Top heavy.
I encountered a little too much "stay in your lane" attitude at times - even from my closest collaborators.
Pay was probably 15-20% lower than my market value.
A bit of favoritism based on where you previously worked. LA has a large talent pool from other toy companies so it can be both socially tough and difficult to navigate advancement. Toronto seemed more diverse in background on the contributor level, but on the other hand, several members of the former leadership were a somewhat close knit deal imported by one executive from the same outside company.
PDE role is mainly cost reduction, metric reporting, and sample management. Not a lot of time or value placed on real engineering work.
PDR as per "Pros", bi-annual in-person was valuable. Monthly PDR took a comparable amount of grueling prep work but was presented to a very small audience who are concerned mainly with financials and on-shelf date.
"Entrepreneurial" is spoken frequently and brings to mind a scrappy, start-up, DIY culture. That is aligned with the company roots and in certain aspects of product development, very useful. But when you start seeing revenues starting with a "B", you can't position yourself as the underdog and it is lazy to be content with chaos. Big brands over multi-year lifecycles and dozens of waves need process refinement to continue or people burn out. The company has not taken spent any notable effort focusing on effective tools, processes, and best practices.
Poor work life balance. Some due to DIY mindset mentioned. Some just par for the business because manufacturing is mostly overseas and you simply have to be accessible outside of regular hours. It just got much worse during the pandemic shutdown. Days were lost to non-value added work: processing deliveries at home from the model shop and manufacturing, cleaning and organizing my tiny home office, getting rid of blister packs and corrugated on the weekends.
