Where do I begin? The hostility in this place is rampant. It exists at all levels, including the administration. Legacy employees live in silos and treat new employees with utter disdain. On the platform engineering side, the formerly-Intuit management solution to growth is to stack layers and layers of management between themselves and the worker bees. This is offset somewhat by the Japanese philosophy of owning the outcome - they force managers to rotate on-call; eating their own dog-food, so to speak. Instead of studying and refining current tools and processes, they create a new management position to address a shortcoming. Right now I have four managers between myself and a director. We have three engineers and one manager in my group. That's one manager for three people!
Forget about fair consideration for a job. Some managers post jobs only as a necessary requirement, but could care less about outside candidates. I've seen highly qualified candidates completely overlooked because the hiring manager wanted to give that job to an old colleague or friend. If outside applicants had any idea, they probably wouldn't apply. Why should they? They'll likely get other offers before Sony gives them a chance.
I can go on and on, -- the micro-managing, the meaningless gestures of generosity, the lack of coordination and standardization, etc., but I won't.
But let me say this... if you apply at the Sony Taleo web site, and someday you get an email from Sony, be wary. The only reason why they would seem eager to hire anyone is to fill in a position that is badly understaffed. You'll get quickly hired thrown right into the fire, without even a semblance of proper guidance. Then what? Before you know it, you're stuck in a lousy job. And don't let them offer you a bonus with your salary negotiations. It's totally bogus. Unless you work 12 hour days and weekends and nights, you won't see squat for a bonus. I paid in blood, sweat and tears for this company, working weekends and nights and early mornings, only to be "rewarded" with a bonus that was a fraction of what was due. Sony pays out very little in bonuses even though the platform is making almost $8 billion this year alone! Over 1000 people work their butts off at SNEI to guarantee this 24/7/365 revenue stream for Sony, and for them to turn around and pay out a tiny fraction as a bonus is beyond insulting. It's a slap in the face.
Don't waste your time with Sony Network Entertainment. Between the hostility, layers and layers of inept management, long, long hours and sheisty bonus payouts, there's very little reason to want to join this company.
Which is too bad because I find the Japanese principals I work with --nationals from Japan-- to be wonderful people with honest and kind intentions. They're polite, generous, understanding, forgiving to a reasonable degree, and eager to come up with cool stuff, like the Playstation Network. It's the middle and upper management from the US and elsewhere that are ruining things for SNEI. This could be a much strong and more profitable company if it weren't for these management problems.
