BioWare Reviews

Former Employee – worked at BioWare full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Committed to product quality
Committed to quality of life for employees
Honest, committed management
Company ran via analysis rather than emotion

Cons – Had challenges with integration with EA
Loyalty to long term employees sometimes meant they were promoted beyond their capabilities

Advice to Senior Management – Let Bioware be Bioware rather than EA!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BioWare full-time for less than a year

Pros – Smart, dedicated co-workers. Internal processes good, could be be better. Fantastic benefits to the point of being extravagant, which may have contributed to all of the layoffs. This may no longer be the case, as I understand there have been major changes in this respect.

Cons – Lack of job security (like most game industry jobs).

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BioWare as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Some of the people working in the Austin office are talented. There is a nice cafeteria within walking distance from the office.

Cons – Most of the people working for BioWare are immature and untalented. Upper management is crass, loutish, arrogant, and mean. Contractors are treated like toilet paper (and about half of the work force is composed of contractors). There are few older employees. Those few are treated with disrespect bordering on harassment. Employees are harassed about their weight. Bioware is one of the worst places I have worked.

Advice to Senior Management – Go out of business. I'm not kidding. You stink to high heaven. You don't know how to treat human beings.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BioWare full-time

Pros – At the time I was there I got to work with one of the best teams I ever had worked with and had the most fun I've ever had. I remember saying to a team member "Where could we ever go that would be better than here?"

Cons – Some of the senior management team is not well respected or well liked, but remain in their jobs despite massive complaints. I wish Upper Management would listen more and clean out the ranks.

Advice to Senior Management – Find the wink links and replace them - it'll keep the good people there.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BioWare full-time for less than a year

Pros – Great People
Good learning experience
Can learn many aspects of business from here

Cons – At the time it was a very large studio with 500+ people. So there is a lot of bureaucracy to communicate with anyone not part of your team. The approval processes and number of meetings can occasionally be disruptive to work flow.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BioWare full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great IPs to work with, lots of emphasis on personal input, management is open to listening to your ideas and is generally concerned with your work satisfaction. There was a really great emphasis on work/life balance as well.

Cons – I don't have too many cons to report. I had a great experience during my tenure at the studio.

Advice to Senior Management – I really admire the company's core values. Keep adhering to them and you'll have a satisfied and enthusiastic team.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BioWare as a contractor for more than a year

Pros – Working with the QA department was a great experience.
My direct boss was very easy going and explained things very well.
Loved my team and my tasks.
Was my first gaming company I worked for, so I was able to get my foot in the door that opened up lots of possibilities.

Cons – I was led on that I would be brought on to the company full-time as opposed to being a contractor. I did an amazing job and worked my way up the QA ladder, but still got the boot once my contract was up.

Advice to Senior Management – Instead of spending ridiculous amounts of money on breakfast every morning, use that money towards bringing dedicated and hard-working contractors on full-time.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BioWare as a contractor for more than a year

Pros – Met some great, talented people. Many days were lots of fun.

Cons – QA is run in a way that discourages being a team player. Too much emphasis on contract and overseas QA. Much of QA, except those few who are 'embedded' with the developers, seem to be kept at arms length.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop the industry-wide use of contract workers. QA personnel are an important part of the development process, not a group to be thrown away.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BioWare full-time for more than a year

Pros – Work with people very passionate about what they do.
Great perks, excellent benefits
Challenging work environment

Cons – Unstable future, your job is one failure away from being removed.

Advice to Senior Management – Be more open to flexibility and listen to your employees as they give feedback. Sometimes ideas are just bad.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BioWare full-time for more than a year

Pros – Food, comfort, and happy people. BioWare is a comfortable place to work and a happy environment. You must find a healthy place in the corporate structure where creativity is allowed to thrive and corporate needs are sheltered by strong leads. There are some really creative people at BioWare, and it is an absolutely amazing environment to wet one's feet or season one's skills.

Cons – The large corporate mogul of EA opens doors but closes independent thought. Only on the micro-level may creativity thrive, for revolutionary ideas that can be iterated on rapidly in a small company setting turn into months-long trudge of certification, documentation, and stagnation. Long "assembly-line" like production pipelines turn great ideas into watered-down results, quashing the desire for creativity into production, as the outcome of both becomes identical.

Advice to Senior Management – Decrease employee turnover to perfect their skills instead of firing and re-hiring temporary workers. Eliminate work-flow pipeline issues by seasoning your people and unifying your technology. It should not take 6 months for a new designer to learn the ropes, and another 6 to master them. That's 4 and 8 months too long, where employees are gratuitously unproductive in comparison to seasoned veterans. On top of that, the forced turnover rate eliminates many of the seasoned workers before they can share their wealth of accumulated knowledge, leading to a downward spiral of production that can only end in one way.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend