I have worked several large publishers and unfortunately, 2K was the worst. They have a "bug quota" which encourages testers to submit bogus bugs so they don't lose their jobs. They encourage you to write as many bug reports as possible, and are not concerned about the quality of bugs. Its as if management wants to say "Our department wrote so many bugs, this failure of a game cannot be blamed on us!"
They frequently abuse overtime scheduling. The week is set up Sat, Sun, M-F. This means that they will frequently ask you to work the weekend (after working M-F) but you won't get overtime pay. This happens because they will then give you Mon and Tues off to compensate for working Sat and Sun, thus nullifying any overtime pay.
When I worked there, the office hours started at 7am. Only a select few people could unlock the door, so you could frequently find yourself standing in the cold for 5-10 minutes every morning waiting for the door to open. No one wants to come early because you can't clock in even a few minutes early.
There was an elitist attitude given by any special functions team. If you were not on their team, you were basically not allowed to talk to them or be in their general work area. That's right, you could not approach them (entry level employees) to ask for clarifications on things. They would rather have a loss in productivity as opposed to a "regular employee" dare speak to them.
Management was very out of touch with their employees. I remember when I applied for (and got) a promotion. They were completely unaware that I had 10-12 years prior experience in the field. That pretty much blew my mind. They also seemed to choose who to lay off at random. As a team lead, they never asked me for input on my team when cuts had to be made. How can you choose who to fire when you don't even know anyone? And when you don't know what tasks they were assigned to, and weather they failed or greatly succeeded.
