Rife with Bullying and no career prospects
Pros
Good pension scheme and dental and health schemes Good place to get industry testing experience in games industry Looks good on the cv as for some bizarre reason it seems impressive to future employers
Cons
HR department doesn't seem interested in the welfare of staff. Multiple counts of misconduct/bullying by senior members of staff. When staff do complain they are met with if you don't like the job leave or there are plenty of other people who will do this job. People actually in charge of the staff are too concerned with watching their own backs to get involved and let staff mistreat and bully other members of staff. No real career progression if you stay at this company. A lot of the testers start thinking they will be able to move into programming/ game design or even a lead position and there is no ability to move around within sony like this. A lot of the lead positions are held by the same people who have worked at sony for 10+ years and when leads/full time staff do leave the positions aren't renewed. There is a high turnover of testers as they now employ a lot of temporary contractors. The testers roles are very unstable and often only last for 6 months during crunch periods. There is an air of fear with working in the first party QA testing department as people are constantly worried they are doing enough to keep the job. Mental health is a serious issue in first party QA as I've never known a department that suffers from this many people suffering from mental health issues due to working conditions. HR and the senior members of staff are not very effective at dealing with these issues. They seem to prefer to ignore the issues and let the people leave rather than dealing with the issues that cause the problems in the first place. Promotions have always seemed to be given to the staff who have been there the longest, not those who have the people skills to lead a team or department. This leads to people with no idea how to motivate and manage staff or deal with any issues that may arise.