I just accepted an offer to join Rockstar Games in Edinburgh and I always wonder why I never see that company mentioned on blind. Can anyone who has worked, currently works or knows someone who's worked there give me some insights on career progression, wlb, overall experience? One of the main reasons why I accepted the offer was because the recruiter told me that in the future I would be able to move to their US offices and working in the US is one of my main goals. That and also because Rockstar is probably my favorite videogames company. Also last year I was still at uni so I think it will look good on my resume if I want to transition to a big tech company in the future. Do you agree? YOE: 1.5
Video game companies suck. They pay little and overwork people and yet they line up to work there because of muh childhood memories. Stay away
This
Not in my experience. In the last 3 years I went from making 60k to 95k to 140k. It’s just about working smarter not harder. Stand up for yourself and have a back bone. This isn’t a video game industry as much as workers not knowing their rights. Work your ass off, don’t neglect your personal life and family. And demand your compensation
shit company with shit products. they make mobile games for consoles.
Coming from someone working at snap that is quite hilarious to say the least.
easy to talk shit when you work at a no-name company 🙂
Former R* designer. Worked on RDR 1&2 and GTAV. For your experience it’s gonna be a great experience. I call it laying your dues. I’m not sure how the UK gets down but seemed like being at the North team is the best place 2nd only to NYC. You will learn a lot, work hard, ship amazing games played my millions of people on some of the best tools I’ve ever worked on. I left because I had better growth, pay, and work life balance at other studios once I had those on my resume.
Those days are over btw. North team is a mess now. Just like their overall org structure. The people in charge left years ago, and the ones left do not have the responsibility to change anything.
Are either of y’all still active? I’m interviewing with R* and I’m curious about culture there
My advice is, get in, chill as much as you can, get that name on your resume, and switch to a better place. They have recently revamped their WLB and all that, so they leave employees plenty of time off and give them extra time for finishing work. Seeing as the company has no real future, it makes the most sense to abuse that by doing as little work as possible, and using that time to LeetCode. Then get an offer at Unity or Tencent or Frostbite with far better pay.
People you work around will be good generally. The company can be ok. The gaming industry as a whole is long hours and not as much upside as you think it would be. When I worked at R* it was fine. I got to make good stuff, but gaming is a bear. WLB is very very tough to maintain.
I had a interview with them for a full stack dev position. Passed the coding exam. Next was a panel interview with two people. It was supposed to be a tech interview. Didn't really get any tech questions from them, just some general questions about my work and company and yet I was rejected with no feedback. Any idea why that was R* people?
Depends on when this was and which studio, was it pre-2019 or after? If before then the people interviewing were probably overworked/didn’t have time to prepare for proper Technical questions and they felt like you wouldn’t manage the pressure working there. If after, it was probably just because they fucked up position and budget planning, they had a hiring freeze a few months ago because upper Management readjusted budget. Ever since the pandemic R* has reached new levels of disorganization. Some employees coming to work not knowing what project they are assigned to. Some ex-employees getting status-updates via Email because they’ve still not been removed from DBs.
That's wild. I was interviewed a few months ago, this year. They did ask about overtime and I mentioned I did work overtime and on weekends during release times... It was weird that they asked that during what was supposed to be tech interview. I really wanted to join the company so I didn't really mind.
I'd have to know the team you're on, or at least if you are product or dev to be able to answer that fully. Depts here are pretty siloed because everyone likes doing things in their own way, so if you need to collaborate you're going to have a hard time. If you need anything approved by upper management good luck. Roles don't mean anything, just title. Career progression seems questionable unless you like to kiss up and over work for years. It's a good experience but not a place to settle unless things change soon. Enjoy getting to know your awesome new co-workers and welcome to the jungle.
hey i’m really looking forward to applying as a designer at rockstar. would you be able to refer me?
OP, any update after first couple of months?
Anyone here care to tell me how long after their onsites did they get back to you? Did they actually give you a call the day they said they were calling or did it take somewhat longer?
Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the greatest games of all time, so idk why you’d pass this shit up go for it