Pros
- Sadness cake and ice cream for all staff members whenever someone leaves, or get laid off. - Occasional trips to the theater, free movies. - Get exposure to many parts of the production pipeline. Though this may pigeonhole people into becoming generalist against their interests.
Kontras
- Employees are paid a meager wage. New-comers are often tricked into thinking their pay is competitive with the rest of the industry. - $1 annual raise, no exceptions. There are no big jumps in pay. An entry-level employee will break $20/hr only if they choose to stay there for a decade. - Grossly mismanaged. As a tiny start-up, the studio insists on a complicated chain of command, and would be better off having a flatter structure. - Management personnel is hired/promoted internally because the studio is broke, and they don't need to be qualified for the position (imagine having a very young group of kids calling shots for much older, more experienced artists and programmers, simply because they showed interest and loyalty to the company). - Attempts to convince employees that the company is very generous with a 20% royalty bonus for every shipped proprietary title. The irony is that they haven't shipped out a single successful title on their own that generates revenue. - Very micromanaged workflow. Work is expected to be constantly submitted by the hour to show progress. - The company places importance of things that don't really matter (mandatory shoes-off policy during work hours, correct punctuation while using Google Chat, don't use desktop shortcuts for hard-to-find directories). - Staff must show up on time, and cannot be late for even a minute. Doing so results in disciplinary action, or even termination. - Instead of having the choice of when to take lunch/break, you are told a specific time for them instead. - Vital software upgrades are ignored. Everything is at least 2 years out of date. - No medical benefits/perks, even for full-time employees. Most holidays must be taken without paid-time-off. - Attempts to develop too many projects at one time instead of focusing on one, draining resources quickly. - Production staff winds up switching anywhere from 3-5 working titles within a day, making it difficult to concentrate on any single one. - Goals to develop certain new IP's are highly unrealistic. They expect to create a workable demo for an MMO from scratch with just a skeleton crew of a few artists and programmers in a couple months' time. - The company breeds quiet, complacent, and submissive employees, and lacks inspiration for growth. - Management job titles are exaggerated and look much more impressive on paper. An "Assistant Game Director' is nothing more than a glorified junior-level project assistant. - Management is indecisive during crunch hours. Often they can't say when production staff could take off, leading to some of my former co-workers missing out on planned birthday parties, or dinner with family.