Walt Disney Animation Studios Reviews

Pros

ANIMATION IS MY CAREER

Cons

There was good environment. but i leave reason of only very far distance my native place.

Advice to Management

There management is good.

Pros

-Interesting and challenging projects -Work with other industry leaders across the massive Disney corporation -Work with rockstar artists (do other artists have their own instagram hashtag?) and industry renowned technical folk -Ambitious future plans -Fun work environment: lots of relevant industry events, screenings, and weekly team building activities -Open environment for publishing work and ideas, encouraged...

Cons

-Loss of some good people over the past couple years, with some voids left unfilled -It's a big company and it can feel like one -Minimal QA and build support available for the technical folk -Diminishing bonus perks (like Disneyland block out dates getting worse) -Your friends will never stop asking you for cheap Disneyland tickets

Advice to Management

-Upcoming streaming business can help address historically stagnant career advancement opportunities -Minimize administrative overhead -Keep taking risks and trust your employees!

Pros

Fun environment. Nice building with art everywhere. Interesting activities, movie screenings, etc. People will be impressed that you work there. You're surrounded by spectacularly talented artists. You get to work on movies, and pretty decent ones too. Hours are good. You get into the Disney parks for free (well in theory -- there are a whole lot of blackout dates). Pay is OK. Wrap parties are fun. Some opportunities...

Cons

The artists are the stars here, and if you're not one you're second tier. It's not terrible, but you will probably be jammed in a weird corner of the basement, and you won't get a shout out at wrap parties or anything. This is a company by artists, for artists. The tech management over the last few years is a real problem from the CTO on down. They talk a good game about doing big things and I think they mean well,...

Advice to Management

If you actually want a world class technical staff, show them some trust instead of trying to micromanage every tiny thing. Find the people who actually make impact, give them some room to actually do some useful work and support them, and get out of their way. If you don't care, then keep doing what you're doing. Lots of recruiters hitting up your engineers.

Pros

- family oriented - lots of resources within the company to help you grow as an artist - generous sharing of knowledge among employees across departments to help each other out - generally safe and respectful work environment

Cons

- hourly rate is lower compared to other studios

Advice to Management

- create more opportunity of growth for everyone

Pros

Casual dressing/environment, opportunity to work with creative minds, brand/name/product recognition, beautiful building, good benefits and perks

Cons

Extremely political in all sense! Catering to their “soft skills” becomes a full time job, no place for career growth and opportunities (unless you win their popularity contest), lack of accountability and direction, and an overall sense of lack of appreciation to employees

Advice to Management

If you are part of the executive group and reading this you already know what you need to do because every person that have left this place have told you why we left! Stop being so arrogant and not caring to improve and change because you can have a replacement in days! Talented people with deep understanding of the craft leave because we need opportunities to continue to grow our career, to feel appreciated, and maybe...

Pros

Competitive pay. Creative environment and talented co workers. Nice perks .

Cons

Management fosters a culture of fear of losing your job. Very cliquish. Mixed bag of cool people and a-holes. Very corporate.

Advice to Management

Encourage creativity and cooperation and quit promoting psychopaths.

Pros

None. There is potential and the place is full of talented individual contributors. Management decisions are however shady and counter productive.

Cons

Way too much focus on feeding egos and too little on improving the status quo.

Advice to Management

Better accountability for top management.

Pros

Upper mgmt has turned around studio and gets the human condition.

Cons

New CTO has isolated himself from tech workers. Managers micromanage engineers. If you like agile, here's the place to work. Great top management probably not long before retiring.

Advice to Management

Trust your tech workers, so stop meeting twice a day to manage them.