Pros
- Unlimited PTO, - Reasonably flexible - more on this later, - If you like being in an office then FanDuel is better set up for you, - Lots of cool tech and nice offices, - Some really smart people work here, you. just might not work with them,
Cons
- Salaries are poor for a company that does so well - Does FanDuel pay fair salaries? In the current climate, with so many layoffs, we are hiring like mad to grow with the ever expanding gaming market in the US. We also make a considerable amount of money each year. We should be able to pay our staff top-tier-tech-company salaries. FanDuel talks a lot about competing with the tech giants in terms of the work we do (obviously not at the same sort of scale and Google and Amazon, but arguably in the conversation with the tier below) and yet we pay salaries that are location based, often not competing with the kind of companies we want to attract talent away from (especially in a world where remote work is an important consideration for many employees). Yes, we do have good long term incentive plans, and the company say this levels the "total compensation" but is that really the case? Do the companies that pay higher salaries not offer equity and long term incentives/bonuses? There is, in fact, a similarly sized tech company in Edinburgh that has base salaries that are 20-25% higher than ours. - Remote work is an afterthought - company doesn't seem to want to make it easy to work remotely even though many of us have working for FanDuel remotely longer than we have otherwise. Many of us aren't able to give up the time we got back from not having to commute. Generally this is very team and manager dependant though. Some managers don't mind too much, while some prefer to "encourage" you into the office - tactics that often increase anxiety and stress. - Again team dependant, but if you're new to a team, and/or new to engineering generally, you might struggle - there's a lot of leeway to not be under pressure from your peers and to be able to get up to speed, but that doesn't do a lot to alleviate the internal pressures driven by imposter syndrome and lack of productivity that being in that sort of position brings - especially when the work has a tight deadline (which most stuff does because FanDuel's product decisions are driven by sports timetables - no point in a new feature for NFL if it's not ready for the season). - Learning and development is very team dependant, and if you're on a team that has deadlines or has a lack of folks in senior positions then you're on your own. - Some benefits are good, others don't exist or are poorly executed. E.g. unlimited PTO is good, but if you happen to be sick you are threatened with "HR might want to speak to you about your absence". Maternity and paternity leave is good - however the company does very little to ease your transition back to work. Other companies in Edinburgh offer a "wellbeing allowance" to give you a bit of extra cash to spend on things that will help your transition back to the office. At FanDuel you're lucky if your team do a collection for you. After having our first child there was no collection, and nothing from the company. Making me feel undervalued and disrespected honestly. Teams should either be consistent with how they treat folks (here's an idea, make it a benefit...), or they should do nothing for everyone. - While a minor point the same thing is true for Birthdays, if you have a birthday on work day, woohoo, someone might do something for you, a shoutout, a collection. If you're unlucky enough to have a birthday at a time when folks are off you're on your own. An argument I would make against Birthday related benefits generally to be honest unless accounted for ("have a day off on your Birthday" - cool everyone's off anyway, thanks for nothing). - Honestly the work life balance is generally OK, but some managers like to be a bit more prescriptive about how they manage YOUR time, than let you manage it yourself. There was a another review about trust and autonomy and if you're lucky enough to be on a team where those things are respected then that's awesome, but often you will get messages from managers "just checking in" that are more akin to micromanagement than anything to do with protecting the employee's mental health. You see a lot of posts on LinkedIn by folks that 'took their dog for a walk to get some air', or 'did a workout to give my brain a break', often IMO it doesn't feel like this is something you can do at FanDuel without extreme anxiety. Unless... you're in the office. If people can SEE you do something it seems to be OK. But when we work across multiple offices, and countries, and there is no guarantee that your manager will be in the same one as you that also goes out the window a bit. - I'm sure this is true for other companies too, but social events feel more like internal networking events where the more you show up the more recognition you'll get in return. In reality who does this really help: folks without outside responsibilities that are happy spending their free time socialising with their colleagues - something that is not very inclusive when it considers people with children, or other commitments that they may prefer to do.
