Zynga reviews

4.1

87% would recommend to a friend

(1,394 total reviews)
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Frank Gibeau

91% approve of CEO

81% positive business outlook

Zynga has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 1,394 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent 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
1.0
May 11, 2011

A very poor career experience

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Pace (but see below); reach (millions of users - for now)

Cons

* No sense of company direction; Zynga cannot come up with a strategy to overcome the fact that it is entirely dependent on Facebook. * It is a loose collection of "studios" with little or no sharing of resources between them, resulting in serious inefficiency. * Disingenuousness is pervasive and seeps down all the way from the very top. * Zynga is not a meritocratic organization. Pettiness, paranoia, fear and back-stabbing win the day; those who "play the game" float to the top. * One of the company values is something called "Zynga Speed", which means accepting that quality will be sacrificed and long hours will be expected, over and over again. For employees aged over 25 this means your years of experience in your field will be routinely ignored; just to get the job done, you will be expected to abandon just about every principle you have learned as a skilled professional. * Deadlines are arbitrary and extremely aggressive, yet in some cases slip by several months as strategies change on a whim at the top level. * Expect to find yourself micromanaged by someone much less skilled than you, and who also has no skills in management. * A large proportion of the employees are in their first job and are treated like slaves; they will stay there until they burn out and discover a life outside Zynga. This is challenging for experienced people as the same is expected of them too. * Seasoned workers are open and vocal about their dissatisfaction with working there (read other Glassdoor reviews for confirmation). * The "no vacation policy" sounds good on the face of it, but basically it means your manager will decide not to let you take time off. * The games themselves are of dubious value. Do you want to believe in your company's products?

1.0
Apr 12, 2011

If you want to burn out, work here

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

*Lots of "perks" (free food, gym membership, onsite massage, etc.) *Dog-friendly workplace *Tech company in SF *The people you work with are nice and generally care about their coworkers

Cons

*Work too much to use the "perks" - employees often look like walking zombies *Mandatory 6-day work weeks for some teams *Compensation packages not competitive with other private tech companies (esp. the equity) *Micro-management at all levels *"Recognition" given based on hours worked, not actual skill or contribution *"Flexible" vacation policy really just means you can never get time off *"Start-up culture" means things change frequently - which is fine, but there's never any awareness that employees have been busting butt on one thing only to be told to make a change and bust butt on something new (i.e. no understanding of how hard people work) *No clear career path for lots of roles *People are unhappy and tired and management doesn't care *No interest in employee feedback *No upward feedback on management performance *Lots of *really bad* managers

2.0
Nov 17, 2011
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Incredible perks - at least 5% salary bonus per quarter - gym, lunch, dinner, massages, acupuncture, health & fitness classes Lots of experienced game developers IPO around the corner

Cons

You'll work 8-18 hours per day 5-7 days per week Company leaders demand creativity of employees after overworking them, and ignores most ideas that don't follow the same technique/code base that most of their games currently use. Not much of a social life Coworkers are grumpy because they've been overworked Codebase is a mess, and it slows down your development/debugging, but you're expected to still get everything done right away California tax system is worst in country San Francisco housing market is one of most expensive in country (compare cost of living to other cities) Many people are planning on leaving after they go public to cash out Although you work with smart people, that transfer of knowledge doesn't really happen Management rushes games Employees know their making the same crappy games and spamming players Management crushes indie studios from forming with "fast follows"

Viewing 13 - 15 of 1,394 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,546 Zynga reviews submitted anonymously by Zynga employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Zynga is right for you.