Zynga reviews

4.0

85% would recommend to a friend

(1,393 total reviews)
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Frank Gibeau

89% approve of CEO

78% positive business outlook

Zynga has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 1,393 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Zynga employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Mídia e comunicação industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
2.0
Jun 23, 2012

Mafia culture. Great for 1%, Ugly for 99%

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

* Be your own CEO: is true for most parts. Anyone (Designer, Artist, PM, Engineer, QA, Community) can impact the game by innovative initiatives. You will get enough opportunities to test our your intuition, and hone your game skills. * Fast moving culture: You do 1 years worth of work in 1 quarter. Thus have big wins weekly, monthly. You commit many mistakes and learn a lot in a compressed period of time. * Meritocracy: In most parts. Very numbers driven company. At least, an year or two ago, the person moving the bigger number wins. Good while things were growing.

Cons

* Meritocracy: Meritocratic culture is dying. Politics and finding the right God Father can help you better than your real value addition. * Nepotism: Lop-sided promotions. You will see many inexperienced Directors, VPs from the old-timer's list. If you are not in the inner circle, you are wasting your time. * HR has too much power. Probably the most hated HR team in the world. One wonders whether they work to make employee's life better, or celebrate themselves and their chief everyday. Its ridiculous. * Sign up your life for Zynga: You are a bonded labor. Forget the weekends, forget your family. Terrible place for married people. You will find enough thrill at the work-place, but kiss your happiness good-bye. You shouldn't promise your husband a dinner date. You can't live up to it. * Open ended vacation policy is actually awful: It results people taking much less vacation than the 1 week per quarter promised. * Week Analysis: The PMs are numbers driven, but I don't respect most of them. Doesn't feel like they really understand numbers. * They don't care: Zynga doesn't care really. The Execs don't care. Everyone works for the bonus, and the stock (which is no longer valuable). If it is worth it for you, then take it. If you can get into the 1% inner circle, then do it. Else don't waste your time.

2.0
Jan 21, 2012
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

You will "love" this place if you are: 1) Executives who receive tons of stocks (some probably are just waiting for their stocks to vest before ditching) 2) New grads who don't know any better or have comparison of what a well-run company looks like--this would be a good first job/internship given Zynga's brand; it would be fun because there are perks like arcade machines, massage services, theater, gym, etc....meh if you know better.... 3) People who enjoy the above perks (arcades after dinner) then go back to the office and continue to code til midnight. That is, people who don't have a family, live nearby, or consider this their life and don't mind living at Zynga. 4) In general, if you work in Art, or HR/Facility/IT/kitchen or any other non-critical areas. They tend to love this place because their job function are not as cut-throat (have time to use the mentioned perks). Their work do not need to collaborate with others so they deal with less BS. 5) You are really good at political and love BS-ing you way up the corporate ladder.

Cons

You will be treated like farm animals, meaning: 1) you will be well-fed (free food, not necessarily a con) 2) well clothed--lots of swags... if you like wearing company logos 3) you will be optimized like animals--long hours, late nights, til midnight (and no one will appreciate you doing that because that's the norm). - If you are an established developer, you will not learn anything new here. Just code something that bring in the best revenue. - No one will care about how you feel or help your career advancement, because there are always the next batch of farm animals (college grads) who don't mind doing this (see my pros) - Career advancement are given to those who have celebrated roles. Tough luck if you are the best back-end engineer or QA. But join if you can be the GM of a game studio or artist, or anyone who excel in the game of politics! - Culture is not collaborated. If you make a mistake someone will make sure everyone is aware of this. If you make a bad game up to alpha, an entire studio can be canned. - A lot of "cancer" or parasites in the work force (thus the bad culture I mentioned above). Middle management consists of people who were promoted because they were here since the early days, but have no understanding of how to build a companyfor the long term. But they don't care because they probably will leave in a year after their stocks vest, but.... - ...they get level ups so they will probably stay longer to squeeze more $ out of the company. Management say work life balance but act like sweat shop. You will hear "Everyone should take some time off...but we need to do this yesterday". "We want to level up our developers, but you cannot work on projects that interest you or match your skill set because you need to work on this that bring one more penny". Management feel they are doing well in leveling up people, when in fact only a few percentage of the team got bonus or level up. Even with level ups I got 3000 stocks distributed over 4 years...sounds a lot but if you consider typical company gives out 10-15% bonus (of course depending on your level), it's a meh considering the current stock price! Keep in mind probably 70% of the team, many of them hard workers, got zero bonus/stocks last quarter, so I was the "lucky" one. In summary, if you enjoy working long hours with little recognition so your incompetent managers who don't care can get all your credit and become richer, this is a fun place to work for.

3.0
Nov 13, 2011
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Good perks and benefits. Free lunch and dinner. 5 - 25% bonus and equity. Has a start uppy feel. To it.

Cons

Once a quarter we'll work a few weekends. The work is dull. The code is a mess and hard to work with due to rushed schedules. Too many junior developers making poor decisions. Management has questionable morals.

Viewing 10 - 12 of 1,393 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,545 Zynga reviews submitted anonymously by Zynga employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Zynga is right for you.