Pros
Get to work at top companies that you won't be able to get in but only as a external contractor which means....
Cons
It technically doesn't matter as you will not get any of the pros of working at a big blue chip company at all. Only join this company if: 1) You have zero career expectations. 2) You do not have any opinion on what you want to do and achieve in life. 3) You are okay with just a flat pay for the duration of your two years (24 months) with no annual bonus, no wage/ salary review for 2 years which also means there is zero incentive for anyone to be working hard. No reason to perform well at your placements. Good luck talking to you other friends and feeling good about yourself when you hear your friend getting annual wage increases and annual bonus or promotions. You get nothing. 4) All the above points are actually justifiable and clearly stated in your contract so it would actually be fine but they also do not care about what you want to do. (which in my opinion What training course you sign up for (Software Development, DevOps, Business Analyst) have absolutely zero bearing on what kind of work you will be doing at your placements. You can do the software development training course and get offered a cybersecurity role or a technical support role. That is where you learn about the FDM business structure. The account managers only care about placing you in any random role that they can find because it is a sales job after all for them. The more they place, the more money they get. When you get a role you do not want, you cannot say no to the interview so your only way out is to purposely screw the interview up and hope you do not get chosen. Just remember, what training you signed up for have no impact on the kind of work you will be doing. So just remember you need to be okay with doing anything if you want join this company (hence point 1 and 2). 5) The training which they say is world class is actually complete trash. Just to let you know, you are paying between 15k to 20k (which is almost like a Bachelors degree cost) plus for the training which later becomes your bond penalty if you decide to leave within the two years bond. Every single module is taught within ONE WEEK so a very dense conceptual framework is taught just in one week. Imagine learning a programming language framework in one week time which is a complete joke. So basically you will have to learn many many things yourself which then begs the question of why the training is so expensive in the first place and why you even need the training. Then you realise, without the training fee being somewhat expensive (which is your bond penalty), everyone who is dissatisfied by their low pay or bad placement opportunities would leave the company without thinking twice. The bond penalty fee is literally build into their business model so that they get to make the most from you when you decide to break the bond. With a training fee of 20k plus, you literally learn way more and in way deeper depth if you were to go take a graduate certificates from university or from better coding bootcamps. Hell, use the 20k to learn UDEMY courses and you literally will learn more. It's literally only expensive to deter you from breaking the bond which should tell you about the amount of effort that they will put in to make your experience good in the company. They don't have to care cause they hire many many people on the regular basis. Trust me, if you have a STEM degree or show you have any quantitative potential, you will get in easy as they are also incentivised to just hire without reallly being selective (unless you are really extremely terrible) as it benefits their business model. The more they hire, the more they can place, the more money they will make. It literally that simple. 6) I left the company and literally got a 40% pay raise which makes paying the bond penalty much easier. Seriously, don't let this company ruin the first two year of your career (which in my opinion is the most important) by forcing you to do unfulfilling work that you do not want to do. Cause after the two years, you will have major trouble finding your next opportunity as you have basically done random jobs in the two years bond which you do not have a say over. 7) Just a word on the good testimonials you see from FDM, it is true that there will be roles having good career development from FDM but those should be seen as a dime in a dozen. More likely, if you join FDM, you will have an average to terrible experience. The number of roles that have good career development that the account managers can place you is rare and just to note, the bond period does not start until you get placed at your first placement. It also does not include the training period which means that if you are very selective about your placement (which you can be by purposely performing terribly at interviews for roles you do not want) you are really just screwing yourself up in the long term as this might cause you to stay at FDM for even up to their 3 years (training + period after training where you are trying to get placed + actual 2 year placement once you get placed) So it is very exploitative and you will definitely feel the pressure of just accepting any placement that the account managers can give you. Just keep that in mind, it is not just TWO years at a crappy pay package (flat pay at 24 months with no bonus, no wage supplement, no annual review), it is actually going to be way longer than two years. Especially if you are not lucky enough to get placed at a role that YOU WANT DURING training which minimises the lull after training when you are just trying to get placed. The stars basically have to align for you to have a good experience at FDM if not you are just going to have resentment for the company. The worst thing is you do not exactly have any control over the placement process. Your fate is basically in the account managers' hands. Someone I know only got placed 6 months after his 4 month training so which means his 2 years bond only started counting down after 10 months at FDM. Which means crappy pay package for 2 years 10 months. 8) If anything, FDM have only taught me to be patient about my employment choices. Don't be too quick to join a company that advertises an illustrious career to work at the top tech firms and have a very enriching career that you won't need top tier grades to get into. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Also companies don't usually hire contractors to do meaningful and important tasks. It typically is only going to be grunt work and routine task that nobody wants to do so it is just much cheaper to hire external contractors to do the work.
