What's it Like Working at Fidelity Investments--I'll Let the Employees Speak for Themselves

Seems CIGNA and Fidelity Investments have a lot in common besides a revolving door of executives, and a vested interest in seeing CIGNA's stock price stay way up despite evidence that they offer no real service; they also seem to have a lousy corporate culture and no ethics.

I told Paul, see, they treat pretty much everyone badly.  You just happen to have Progressive Multiple Sclerosis--and had to work through chemotherapy. 

I wonder if Ms. Johnson's billions insulate her from really knowing what's going on at HER own company.

All the excerpts below are from JobVent.com.

respect: this is a joke. the first day i met my manager when i was in new hire he made a joke about screwing me from behind. ummm gross? yeah, welcome to fidelity! let's just say if you are a female expect to be harassed and to just smile it off because HR is a joke. anythign you tell HR will go into a thing called "eworkplace" where your boss will document everything that you do. anything you tell HR or your boss you can be sure your boss will joke about to another boss within earshot. HR tells you that "fidelity is like a big locker room so suck it up" and " this is corporate america". my new hire training was a bunch of crap about how fidelity was such a great culture to work in. then you get on the floor and you realize that the managers will use intimidation and swear at their reps all the time! so inappropriate.

team outings are at a local STRIP CLUB called marks showplace. inappropriate. this about sums up the culture at fidelity! the managers use the fidelity credit card at a STRIP CLUB and call it "team building". i call this unprofessional.

work environment: TOXIC. it's so hard to go to work every day knowing you will be told you do everything wrong by your manager and told when to take your 2 15 minute restroom breaks and constantly berated and harassed.
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Fidelity was such a great company to work at, but that is all in the past! Any of the senior leaders that were good people leaders were run out of there. I was there well over a dozen years and have watched the values crumble. No respect for service. It is a SELF-PRESERVATION culture. The worst survive. They proclaim to be product neutral but are not.
The executive team of NY cronies are starting to fail now. The Johnsons will wrestle it back into their control but then what. The leaders supposed to protect the culture were the worst offenders. Fidelity is now just like any other average big company out there. Sad!
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3) Diversity: Exists at Fidelity only in pockets such as HR and customer service. The financial groups, IT and other professional areas of the organization are starkly white male. This is especially true in Marlbourgh, Smithfield, Boston and Merrimack. The company is private and does not make any effort to recruit young bright and talented minorities that are out there. So if you are a young bright, professional and talented minority that happens to find yourself at Fidelity, just be aware what you are in for: stares, lonely lunches by yourself, and a huge lack of respect from coworkers.
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There are three things that one with career experience will notice immediately. 1) Personality trumps professionalism 2) Financial company with no apparent real interest in finance. 3) Total disregard for ethics.
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Worked there over 10 years. Experienced sexual harrasement twice.
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To begin with, you come in a hour early because you always have to work mandatory overtime. Then, you get situated at your cubicle and turn on your aspect phone. (an aspect phone is a device that holds calls and counts every single second of your day. As well as what you are doing at all times.) Once it is on you will notice a red light. This means you have 50 plus people waiting on the line to speak with you. There are other colored lights that represent less people waiting, but I have never seen them. For a few hours you will be berated with unpredicatble questions and comments. It will all be recorded, so that your manager can listen to them and tell you how much you need to improve. Make no mistake about it, you will take calls. Financial anaylist= calls, 401k rep = calls, trader= calls. It is all the same and calls are terrible. Then you need to use the restroom, so you put yourself on a break with your phone. This time counts against you and your bonus because your phone knows you are not taking calls and being screamed at. God forbid you need to do some off phone work on an account. It counts against you, even though you are making an extra effort to help a client. Then you get a 30 minute lunch where you have the opportunity to pay for really expensive caffeteria food that you dont have time to eat. Then it is calls for the rest of the day. But dont forget about that mandatory overtime! You get to stay and extra 1.5 hrs and leave your kids at daycare until 8pm. Isnt this great? If you have time, you can use the company gym (that you have to pay for) and stay at work a little longer.
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I see Fidelity made an announcement they are now shifting 950 employees from Marlborough back to Boston and further south to RI. Many of these people will no doubt be the same people who were forced to leave Boston back in June 2008 or, as many did, opt out with a severnace package.

This constant movement conjured up by Fidelity Senior Management highlights a few very sad tell-tale possibilities:

Behind door #1, Senior Management are a totally confused, unfocused lot, incapable of making medium to long term decisions that stick. Said another way, they do not know WTF they are doing. That is enough to make me pull my money.

Behind door #2. They continually move people to bring about attrition thru forced job loss. That is even worse than #1. Said another way, they could care less about people and families; they totally suck. That is enough for me to pull my money and not look back.

Behind door #3, there lurks a dark pool containing a huge power struggle amoung the sharks swimmming around the fading abilities of Ned Johnson. He obviously no longer has the strength to untangle the mess Fidelity has become. He can no longer prevent the train wreck from gathering steam. Abagail - either can you.