Big Fish Games Oakland or: How I Learned To Stop Loving My Job and Start Worrying
Pros
- Some very friendly people who will make you feel like one of the gang. - Great office views. - You get paid to work here.
Cons
- Leadership at the Oakland studio is essentially non-existent. Managers are forced to run things on their own terms and mostly disconnected from other managers. Minimal guidance is the norm, which is just complicated by the fact that there is nearly no communication between the different departments. - The studio does not have a solid production process. If you like your job to be challenging for all the right reasons, this is not the place for you. The challenges and frustration are all very easily avoided and are mostly due to a mixture of general incompetence, lack of communication between people who sit near/next to each other, or the extremely flimsy studio release process. - Office politics out the wazoo. If you like the mystery and backstabbing of Game of Thrones, you're gonna love working in the Oakland office. Gossip, rumors, swirls of he-said-she-said. Blame games, whining about other departments, and friends hiring friends. Each day is a struggle to make progress in both your work and with your career. I've never felt as bullied by a studio as I have working here. - Morale is at an all time low. It's masked mostly, but once you start talking to someone 1 on 1, they can't help but mention how down everyone seems.