Actually an R&D tech company masquerading as a game company
Pros
Everything moves here incredibly slow. You actually find yourself with a ton of free time. This is great for now because we are all WFH, but will be a nightmare once we're all back in the office. Probably great for engineers who want to work in R&D for AR tech. Great benefits.
Cons
- Leadership is severely underqualified. They're all just buddies with each other with absolutely 0 experience in gaming. - Promotions are not up to your manager and team. A governing group consisting of upper management needs to review your manager's pitch, and the group deems you worth or not of a promotion. However they have openly said many times that they do not believe that you deserve a promotion/raise unless you have already been doing the job for one full year. This method makes absolutely no sense for those in non-engineering roles. In fact, none of the career ladders make any sense outside of engineering roles. - Leadership constantly spews lies about being innovative. They only want reskins of Pokemon Go. They are afraid of change, afraid of risk, and afraid of setting trends. The only innovation they care about is with their AR tech. - Leadership has literally said that they do not believe that creativity is possible when working remotely. The truly believe that professional creatives cannot do their job unless they're in the office. Leadership literally pointed out "water cooler talk and bumping into people in the hallway" as a vital part of being able to do our jobs - Leadership has said they will not allow teams to decide their own hybrid schedule even though every team has at least 50% already working remotely from other Niantic offices. The company wants us to all commute in traffic just to do more Zoom meetings in the office. When asked about full remote possibilities, leadership told us that if we want to be remote then we shouldn't be working at Niantic then. - Pay is not that great. It's ok when you first join, but since its so incredibly hard to move up the ladder, your pay just never really increases. They could be paying us more, but the company would rather spend the money donating to social awareness charities, which is great and all, but leadership does not actually lead by example. They think just throwing money is good enough. - A lot of weird, forced social events. Forced culture. Everyone walks on eggshells when they talk. - The company hierarchy and organization is a complete mess. People's titles do not match their job descriptions. Some people are managers with no one to manage. Some people report to someone not even involved with your team. Its a huge mess. I was interviewed for UI/UX Designer position, only to be told upon hire that UI/UX doesn't exist in the company because UI and UX are two separate departments. - Overall, leadership is just disconnected from how things really are nowadays.