Pros
-Whether or not you have a good or bad time at Fanatics is largely based on who you report to daily. I was one of the fortunate ones. -Many of the people you work with day-to-day are great. People work hard here. There’s always going to be some unpleasant folks in any workplace, but nearly all of my experiences here have been positive. -The company is an exciting one. They own much of the market share in the space and there’s new innovations coming from all verticals that are exciting to be a part of. -New company leadership in Commerce has found longstanding inefficiencies and tried to improve upon them quickly.
Cons
-Leadership has too many cooks in the kitchen. There’s too much change at once. Working at Fanatics has become an exhausting experience. -Town halls are monthly where leadership both says too much and nothing at all. There’s a Q&A where nearly single question is met with a non-answer. We can’t even get answers regarding whether or not Summer Fridays will return under this new regime (they didn’t for many). Many employees are remote and there’s no clarity on if Return to Office mandates are a team decision or a company mandate. Some teammates are in 5x a week, some are 1,000 miles way from the closest office. Leadership frequently throws buzzwords around about breaking silos and creating pods and becoming a beloved brand, but there’s no communication on how that’s being measured. Yet there’s a consistent stream of HR imitative being rolled out that put employees under a microscope. And given the fact the yearly company employee survey has been erased, it’s clear the Commerce CEO and Chief People Officer have no interest in hearing about such displeasures. -Layoffs are prevalent and employee morale is low across the board. It’s not fun when Michael Rubin has his yearly lavish Super Bowl party and two weeks later over 200 people lose their jobs. And a few weeks after that, employees are told that they will not be receiving a healthy bonus because of extremely lofty financial projections in the middle of a recession. There have also not been any cost of living adjustments given the economy of 2024 is much much more expensive than of 2020. I made nearly the same exact salary for over four years. -It’s clear the company will also be very aggressive on AI. This is going to be an issue that can be seen in all facets of the business. It is consistently talked up despite AI showing no true business value to any major company to adopt it. So if you really believe layoffs are over, think again.