Pros
- Employee discounts. - Close coworkers are pleasant. Can even make friendships here. - Cafeteria has decent food at lower costs. - Desks and cubicles you can personalize and have some privacy in - You may get lucky and snag some free stuff - Bragging rights if you get to work with the publishers or vendors - If you really like the subject matter you might enjoy the type of work you do. - Looks good on a resume ? - Benefits are decent but I also don't require much and don't have a family - "Bonus" at the end of the fiscal year that is dependent on what the company considers a good year or not. - This also really depends on who you work for but you might be able to work from home or set your own lenient work schedule. Some people get to come in at 9:30/10 and leave at 4...(not me, though)
Cons
If you think you'll have a better time being promoted to the SSC, turn back now and launch your career elsewhere... - Incredibly high turnover rate. There are either too many legacy employees who know the business inside and out but are too old fashioned, or too many new employees who aren't even qualified for their role and end up causing road blocks or quitting altogether. Talent retention is a joke and most departments have no real goals or resources for employee training. - The turnover has been very high this year, with numerous execs and seniors either leaving or being terminated. The empty president and true CEO situation is especially troublesome. It creates a very anxious environment. Too many gaps and question marks about our future. - You'll be doing a lot of grunt work before you ever start building your resume/portfolio/etc., if ever. - Overworked and underpaid. It never ends, and when "crunch" seasons come around it doesn't matter how late you stay or how much extra time you pour into the work. You won't be compensated, you'll be given a pat on the back at best. They tell you when you start that it will be typical retail expectations in terms of working late or on the weekends, but trust me...you WILL overwork yourself and it WILL become the norm. - Equipment is outdated and tends to crash in the middle of saving your work. Can set you back a whole hour or more. - Poor relationships with external partners. This alone will make you hate the video game/pop culture industry. - DISORGANIZED DISORGANIZED DISORGANIZED. I cannot emphasize this enough. There is mismanagement, miscommunication, no strategy, no order, it's absolute chaos. Giant red flag on this company. - Fire drills and emergencies all the time. Not a single week can go by without some last minute emergency. A tiny little spark upstairs becomes a wildfire by the time it hits the end of the funnel. The people at the bottom get the biggest burden and all of the blame. - Morale is in the dumpster. Someone on your team has something negative to say every second. They hate their job, they hate GameStop, they hate who they work with, they hate their outdated computers, etc. People are vocal about it, too, so you'll hear it at your desk, in the halls, or at meetings. It will wear you down if you can't put your headphones on the whole day (you can try). - Priorities are whack. Management cares more about appearances and numbers than actual employee happiness, success, or well-being. - Very unbalanced demographics. The warehouse has some of the most diverse workers you'll ever meet but that disappears when you hit the actual office. The business is run with a heavy leaning towards older male and white leadership. It's almost outright segregated, the warehouse vs the office. - Unprofessional, unsafe, and offensive environment. Most of the men are sexist, uncultured, and stuck in this supremely old fashioned mindset that the video game/pop culture industry is a boys' club, so that's who they favor the most aggressively. They don't care about any other type of consumer or even employee. Plus, people think they can get away with crass jokes that border on racism, homophobia, etc., and even sexual harassment. I've seen a lot of harassment over the years I've been here and unfortunately I know for a fact employees across the office have left or been fired for experiencing sexual harassment and trying to do something about it. When you try to speak up about the work environment being toxic due to people's offensive "jokes," you'll get made fun of for being "too PC" or "too sensitive" even though people are literally throwing around slurs. - Upward mobility is difficult to achieve and definitely depends on favoritism over actual recognition or talent. I have seen senior roles filled by people who have less experience and less knowledge than their mid-level counterparts. - Deceitful practices, both to employees and consumers. GameStop has outright lied to its stores or forced employees to lie to customers. The company as a whole is shady and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't have negative things to say about it. It's not a company you feel proud to work for.
