Pros
really generous benefits and insane goodies. Flexible hours, sick days and vacations. one of the most Inclusive studio out there. Its part of the XBox Studios family, which is a gamechanger. Really good onboarding.
Cons
Really good onboarding like I just said,but its a trap.The project and concept is super cool and original in papers but the execution is bad: -We lost A LOT of our work hours for online meetings on a daily basis, which are often long and futile.Because thoses meetings never end with a clear intention. So we don't have much time left for actual concrete work.So yeah you can get burned out because of that. -Project don't advance at all because directors are never on the same page.No one want to take a decision. Management and directors keep repeating mistakes ever and ever and never aknowledge their errors.So deadline keeps delayed.. -Incompetent old employees are given a lot power. They get promoted but never actually changed their ways or improved. -Techs are not listened and some artists dont use the tools tech peeps made.There's also constant fight about pipeline decisions. -Problematic artists have huge egos, don't listen to newer but experienced new employees. I often saw employees who have shipped WHF more listened than newer employees who have shipped other games and is equally experienced or more. -There's no leads.If there are,well they don't do properly their job. - Its not true that you'll need 1 year of employment to have a raise.LIES.stop telling that BS to your employees, They will know either way. - There's a alarming departure rate in environment art, tech and animation department because of previously said reasons. - Leadership in narrative department don't understand game narrative. - Art direction is not consistent. - They expected from you to be in charge of your growth which I don't mind. but they don't really aknowledge that when you have improved if you are an newer employee since pandemic. - The company culture is a joke. their values (trust, craftmanship, autonomy) are dysfunctional and can't be acted upon.Privileged employees can even bypass them.Microsoft certainly don't run on trust at this studio. - Directors and management are constantly telling us " don't worry, everything will be fine,will resolve themselve " . -surveys and post-mortem are manipulated for looking positive - They said that your opinion is encouraged but when you do and you make a contructive comment,or try to make the studio a better place you are tagged ''negative person''. After a while I finished doing that as I noticed that employees in my department stopped doing that as well. Then ''leadership'' told me they want me to give more my opinion!? Seriously... -They have clearly a rating scale of employee but they don't tell employees about it. -So yeah, its no wonder why you keep losing intelligent,critical-thinking, skilled talent that cared about your project.