FactSet Employee Review

I worked at FactSet

Pros – Benefits, work/life balance, work from home privileges (note: not all teams have this), very strong engineering culture, smart engineers and capable managers, relatively fair review system, tries to be client driven, strong onboarding plan (new hire training, mentors), innovation encouraged, company will support you resource-wise in "getting things done", relatively little bureaucracy due to PD / engineering division of labor, patience with new hires, excellent in-house managerial training, decent social atmosphere (you have to be here for a while to appreciate it).

Cons – Rigid promotion requirements hinder top performers from faster recognition (for some teams, not all), pay is average to below average for the financial software industry in NYC, in-house technology-oriented training not at the level of managerial training, an initiative needs to be developed to help PDs and engineers collaborate better (I'm serious about this), working in the financial software domain means you don't really understand the end-user (unless you are a banker or money manager), some teams have pager / on call duties, specialization means cross-team moves are less likely.

Advice to Senior Management – FactSet is the best place to work in the financial software industry, despite its shortcomings. I qualify this because the industry may not have the mass appeal as some others such as consumer-facing industries or social networking companies. Nothing you can do about that. Recommendations: make the promotion structure more fluid for high-performing engineers. Pay PDs more, they deserve it. You are not a mediocre company but you pay like one; raise your average pay to be in the top 10-15 percentile in the industry. You have a ton of free cash flow, make sure you do everything you can - not only pay, but also benefits, promotions, training, and compelling work - to keep your top performers motivated and challenged.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend