Fanatics reviews

3.3

48% would recommend to a friend

(1,521 total reviews)
avatar

Michael Rubin

55% approve of CEO

47% positive business outlook

Fanatics has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 1,521 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Fanatics employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
3.0
Jan 7, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* my co-workers were great: kind, smart & hard-working! * clean code-base that hasn't yet had time to accumulate cruft * young & dynamic company that could be on its way to #1 in the US Sportsbook & online gambling market * top notch business leadership

Cons

FBG has copied Amazon's policy of giving managers a quota of 10% of their reports that should be "missing expectations". So my manager (who has never been a Software engineer) was monitoring every individual's performance to be able to decide who had to be "missing expectations". My team was high performing and almost always finishing our projects early. Of course the evaluation metric my manager used is simplistic and easy to game; if you know what's going on! In my case the metric seemed to be "Jira points" finished. So people who cut corners to go faster are rewarded and people who are thorough are penalized. As one successful staff engineer told me after I decided to leave: "If the solution isn't *obviously* terrible; I go for it!" Worst of all I did not receive any feedback or guidance from my manager until it was too late. I was just told "you're missing expectations"; but I couldn't do anything about it! This happened to me on both of my performance evaluations! After a miserable year at FBG I decided to make it easier on everyone and chose a "voluntary" exit program which will give me back my happiness.

2.0
Sep 5, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fanatics Inc. as a COMPANY is amazing. The culture and casual dress code is comparable to Google and Facebook.

Cons

The middle and upper management are driving this company in the ground, and that is not an understatement! The middle/upper management only hire and promote people that they know or that kiss their behind. They do not promote based off of skill, intelligence, and seniority. Thus, a lot of highly qualified people are doing menial tasks; and adversely there are a lot of inexperienced people in great positions. The tier-1 Enterprise experience looks very great on your resume. Therefore a lot of great workers use this company as the stepping-stone to bigger companies. If you are going to work here, MAKE SURE YOU DO YOUR OWN MARKET RESEARCH ON THE SALARY RANGES FOR YOUR AREA! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Fanatics will pimp you if they can. For example, a SharePoint administrator easily makes over $100,000. Fanatics will find someone with SharePoint administrator experience, hire them as a lower job title like "System Analyst" (which pays at most $65,000) and then pay them a lesser salary while getting them to do specialty work. They will not pay you what you are worth. The human resources know this, however they do nothing about it. Another bad issue at this company is they hire smart, lazy people. Everyone wants to get paid top salaries for not doing their job. The middle management does not hold their departments accountable for their work. When an issue of severity arises everyone will point the finger at each other instead of taking ownership and do their job. Fanatics constantly lies to their employees and doesn't value their people. They will promise you the world and under-deliver every time. Whatever they promise you in your interview, GET IT IN WRITING FROM THE MANAGER BEFORE YOU ACCEPT THE OFFER. Whatever duties they want you to perform get that in writing also. Fanatics will under hire people just to save money on the back end, and work their teams to death on a bare-bones budget. Get the highest salary you can fresh out the gate because you will more than likely not get a raise for years. Fanatics has no direction. Every work day is chaos because the company has grown so fast in such a short time. So, expect the middle management to change direction and focus multiple times a month. If you are going to work here, please do your research. I would only recommend working here for no more than 5 years and then moving on to a more organized company. There are much better companies out there than the circus called Fanatics.

1.0
Apr 4, 2019

Blatantly unethical HR leadership

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Connection to sports Great employee discount

Cons

Embarrassed to have been a part of the HR team. Communications/policy roll outs/system changes are unprofessional and many times don’t support business needs. Feedback is unwelcome to a point that it’s not just disregarded - you will be coached harshly in a way that discourages any feedback at all ever again. Team members eventually give up on trying to make things better and either become disengaged or leave. Team members who are incompetent, disruptive and just plain rude to the entire organization are protected. People are moved and promoted without posting positions. Opportunities are not awarded based on performance but on favoritism. Tenure in the department is non existent due to extreme turnover. There are no avenues for HR team members to raise concerns because even the hotline is managed exclusively by HR.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 1,521 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,676 Fanatics reviews submitted anonymously by Fanatics employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Fanatics is right for you.