Pros
This game studio has a lot of people who love sports and care about making good video games. This is a great place to start for young engineers or anybody who has a very little programming experiences. You will start implement game features as soon as you become familiar with their tools and systems. Engineers are laid back and very relaxed. Most engineers I know do not like to crunch everything in 8 hours. The studio has a flexible hour policy. You can show up anytime you want to as long as you finish your work and bugs. There are people who are gaming during working hours, or playing basketball during lunch hours. People here are definitely not stressful and really fun to be around. There are many engineers who just like what they are doing. They take pride of their works and spend many hours working on their projects.
Cons
I think the studio's culture does not encourage engineers to think outside-the-box or get system design right at the first place. It seems to me that people here are too sloppy and not being efficient at work. Many young engineers who hope to learn something will be disappointed. The senior manager is too busy to care about your career growth. There is no formal training, no formal document. Yes, No spoon feeding! They are trying to have Wiki server, but nobody really cares. Their lack of technical managers is also a major problem here. Most intermediate managers have very little technical knowledge. We call them as a "producer". Producers usually take orders from the senior manager and try to push engineers to do whatever their boss wants. Engineers have to be a good negotiator so that they don't have to implement everything their producers come up a week before alpha date. In my opinion, intermediate managers ( aka. producers ) really need some formal training before start their jobs. They need to know the proper way to manage engineers. I saw many engineers have fierce arguments with their producers. I was lucky that I got along with my producers and had very little conflicts. And just like other game studios, their compensation is lower than average compared to other software industries.
