No career growth here - Junior Full Stack Engineer Simple Fractal Employee Review

1.0
Jan 3, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- The culture is good here - You can be vocal about things and management would take it into consideration

Cons

1. The work became very repetitive after a few months. 2. Turnover is pretty high as people left the company constantly (no more than a year). And the tech lead has been there for not even a year. Therefore, there are no experienced engineers you can learn from. 3. There is no training program in place. You are expected to start coding on Day 1. 4. The starting salary is very low (way below avg)

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Simple Fractal Response
3y
We strive to make everyone's experience positive here and I'm sorry that you weren't happy with yours. Thank you for recognizing how much we value feedback - yours is no exception. We have already taken action and enacted positive change, but there is more work to do. Firstly, it sounds like you projects you were assigned didn't match your preferences. Some team members prefer a multitude of shorter projects to rack up more end-to-end development experience while others enjoy working on products with continuous iterations, with pros and cons to both. This tells me we can do a better job surveying employee interests so that we can more accurately consider them alongside client needs when making staffing decisions. Secondly, we weren't immune to the Great Resignation and I regret losing some great team members. We've made an effort to improve retention with regular team building activities, more upward mobility based on results and merit, and the addition of more experienced engineers and team members. We now have several team members that have programmed for ~10 years or more. Additionally, we recently hired a CTO with over 35 years of industry experience to help us scale successfully. We think these actions will improve retention and encourage further investment in our team members. Thirdly, it is no secret that we offer starting salaries below market. There are two main reasons for this: 1) We want to attract talent that is confident in their ability to grow with the company and deliver results. As such, we use end-of-year bonuses, rapid promotion opportunities, along with uncapped compensation aligned with KPIs at higher levels to share the upside in financial performance. 2) We are a bootstrapped company where profitability is very important for survival. We do not subscribe to the high engineering salaries and cash burning that ruled tech for a long time. Instead, we start off team members on a modest base, and offer significant rewards to those that deliver value. We think there are benefits to our fiscal responsibility as we have doubled our team in the past 12 months and are able to offer job security at a time when most other tech companies are undergoing mass layoffs and/or having existential worries surrounding their next round if financing. Lastly, I appreciate your advice about product. We finished a smaller bot product toward the end of 2022, and it's on our strategic roadmap to develop a bigger bot product in 2023 based on market feedback. We have a plan and have already taken action to bring it to fruition. It will be challenging to work on, and fulfilling to better support our clients and the communities they serve! Thank you!

Explore other reviews about Simple Fractal

5.0
Nov 5, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Often the work feels very impactful - The other engineers are hard-working, curious, driven and collaborative - To a certain extent, everyone is welcome to express opinions and shape the direction of the company. - Founder/CEO is dedicated, down-to-earth, and intelligent. - Fully remote and I found WLB expectations to be healthy.

Cons

- Often working on legacy code and with clients who are limited in technical understanding and maturity. - Growth path involves more interfacing with clients (i.e. at this time there is less of a purely technical growth track). This could be a good thing for some as that client-facing time was extremely beneficial to my growth in the non-technical areas of SWE (communication skills, prioritization skills, etc.). But worth noting.

5.0
Dec 1, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Great support for new engineers. This was my first job as a professional developer and I was given the tools and mindset to succeed. - Clear steps for becoming a force multiplier. If you want to have impact beyond executing on software requirements as handed to you, this is the place for you. - Objective, regular opportunities to increase compensation via performance reviews. These are advertised as achievable during the interview process, and this is indeed the case. - Feedback from employees is taken seriously and acted upon.

Cons

Take the following cons with a grain of salt - they may be considered pros by some. - You will be expected to demonstrate growth and be proactive about improving aspects of the company, from software development processes to company culture. This can be uncomfortable for those who would rather not take initiative, or blend in. - Client facing work can add additional surface area for responsibility/stress that you may not want. You have control over this to *some* degree.

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