Pros
- There are some genuinely smart people there, both with backgrounds from other game studios and from within Microsoft. - You're technically a part of Microsoft, with all the potential perks that come with that.
Cons
- Absolutely awful build/repo issues. Tests would fail at random and the build was broken more often than not, leading to things being locked down. This only caused people to mass-submit their changes once things were unlocked, leading to a vicious cycle of things "working" for just a few hours at a time before things were locked again. I've seriously had month-old submissions that I just had to sit on, delaying further work that touched the same files. - Massive awful codebase, but that's kind of common for this sort of studio. - *Really* heavy use of contractors. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if more than a third of the programmers are hourly, and I assume the ratio for artists/designers is even worse. - For every genuinely talented person, there's a dozen vendors or "senior" programmers that don't know even the basics of the tech we're using, and there's zero investment in improving that. - Zero accountability as far as I can tell: The same people have been in upper management for ages despite games being poorly received and the studio itself being a mess, and the build is constantly being broken by bad check-ins without any consequences. - Not enough restrooms. It seems weird to point out, but when you usually need to go to a neighboring building to find a free stall, that's a problem.