Social events foster connection, but favoritism exists - Sales Manager Fastmarkets Employee Review

Lots of room for career advancement. Good transparency from management. Good work flexibility

Work can be stressful and demanding as some prices are used in clients contracts.

disappearing rapidly. all the old reasons to work here are being stripped away

The company was bought by private equity, who set unreasonable growth goals as an excuse to not pay out bonuses or give raises anymore. Fastmarkets' CEO has become obsessed with the former CEO of a competitor, who singlehandedly destroyed the competitor's standing in the markets (they lost all their crude benchmarks due to his poor leadership). But for some reason the current Fastmarkets CEO has overlooked all that and slavishly does whatever the retired CEO recommends. Which seems to be triple all the pricing and drive away all the customers (just like at his old company!) while making the company a worse place to work every day. The desperation is obviously growing internally as the company is stripping itself clean like a chicken bone to fake higher and higher profits every quarter, and employees are given more punitive administrative tasks every month to prove they are providing value. Goals change suddenly without warning, and employees are expected to meet rising goals even while not being allowed to attend industry events because of budget cuts. One year I watched the marketing team have total turnover 3 times in a single year, leading to very chaotic conference events. Sales is given ever-higher goals in completely saturated markets, making it impossible to succeed. At one meeting the sales team bragged about its growth by saying the oldest employee had been there for 60 days - a fact that should be raising alarm bells instead of praise. Pay rates are chaotic and unfair, with younger and less experienced workers sometimes making up to 50% more than longer-term employees. Do not settle for an offer here less than $105k because that is what they are paying new market reporters with hardly any experience - and you will need higher income to offset the risk of joining this company. Fastmarkets is a ticking time bomb for the private equity to strip it and sell it for parts, which means no more jobs for anyone.