Imageworks Employee Reviews about "vancouver"

Pros

ok salary good location good R&D team

Cons

Many leads / sups are not qualified for their role. Either they don't care about work or micro-manage everything with huge egos. Artistic direction going nowhere, opposite feedbacks from different people. Blaming artist for pipeline issues. (like what the h***)Intense politics, no communications, very cold work environment. inefficient daily schedules. Unstable contract (on this, Sony is the worst among these vfx houses around Vancouver), garbage projects. The best possible project you can get is Spiderman franchise. The list is endless. There was glorious era for Sony many years ago. Now it became worse than average studio around here. It's not sinking ship. This ship had already sunken.

Pros

Co workers are great, best benefits, nice environment, good projects. They used to have great extracurricular activities that made it a fun place to work.

Cons

Moved most of staff to Vancouver. You never feel completely at ease and safe because you are always waiting to hear bad news. Hours can be grueling.

Pros

Usually good benefits, good people, they have a great lot to visit for lunch, good gym facilities on the lot if you want to use them.

Cons

Unfortunately, most of their jobs have been moved to their Vancouver facility. Only supervisor level for most jobs are left in Los Angeles.

Pros

Perks like snacks, free screenings, nice building right downtown Vancouver, mostly competent supervisors. Love the fact that they use gmail.

Cons

Proprietary tools are pathetic, old timers that have been there 10+ years are too set in their ways, communication from show upper management often lacking, unclear about the elite group of 'lucky ones' who get to remain in LA Culver City, while everyone else has to go to Vancouver. Feels very corporate in that if you're too low on the chain, your voice is virtually unheard.

Pros

Good environment with competitive salaries. Probably the only good perk of being at the Culver location? A nice campus.

Cons

Lots of changes going on, it feels like the Culver office doesn't get as much attention. There aren't as many perks as the Vancouver office.

Pros

Production staff are very friendly. Perks like snacks and movie screenings are great. It's an easy salary if you don't care about building great products.

Cons

Management for development is all in LA. The managers and "leads" are all people who have been with imageworks and only imageworks for so long that they have no clue about modern software engineering standards. The tools used and produced are shoddy compared to industry standards at other studios. The development environment is very limited, no automated testing, no automated build system, no project management. They have no technical leadership in Vancouver.

Pros

- Foundations that shows are built on are solid and developed over past experiences. - Pipeline. Somehow it just works - Managers in place have been in the studio for several years and started from the bottom. - Supervisors are very knowledgeable and understand the production needs. - Facility team tries to actively engage employees with treats, events planning, email communication, etc - Downtown Vancouver

Cons

- Downtown Vancouver - High cost of living. Commute is not sustainable if you can't afford living in Vancouver or work a lot of OT - Pipeline. Old practices/systems/tech/tools can archaic, especially if you come from different faster paced studios and have seen smarter ways of doing things.

Pros

Good work/life balance Great opportunity to build a skill set Nice campus

Cons

Moving most positions to Vancouver Employee/artist retention is not a high priority

Pros

This place had great content to work on. The supervisors were very intelligent and amiable. The salaries were also good. When in the final push, production was very good about showing appreciation with various food trucks or other little goodies. That made the workplace happy and subsequently people were motivated.

Cons

Thanks to the tax incentives this company has essentially closed up shop in Culver City. Perhaps they are good to work for in Vancouver, however, bear in mind the cost of living difference before you pack your bags.