Anyone switched out of gaming? Where did you go? How did you like it?
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Not liking Valve? Low TC? Unfulfilling role? Bad WLB? Asking since Valve was a childhood dream of mine.
Nah, Valves fine. I'm just curious because I keep hearing about people leaving gaming.
Ya because the industry is run by hyper intolerant liberals, doesn’t pay engineers properly, and encourages toxic business practices like crunch or unpaid overtime.
Gaming is fun but it can burn you out because of deadlines and the fast pace. I switched to video and love it.
Know a lot of people who went from EA to gaming related programs at FAANG. Sounds like across the board multiples of pay and better work life balance.
Switched to Facebook (a while ago). Not sure if my experience is very representative as I was at senior director/VP level. The pay increase was not particularly spectacular because of that. I did not enjoy the experience. There's not the same passion ( at least for the teams I was exposed to) and the average EQ is even lower than in the gaming industry. (Yes that's possible). It's poluted by a lot of new grads with very big egos, some terrible managers and a very a questionable top management... People tend to forget that every 6 months, fb fires the bottom 5%(to 10%) (based on a normal distribution) of each profession (Eng, PM, DS, etc.). I ve literally been in meetings where we have an Excel file, rank people quite arbitrarily, draw a line and fire everyone under this line who has been here for 2 halves. I ve never seen that in the gaming industry, I find it very inhumane. Furthermore, being at my level I got exposed to too many unethical actions, projects and decisions. I am surprised there's no more ex fb execs deciding to speak up about how dystopian this company is. At lower level, ignorance is a bliss and I am pretty sure most people will have an ok time but I would advise to stay in the gaming industry if you are happy there.
Thank you for the insight! No wonder we see so many PIP posts here (more than Amazon). If they fire 5% every six months, wouldn’t that mean eventually many of good people who stayed longer than 2-5 years have been a candidate for PIP? That rate seems atrociously high considering it is not every year or so but we are talking about every 6 months. It sounds like it is not safe for people who survived for a long time. Isn’t this worse than any industry?
The average tenure at fb for non admin jobs is under 1 year and 2 months (source: internal HR), they artificially inflate it with service jobs and admin to 2.02 for the "pr approved" number, but it's totally misleading. As mentioned, employees get terminated only if they get twice in a row on the list or have a poor rating (or are being disliked by a manager). It's very easy to frame someone at fb as manager (or to inflate a rating). Employees also get terminated if they stagnate too long at the same level/rating. I was forced by my boss to fire good employees who got ratings around the average for 2 years as L3 or L4. The rule is slightly different for L5 and doesn't apply for L6 and above. I don't know any other industry other than gaming and tech, but yes it seems harsh. Facebook wants to create this natural selection culture. Is that really surprising coming from a CEO who kills his own meat lol ? (http://fortune.com/2011/05/26/mark-zuckerbergs-new-challenge-eating-only-what-he-kills-and-yes-we-do-mean-literally/)
My total comp here is less than my annual bonus at my previous company. And ‘no’ there aren’t enough ‘non-monetary benefits’ to outweigh that hilarious drop in TC.
Why did you make the switch?
Like millions of people, working in the gaming industry was a dream. The opportunity presented itself to work at one of my favorite studios, I get it was a once in a lifetime opportunity so I took it.
Switched to amazon. Doubled my pay. Then went to MSFT, got another pay increase equal to my original games TC. 3yoe, 210k. Game dev culture is stagnant filled with boring people who actively suppress young talent. It’s much more chill for me outside of games.