Fandom Reviews

Fandom is an organization that likes to talk about doing things. Between quarterly Pulse surveys, fireside chats with the CEO, monthly all-hands meetings, etc., they are very good at giving you the impression that they are *going* to make things better. And that's not to say they don't make any changes for the better, but oftentimes its one step forward, two steps back. The first big issue is that Fandom's upper-management thinks they know best, and they don't have enough respect for their subject matter experts to listen to them. Instead, good ideas are often dismissed in favor of short term gains from leaders that don't have the same grasp on the product as those who have been working with it for years. This is very apparent with their handling of the Curse teams and products they acquired back in the beginning of 2019. Questionable product decisions have been made despite pushback from the teams directly involved with those products, and it all boils down to feeling like you're in an environment where you're not truly being heard. Speaking of being heard, there's a toxicity to the way Fandom handles open communication between staff and upper management. For example, in 2020 the Tech team at Fandom made the unpopular decision to no longer allow anonymous questions for AMAs during the Technology Team's All Hands meetings. Their reasoning was that they want to foster open, trusting communication between an employee and management. They said that they wanted every voice to speak without fear of retribution. The problem is that trust had not been earned yet, and their actions since then betrayed that trust even more. Examples include pulling employees aside assuming they were the ones who asked some of the "harder" questions during an All-Hands, even when they didn't. As someone who was pulled into one of these meetings, it played a pretty large part in my leaving the company. As mentioned previously, Fandom doesn't value expertise in their workers. A person in a role should feel more like just a warm body to fill a slot on a team. On the Curse side, the last year has been a mass exodus of talented individuals leaving, many of which would have stayed if they had felt any sense of value in the eyes of the company (some of which were forced out as well). Instead their response amounted to "Leave if you want to leave". The moment you express any intent of looking elsewhere for a job, Fandom will immediately label you as a lost cause instead of actually trying to understand why you feel the way you do, and what they can do to keep you. It's also worth mentioning, that during the churn (which continues) of Fandom employees, they've resorted to asking newer hires for positive Glassdoor reviews, and have even pushed people to positively review after a big meeting that they think went well. It comes off very disingenuous. Good employers don't have to beg for positive reviews. Half of my career at this job were some of the best years I've had professionally. The other half after Fandom took over was a completely different story. As someone who wanted to keep working on the products I helped build, it was extremely disappointing to see how they treat their workers.

Bottom line: you're just a cog in the machine. If you're seeking employment here, know that your teammates are basically like the musicians on the Titanic... meaning this boat's a-sinking, and you're gonna go down with the captain.