International Game Technology Reviews

Pros

Plenty of opportunites to advance in the company. Good management structrure and exciting to work for. Gained valuable business skill sets to advance career

Cons

There really weren't too many downsides to working for this company. Just the usual excessive paper work and sometimes I had to park along way from my office.

Pros

Nice co-workers,relatively stable job. Good balance between work and personal life.

Cons

Compensation not at part with market rate.

Pros

Great people and good work life balance. Overall good culture and enjoyable place to work. I would recommend as a place to work

Cons

Unfortunately too much dead weight dragging this place down. Classic case of the 80/20 rule, 20% of the people do the work for the rest of the 80% and this is okay as long as the work gets down.

Pros

Industry Leader - You get to see the projects you work on all over the world.
Some teams are great to work on, hope you are lucky.
Innovation is starting to come back into IGT's games.
If you join IGT now, you will most likely get paid more then the engineers you are working with.

Cons

There is little to no chance for career advancement. There are WAY too many senior engineers at the company. Many of them are not motivated, or are completely inept. They often cause more problems than they solve. A few years back the company decided there were too many managers (which there were) and demoted 2/3 of the managers to staff engineers. This made for a very top heavy engineering staff with many of the top level engineers not doing their job, or not qualified for there job. As a result, mid level engineers find it very difficult to find room to get promotions without leaving the company.

Another major problem is the company moved all of its pay scales so that they could attract new talent, but did not adjust th
e current staff’s salary to match the new pay scale. Chances are if you get hired at IGT you will be making more then someone with the same title. However; if they are still there they are oblivious, or on their way out.

IGT has a lack of respect for engineering talent. The culture is "if you don't like it, we can find another engineer to do it”. This is causing many talented engineers to flee the company, leaving behind bunch inexperienced or inept engineers. I sat in a meeting where a director told a group of engineers, "If IGT can hire 3 engineers in China for the cost of one in the U.S., that just makes sense.”

Senior management is deaf to the employees. 4 months ago we got our annual employee satisfaction survey results, the results showed wide spread dissatisfaction with the company. Senior management ignored the results and started focusing on the few good points from the survey. It was a real missed opportunity to make IGT a better place to work.

Beware of the non-compete at IGT. It makes it VERY difficult to find another job in Nevada, or in gaming period. They like to attach it to your annual Stock Award. Many employees don’t even know they accepted it with their “bonus”. Many engineers have stated that were it not for the non-compete, they would leave IGT.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to the employees, we are just as important as the stock holders.

Stop the spin, be honest. We can do the math; giving us 3 days off, but forcing us to take a week of personal time Christmas shouldn’t be presented as; look you get more time off.

Provide opportunities for career growth, Clear you some of the dead wood that is not contributing.

Keeping an employee hostage with a non-compete, makes for a poor employee.

Pros

Challenging work
opportunity to work in video game technology without the severe crunch
good co-workers
salary seems competitive for the area

Cons

IGT changes direction far too often
It seems like we are hiring a new VP every month
training/conference budget is sporadic at best

Advice to Senior Management

Ideas don't seem to make their way up very easily. There is a lot of fanfare about the processes that management use to get information from the employees. but none of them seem to follow through with anything.

Pros

Industry Leader in gaming field
International exposure

Cons

Very Fast Pace working environment

Pros

If you show initiative, the people you are working for will take you under their wing and allow you to take on some interesting design projects. For the most part, the people you work with are supportive and will take the time to answer questions and teach you the things you need to know.

Cons

The company is constantly losing ground to competition and layoffs always seem to be a possibility.

Advice to Senior Management

Recognize that research and development is key to growth and should not face as many austerity measures.

Pros

Very fast paced work environment

Cons

Little time to breathe. Always looking ahead and not learning from the past.

Advice to Senior Management

Slow down and learn from your mistake

Pros

A few hardworking peers (but they're the minority)
Really good benefits
Totally decent cafe onsite
Good vacation allotment
Reno has an inexpensive cost of living

Cons

Mindblowingly incompetent management, most of whom have no clue about the industry or what IGT really does. They constantly hire expensive (but ridiculously underwhelming) new people down in Las Vegas while the Reno people make much less and do much more. There is a terrible, horrible morale problem although LV upper management tries to pretend it away and paint Reno as disgruntled. The problem for them is that many of us didn't drink the Kool Aid. I ran myself into the ground, waiting and hoping something would change but ultimately I stayed about a year and a half too long. It actually hurt to see how badly the company had been destroyed. It used to be so great.

Advice to Senior Management

Equalize the pay between the people who actually do your work and all the expensive new toys you've accumulated down in Las Vegas. Stop acting like IGT is a happy company and come to terms with the corporate disaster you've so proudly turned it into. And please, please, please drop the horrific phrase "Courage to change" and discontinue your silly "Peak Performers" propaganda campaign where the lemmings get crowned. You have no idea how many people loathe both those things.

Pros

Respect for employees.
Good environment.
Work load is normal.

Cons

Behind technology They need to come with pace. Management is not aware of much technical side.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to concerned with technology updates and employee profiles