"Posting here on behalf of an employee who is working at Fid India (as this website only allows posts from within the USA)."
I am an L6 Principal Engineer in India and have spent the last 12 years at Fidelity, working across three different BUs. Over time, I’ve noticed a steep decline in the caliber of senior leadership at levels L7-8 and above. Their primary concern seems to be hosting “visitors” from the U.S.; the moment such a visit is announced, they go into “alert mode,” preparing PowerPoint slides, arranging floor walks and roundtable sessions, and coaching employees on exactly what they should or shouldn’t say. Most of this preparatory work is pushed onto individual contributors like me (L6 and below), but when these visits are deemed “successful,” managers usually receive all the credit—often in the form of a single congratulatory email or LinkedIn post from the visiting executive.
In prioritizing these presentations and visitor-focused activities, actual project work suffers. Those who create slides, manage schedules, or organize events are favored for promotions, while employees handling core technical tasks remain overlooked. Compounding this issue is that most senior leaders sit in Bangalore, leaving those of us in Chennai perpetually at a disadvantage.
Many of the managers in these tech teams either lack technical expertise or have allowed their skills to lapse, preventing them from contributing meaningfully to real project needs. Instead, they rely on strong presentation and communication abilities to secure positive performance reviews. This system rewards non-technical individuals, resulting in a leadership structure that is often incompetent and self-perpetuating. As a result, genuine technical contributions lose value, and the focus remains on “partner visits” and superficial, India-specific initiatives instead of substantive, technology-driven goals. This pattern holds across all BUs, with some business units experiencing even worse conditions.
I respectfully urge visiting executives to encourage senior leaders to focus on more meaningful work instead of devoting excessive effort to superficial presentations. Many of these orchestrated events offer minimal benefit and consume significant time that could be better spent on genuine product or project deliverables.
15 replies (most recent on top)
Heard this nonsense is still going on
I left the organization three years ago, and one thing is evident—the leadership lacks direction and genuine leadership qualities. They possess no real capabilities; their primary skills revolve around meaningless rhetoric, taking credit for others' work, and running ineffective India-specific initiatives that require weekly meetings. These meetings, along with various workshops, mentoring sessions, and initiatives, waste a significant amount of time without contributing to the organization’s overall goals.
PI is the worst business unit in India, managed by a group of incompetent individuals handpicked by the BU head. These so-called leaders have no real skills beyond performing trivial tasks for the BU head. As a result, most of the top talent has already left the organization.
Under the current leadership, the firm has become an uninspiring and unproductive workplace. To drive meaningful change, all BU heads should be replaced with external talent, as there are no capable leaders remaining within the organization.
please use chatgpt to summarize your posts fo godsake. too long!
I left Fidelity India last year due to the deeply toxic environment created by its leadership. The root cause lies in the top leadership, who lack the skills to lead effectively. Instead of focusing on genuine problems and constructive solutions, they fabricate unnecessary issues and tasks, most of which backfire spectacularly in their face, and then they blame other BU’s like support groups and on. India Risk and Legal watch it happen and come in afterward so they have made up work to do!
Their hiring strategy revolves around bringing in individuals willing to perpetuate deceit, set traps for existing employees, and further entrench the toxicity. The situation worsened significantly with the hiring of a new head of Risk and Legal, whose actions have taken workplace toxicity to unprecedented levels. Adding to this, the head of HR has actively worked to undermine and marginalize anyone who dares to challenge their harmful practices or deviate from the leadership’s path of destruction. This deliberate targeting of employees fosters fear and division, making the work environment unbearable and unsafe!!!!!! The current employees watch as risk, leagal and the site Leadership sit for hours in rooms trying to find ways to get rid of people that they don't like. Its terrible that Fidelity lets this continue!
I remain in touch with current Fidelity India employees, and it’s disheartening to see how the environment continues to take a severe toll on their physical and mental health. Despite escalating concerns to the U.S. leadership and Chairman’s line, there has been no intervention, suggesting implicit approval of the abusive practices perpetuated by the India leadership.
The labor department in India must be notified urgently to address these violations, or a complete collapse of employee morale and organizational stability is inevitable. This is not just a matter of workplace culture; it’s a systemic issue that requires immediate attention. Cc Abby, India labor department
Part of the issue is that the current leadership at Fidelity India has reached their positions by managing contractors from companies like Infosys. They lack a strong technical background and function more as overpaid contractor managers. They need to move past this mindset and start recognizing and rewarding those who are truly technical and excel at delivery.They used to showcase all the work done by contractors as their work and get promotions and now they are doing same with lower level employees
Nothing new here
A funny thing I heard from a Wealth India associate is that they go through multiple levels of PowerPoint presentation rehearsals with different teams. Everyone, including the BU head & his secretaries, chimes in with their own silly remarks, and they’re expected to incorporate all that nonsense into the final presentation .
These same clueless leaders in India are the ones that pushed for 2 week onsite instead of 1, making everyone unnecessarily miserable in Bangalore and Chennai traffic. I agree with the OP - they are m0r0ns. But wait, the leadership visiting from the US are equally M0r0nic. They have no idea how anything works or what really matters. They are like kids in a museum. Yet they are first to offer their leadership advice and the spineless leaders in India dutifully take notes. It reminds me of Kim Jong Un walking around with his generals taking notes behind him. None of the good people from the US come here. They don't waste their time in pointless exercises, presentations, hackathon judging and dance recitals.
U can post from outside the US!
Way too much politics and favoritism in play. You’ve got people stuck in the same roles for years, probably with no clue why they’re even there. They like to think they’re leaders, but honestly, they’re just a bunch of clueless folks who wouldn’t cut it anywhere else
With the new administration Indians abusing the H1b system and defrauding it at scale to stack the company with poorly qualified nepotism hires will be more difficult, though discriminating against others who have merit based qualifications will continue.
Good news, the legal pathways are still open to all people. Don’t come over expecting to the skip the line. We don’t need you.
It doesn’t help that the American visitors are White Messiahs who act like they are Marco Polo surveying a magical, mystical wonderland. In reality, they are stupid White liberals who make it a point to wear a traditional Indian dress costume and are worthless midwits who should be fired for massive incompetence.
I was talking to a buddy over at India Wealth, and what he shared totally blew my mind. Sounds like their leadership is pretty outta touch with what's really going on—and even more clueless about the tech side. They seriously need some fresh blood to shake things up and fix this mess
Similar to what occurs here in the USA when upper management decides to do site visits.
Upper management delegates to middle which delegates to those actually producing which in turn leads to project slow down and a pile up of work.
Very sad to see leaders are from a certain location in India office not distributed evenly. Reeks bias to Bangalore where only gas rises to the top
Exactly. I blame those so-called visitors here who have no clue what they're doing, and it just gives them a chance to boost their egos.