Bi-polar company -- Great immediate team, horrible C-Level management - Senior Engineer Razer Employee Review

1.0
Dec 11, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great bunch of highly overworked co-workers around the world. High upward mobility in Singapore office and nowhere else. VP of our organization in SF - John Wilson - is among the best boss I've had. He trusts the people in the organization that he built up. He expects and receives our best work because he truly listens to our ideas and disagreements without taking any disagreements as a personal attack. Our VP gives us a direction to proceed with our work despite the constant changes (many times even conflicting changes) by our CEO and COO. 6 consecutive Best of CES award winning products (all from SF office) despite consistently being understaffed and overworked. Large amount of technology leading products produced with very little staff (3-4 laptop models/year, connected devices, Android devices all designed and build by a hardware staff of 2 ME's, 2 EE's, 1 Thermal Engineer, 1 Industrial Designer, 1 Systems engineer, 1 Firmware engineer and 1 Program Manager). Get to top tier Frequent Flyer status with any airline within 1 year! Only reason I'm still with the company for over 5 years is our VP! Most in our organization are still around because of him!

Cons

C-level management that seems to use the Magic 8 ball. Direct quote from our CEO - "If you have time for vacation, you have time to do work! You have to give your life and soul to Razer!" CEO once gave an award to an employee for coming to work during his wedding night and expects the rest of us to have that kind of dedication to Razer! COO must personally approve all hires at all levels (mostly rejects highly qualified candidates for those positions not in his organization) as he doesn't trust anyone without his micro-management. CEO must personally approve all design proposals by ID (without any engineering feedback). He must also approve of any changes to his approved design no matter how small, so our ID must meet up with him wherever he is (and he's never in one location more than a couple of days). This slows down projects tremendously as we can't proceed without his blessing (sometimes projects come to a halt as our ID needs to travel to our CEO's location and schedule a meeting to go over each change as it may take over a week to get such a meeting). Treats the company like a 20 person startup despite having over 500 worldwide employees. There's reasons for the high turnover!

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5.0
Jun 23, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Culture is competitive and lots of politics

Cons

Calls happening at all hours

2.0
Jul 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Team is all in it together, hard work builds strong relationships

Cons

Leadership had very unrealistic expectations about results and the pressure was immense

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