Epic Games sentiment
Hi people, I was wondering if I can get some insights from the insiders about Epic's working culture and a general sentiment. I'm aware of the recent turmoil with the layoffs and strained financials, but in a 1-2 year perspective I'm optimistic since Epic’s core competencies seem strong as ever, the company is still private and Tim is a well-versed industry veteran. Personally I've spent my career in gamedev and adjacent fields and after my current stint at Meta I'm starting to strategize a comeback, thus I would very much appreciate your thoughts on where things currently stand and help me decide if it's a path worth pursuing. I'm mostly curious about the experience in the core dev teams (engine, editor, UEFN, verticals) but hearing from other projects would be great too! 1. How's the engineering culture? Tooling, processes, management, tech leadership etc. 2. How's the bureaucracy? No constant politicking, reorgs, gaming performance metrics and empire building? (I received words of caution about Unity). 3. Are the engineering folks still mostly from gamedev/low-level background? Are EMs technical, doing coding themselves with relevant industry experience? 4. How’s the cross-team collaboration going? Can self-driven individuals effect a change across a range of products and features (I guess I’m asking about siloing, fiefdoms, misaligned incentives, design-by-committee stalemates etc), 5. Overall, do you feel that the company lets you just focus on making the best product for the users and push the limits of current tech? Finally, since I'm outside of the US, if you know anything about the near-future policy towards cross-border collab from other Epic offices, fully remote options (contracting + eventual relo) or the sentiment towards H1B sponsorship that would be very helpful. I will ask the recruiter all the details for sure, I'm just doing a preliminary prep work now by gathering some first-hand experiences. Thanks in advance and I appreciate all the comments. TC: 350 YOE: 12 #gamedev #epic #epicgames #layoffs #gaming #games #unity #roblox #career
Epic is an engineering first company. Everything else is less important than that for Tim. Perks are good - free health care with no copay. 4 weeks mandatory vacation per year and unlimited outside of that. Free lunch every day. Pay is a little below big tech but up there compared to trad gaming
Thanks, and what's the management like? Boots on the ground kind or politics-first BS peddlers? (maybe I'm polarizing too much :)
Engineering is a mess IMO (at least backend). There's a massive amount of tech debt and people still operate like we're a startup. Standardization does not exist and teams are extremely short staffed. Critical systems are owned by individuals and not teams. I don't think this will change rapidly until there are changes at the very top, but slowly but surely some teams are making things better (mostly by saying no and focusing on the boring stuff). You can make a LOT more at FAANG, but you'll miss the gaming culture there.
Appreciate your honest comment.
Thanks for the reply. How's the day-to-day work though? Can one manage to get anything worthwhile done?
it was worth it when the bonuses were insane but when they came back to earth it all felt a lot less appealing and i moved on. miss all the free shirts.
What percentage of base are people getting for bonuses these days? I have a senior SWE offer and highly concerned about this...
Ask them for guaranteed bonus for two years
Sorry! I am hijacking this post but is it worth for a backend engineer to join Epic as an L5? I have been a backend engineer whole of my life.
Why am I not asking ChatGPT to hallucinate me a plausible-sounding answer that's a weighted average of all the glassdoor HR spam?
What precisely strikes you as ChatGPT sounding??