Pros
-Work-life balance is actually good if you are good at setting boundaries on a near daily basis. -Team of IC's are really fantastic people -Pay is okay -PTO perks are pretty good after being employed there for a few years
Cons
-Managers are all from a prior company, who all have brought up how terrible that company was, whilst simultaneously making the studio run exactly like their previous studio. -Managers don't bother to ask for feedback from their team members, and when they do get genuine feedback from their team, they downplay the feedback and choose not to improve on anything. -Managers are all people pleasers and can't seem to say "no" to impossible or ridiculous demands, or even consider compromises. They are not good at establishing boundaries for their own selves, therefore, they are not good at encouraging boundaries for their team. -Managers feign ignorance over any high level decision they don't want to claim any responsibility or accountability for. -Each piece of a project is accomplished in a different studio at a different location, and each studio manages their teams and projects under a different philosophy instead of being unified. You will work on a part of the project, then throw it over to Vegas or India, they will eventually get around to working on your project months later. There is no sense of teamwork but rather an "us vs them" mentality in project development as a result. This also means you will be asked to be in meetings at various hours like 7AM on through 10PM, with zero encouragement from management to establish core hour boundaries for their teams -Managers carrot-dangle to IC's "growth" positions by having IC's perform managerial duties alongside their IC duties, sometimes for *years* before actually giving the IC a title or salary increase which actually reflects their effort of work. In short, managers fully take advantage of high-performers for as long as they can and then feign surprise with the IC asks for more pay/title upgrade, as if the IC was doing the job duties expected of them the whole time. -As an artist, if you are familiar with the slots industry and how other studios run, designers at this studio put an intense amount of burden on the artists to figure out nearly everything instead of them giving you a vision of their design. They have no input on theme, symbol suggestions, or even basic money chase highlights unless you are asking the perfect questions to fish it out of them. This is a double-edged sword since it allows you creative exploration, but with tight timelines it is an incredibly unnecessary time-sink.
