Pros
The pay is competitive for the Buffalo, NY health care industry.
Cons
Note, this review mostly pertains to the IT side of the business. Where to begin. To start, Fidelis has a reputation in the Buffalo IT industry of being a bad place to work. I'm here to say this has been well-earned. The reason I'm writing this review is that many of the current IT staff have been asked to pad the reviews in an effort to ease hiring difficulties, and I want to make sure people have something accurate to help get a good sense of the company at the at the time of this review. Like many companies, Fidelis has good and bad employees. It just happens to be that at Fidelis, many of the irrational, aggressive non-expert employees get the promotions to positions of power. This would be fine if these managers had the technical expertise to lead effectively, but in almost all cases, they do not. This is a company of half-understood buzzwords, and hastily made purchases of products recommended by folks who believe Fidelis's problems are entirely technical, and not in fact created by humans. Fidelis's problems are for the most part, cultural. Fidelis maintains a culture of fear. Fear of blame, fear of being reprimanded, fear of not getting a promotion. The CIO has made attempts at weakening this culture, but it runs deep in lower level managers. It is in someways justified. Getting yelled at is common. Getting yelled at publicly is just as common. Shaming is normal. This has led to a rift between departments, and not being able to get a straight yes/no answer out of anyone. Managers will be copied in on every e-mail, and some departments do not even allow any of their employees to have one-on-one email chains with people outside the department. With the absence of working relationships between departments, communication is weak, and productivity is worse. Black boxes are scattered throughout your day-to-day operations. Getting answers from other departments on simple questions or requests can take days, weeks, or even months, and the requests can never be made in person. Sitting around waiting for e-mails and pretending to work is normal. From a more day-to-day perspective, it can commonly be feast or famine, but usually feast. Projects are started late and regularly mismanaged, so deadlines are constantly looming. Project managers have no issue requiring you to work nights as weekends, with hourly meetings, until deadlines are met. Things can be worse in some departments, where work is disproportionately distributed to those who show competence. These people can, and have been, worked into tears or even the hospital. From a career move perspective, be very wary of coming to Fidelis unless it's for a very high-level position, or if the position you'll be moving into is one you want to stay at for 10+ years. Most managers do not advocate for their employees advancement, so do not have this expectation. There are some exceptions, but for the most part you are treated as an asset, and you'll need to play a political game of perceived competence rather than actual accomplishments to get ahead. This is common at other companies, but at Fidelis it's possible to move up the ladder without doing any real work. The opposite is also true, where you will likely be overlooked to be moved up for doing lots of real work. And from an amenities point of view, Fidelis is not offering what a normal company offers in the 21st century. Insurance is supplied (by another company), but that's about it. The Buffalo office has no gym, and no gym membership reimbursement. This is a symptom of Fidelis's spending habits, coming down from the top, Father Frawley. (Side note, the CEO is referred to by all as Father.) He seems to hold implicit religious frugality as the deciding factor of budgeting, so preventative medicine is very low on the radar. It also bleeds into spending on training (with the exception of microsoft word), and many other areas. The lowest cost "solution" is always selected. Because of all these problems (and more), the turnover rate is well above the national average (even for health care), and they've broadened their recruitment efforts outside of the Buffalo area because of the aforementioned reputation. The only way I could recommend the IT side of Fidelis is if you are completely emotionally detached, because you'll be running a gauntlet of frustration in your time there.
