Industrial Light & Magic Employee Reviews about "great people"

Pros

Great people, talented artists, high end projects

Cons

Clunky pipeline, overly ambitious, same old vfx issues with overworking staff , unnecessary beurocracy

Pros

Working with some great people who bring their talent to a company that sorely lacks respect for it.

Cons

Everything. Broken pipeline, kept on life support by legacy ILMers who refuse to change. Horrible deadlines and under-bid shows that cause unmanageable chaos. Clients are verbally abusive and disrespectful to the artists making their films and ILM does NOTHING ... because clients are money. So, minimize the employees and ignore them, clients are all that matters no matter how crazy, incompetant or rude they are. ILM has become a shadow of itself, favoring clients who meddle with pixels over and over and over until the artists lose their families, health and sanity from being overworked. ILM is just another failed VFX house propping up a broken industry enabling hack filmmakers who have no idea what they are doing and unable to allow VFX artists to do their best work because they are micromanaged into oblivion.

Pros

Generally great people, good projects, nice perks.

Cons

Leadership constantly assures staff of commitment to SF location, but bulk of work keeps going to competing divisions in Vancouver and London, and head count continues to go down. As such, management values its talent substantially less these days. No opportunities to advance, and raises have been replaced by meager bonuses. There's been a real disconnect/disinterest in day-to-day artist experiences and performance by management, reflected by a recent move to eliminate what little performance review system we had. Training program is not what it once was. Just talking to other artists, bad management tendencies, such as favoritism, have become very common. Getting onto the few slots on the hot project has become rather political.

Pros

- Some people are great to work with - They are attempting to expand their education structure, but no one has time to go to the classes - Company is led by women - Dem Disney benefits doe

Cons

- Too much legacy preventing updates to simple newer technology - No budget to fix annoying bugs in internal software - Weird internal politics - Poor long term crew planning - Not much room for promotion

Pros

Good work life balance. Great people to work with.

Cons

Very low pay compared to any Software Engineering job in the Bay Area. Engineers are literally viewed as 'Overhead', like unsold product in a warehouse. Not valued by company at large, even though Shows and Artist need us to make the magic screen. No Credits, they say their is a a revolving list, buts not fair or evenly distributed. Flat structure so little room for advancement.

Pros

Great people, great movies, good on resume

Cons

I'm forced to never have plans on weekends because they tell me if I need to work the weekend late Thursday or Friday. The pay could be better and it seems difficult to move up. Management is very limited with who they can salary so most people are stuck on uneasy contracts which makes settling down hard. The location is annoying because it is very expensive and forces many people to live across bridges.

Pros

Wonderful projects, strong VFX and CG Supervisors. Facility is top notch. The people are great - really great.

Cons

Benefits for project hires are fair - now that it's Disney (probably true everywhere these days). Pay is good (which is not necessarily saying much, given the industry's rates for artists is now stagnant for over a decade it seems). Very hard to get a long-term gig. Almost all new hires are project-based. These can range from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Long-term life and career planing is very challenging under these circumstances. Not a problem with ILM, but the cost of living is very high (move up north and you have to deal with a 30-50mins commute in the mornings)

Pros

The people are great to work with. The projects that you are given the chance to be on are nothing short of fantastic. The name recognition of ILM on your resume is a huge boost to your career. They are good about rehiring people that have worked for them before. They offer full health benefits for their project hires.

Cons

It is not very stable if you are looking for year-round employment. You should count on only being able to work 8 to 9 months of the year. The summer months are especially slow. There is very little opportunity to advance in the company or be given a staff position. The artists are being asked more and more to produce larger amounts of work in less time. There is no vacation or sick pay unless you are staff.