Jagex Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at Jagex full-time for more than a year

Pros – Fantastic colleagues and atmosphere
Fair working hours
Good benefits
Slowly getting more experienced developers on-board.
QA and Player Support teams are relatively well-paid.

Cons – Managers and directors largely lack the necessary experience. Projects and teams are largely disconnected and reactionary. A lot of work gets redone.

Communication is a huge problem for many departments, results in wasted time and effort. Visibility for cross-departments and cross-teams is dire. Many developers run around chasing decisions others have made.

Pay is highly variable and rarely based on experience or contribution and effort. Largely underpaid. The company often cites the line that pay is lower as our jobs are safer. Not true, with several projects having been shut down in 2012, people have been made redundant, along with various "dissapearings" which makes us all question our positions.

Although the company is getting more experienced developers, its slowly eroding the work-life balance that once made Jagex a fantastic place to work. Company days out are now limited to just one or two days a year and team events are extremely rare. Starting to become permanent crunch on some teams and we are losing our benefits in the process.

Almost no room to grow or develop your skills. No on-site training offered and internal promotions are extremely rare. Senior positions limited by headcount. Tech is not similar to the rest of the industry so skills are not always transferable to other companies. Pay rises are difficult to achieve. Even just to match inflation.

Positions are often sold with generous financial bonuses. Not as generous for most employees.

Advice to Senior Management – Bring in more experience - at all levels - but don't erode the values that make it a great place to work.
Work to integrate teams and make decisions and communications clearer.
Increased pay doesn't always make happier employees, but it certainly makes employees feel valued when they're asked to give up more than before with no reward.

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