, most of them aren’t too satisfied. And in the long run, to be sustainable I think the QoW should be improved. Because between the work and the company, people will choose their work in the long run. People don’t want to do standard reporting, which is common in many projects. I know few big CPG clients are major cash cows with fixed stream of revenue, but we need to move beyond that. Srikanth, kindly look at this yourself. D. Appraisals: Generally the appraisal time is the worst time in Fractal, specially on promotion discussions which generally goes down to voting, and something which leads to lobbying. Every manager will want his team member to get promoted. Lets have a clear metric for promotion as well like we have for Goal achievement. I know we are working on it, but this is something I wanted to highlight. E. Dependence on A/SA: Dependency on A/SA is huge. Literally HUGE. Sometimes entire project hinges on the availability of one or two As/SAs. This is wrong. The AL/SC/AD should be equally responsible for the entire project, and should serve as a back-up at all times. A/SA cant take proper leaves without meticulous planning. F. More space for sitting. We are all cramped! :( But this is a secondary requirement.