Lucasfilm Reviews

Pros

Gorgeous facility, great benefits, fabulous subsidized cafeteria. Lucasfilm is a cool place to work. It's fun to tell people you work here.

Cons

Low pay, limited career growth opportunity, a lot of politics

Pros

The only pro is putting it on your resume but even that starts feeling old quick. The cons really outweigh the pros.

Cons

If i had more time and patience I would write a movie script. Senior Management in this place needs to be replaced. Constant backstabbing.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees. Stop and look carefully around you - the masses will eventually riot. There is so much bloodshed within closed walls its sad.

Pros

star wars is challenging to work on

Cons

open campus, lots of room for anyone to just walk on it

Advice to Senior Management

realize that the gaming division is just as powerful as the film division

Pros

Pride in saying you work "for" George Lucas and the respect the company still instills in people on the outside. Nice environment and campus.

Cons

This used to be the place of my dreams in every respect but has turned into a ridiculously political, angry, unhappy workplace. Those who curry favor with management are petrified to do anything that might rock the boat, ideas and innovation are discouraged, and now Star Wars is just a shell of its former self and the visual effects and gaming industries are in turmoil. This is SUCH a miserable place to be now, it is unbelievable.

Advice to Senior Management

Please get rid of the current management team and start fresh. It's fine that Lucas himself has run out of ideas, but to compound that with such EXTREME pettiness and politicking is just unnecessary and unpleasant. Stop treating employees like they are little kids and start having some respect for the people who are putting their all into their jobs. It's starting to feel more like a very nice jail from which I desperately want to escape than the creative, innovative, convivial and respectful place it was just a few years ago. The change has been remarkable, and remarkably sad.

Pros

Great team environment in with the worker-bees, strong and supportive benefits program, 'cache' of working at Lucasfilm has a cool-factor in SF. Amazingly smart and capable artists who are passionate about what they do.

Cons

The Leadership lives and dies by risk-management.

Advice to Senior Management

Open yourselves up to the world: You are in danger of becoming a completely homogeneous environment that only rewards people for conforming (unless that individual happens to be protected by the "George-factor" )

Pros

The company is very stable -- it's not going out of business anytime soon. Layoffs are relatively rare, compared to other companies in the industry.

Everyone who works there is at the top of their field, and very easy to get along with. The employees are all genuinely wonderful people, and set the bar high for job performance.

Culturally, the company is very thorough. There's a heavy emphasis on process and procedure, so projects are often run very efficiently.

It's an extremely comfortable environment; from the benefits to the furniture, it's all rather posh. At times, I've heard the company called "the guilded cage" or "the golden handcuffs."

Cons

It's a very risk-reluctant company, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, the risk aversion keeps the company very stable; but on the other hand, it can be difficult to try anything new. Change comes slowly.

Nobody questions The Chairman of the Board. Fair enough; it's his company, after all, and he's the one paying for everything. But there are times when his decisions are, well, difficult to understand; and everyone just has to go along as though it all makes sense.

There is not a lot of emphasis placed on personal initiative. There's not much interest in trying something new or taking a risk.

Advice to Senior Management

An initiative like Google's "20% Time" (or even if it was just "5% Time") would be very warmly received.

Pros

Our work locations are beautiful and we get to work with smart people who care about what they do on a day-to-day basis. This company really cares about what's important to its employees. Things such as growth and learning opportunities and employees' interests outside of work are respected and considered.

Cons

The company is structured such that many promotions are based on the opportunity to move into an open position (i.e. someone has to leave for the next level job to become available). While this isn't an unusual structure at all, some people resent it.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to listen to what's near and dear to employees' hearts.

Pros

There's only one reason to work at Lucasfilm-- a personal pride in saying you do. To be fair, some of the people here are very smart and fun, but on reflection they are the exception not the rule. The building and campus are very nice, too.

Cons

Pettiness. Infighting. Politics. This is one of the most childish, immature, envy-based environments imaginable. The years I worked there I thought it was great, and now that I have been out for a while I could not be happier. They keep good people down and have an attitude of control that goes beyond secretive-- it's paranoid. The unhappiness comes from the top and works its way down. There's no pride in the end product except on the creative side. No transparency. No professionalism. Claims to be "familial" but in actuality that familiarity is used to the disadvantage of employees; you're trapped in a little box and they'll never let you out. Forget about real promotions or the ability to rise from the inside. There's no growth potential, and no sense of fun in the end. It never seemed that way to me.... until I got out.

Advice to Senior Management

Be professional. REALLY professional. Start treating your employees with respect. A nice gym and sushi at lunch don't count. Quit making people fearful of management. And for God's sake, get rid of some of your "leadership." Many of your senior executives are downright embarrassing.

Pros

Beautiful place to be working. Even if you are not a hardcore Star Wars geek, you will enjoy working here.

Cons

The location is somewhat isolated. IP is taken very seriously, so employees always have to be careful what they say.

Advice to Senior Management

The management team does a great job of providing a real sense of community to the company's employees, especially given the breadth of work being done.

Pros

Opportunities to learn in different businesses
location, location, location the offices are amazing
food is excellent (maybe too good)

Cons

slim holidays
they need a better games room
be more flexible with visits to Skywalker on weekends
Assist employees on buying game consoles so they can use the products; assistance with a PS3 so we could watch the movies on Blu Ray would be great, they are coming out on blu ray soon aren't they?

Advice to Senior Management

think about time off it justifies pushing people more