How are career development opportunities at Crunchyroll?

- Cozy offices - Friendly colleagues - Great opportunities for new hires in Mexico and India to do nothing while the company is in chaos

- Immature top management. Management came from Funimation in 2021 does not have the competence to manage a large company. Their current successes are based on the foundation laid until 2021. - Incompetent top management intentionally hires weak subordinates, which undermines their weakness and intention to avoid competition. - Weak but loyal subordinates have more weight in decision-making than experienced professionals. - Constant restructurings and layoffs slow down the development of projects. The company's development has stalled. - Management's statements constantly run counter to actions. Example: We layoff to grow; We are reducing QA to improve quality.

- Experiencing continued fast growth and therefore stability in this market - Lots of cool, diverse, and smart colleagues who are easy to strike a conversation with or to befriend - Opportunity to make an impact - Transparent & passionate senior leadership team who genuinely feel like they care about the employees - Continued support of DEI, shown in both verbalized support at All Staffs and in how they show up and put funding behind meaningful events and nonprofits - Definitely a more fun work environment compared to other companies and streaming competitors - Competitive compensation and recognition of hard work / achievements shown in promotions (although this can be team dependent)

- Lack of proactive mentorship / career development programs and clarity on internal growth opportunities beyond promotions - Fast growth led to major culture change, which understandably is necessary for a high growth stage but unfortunately was not all positive. - Some toxic traits were picked up from new hires from big names that can be cliquey and old school, alongside finger pointing when things don't go as expected, which is antithesis to Crunchyroll's DNA and original mission of creating true belonging and community, internally and externally - Constantly changing strategy and direction to a fault. It's good to be nimble based on market trends and data, but this is happening at a frequency and a point when strategy should already be finalized. The constant changes are made to the detriment of working teams who then need to scramble to change directions despite doing work towards it already leading to loss in morale and confusion

Working in anime and coworkers

No interest in career advancement for entry level employees. It seemed like they wanted you to just stay where you were and even though they “encouraged” creativity, it was never actually wanted. You just work til you burn out.

- ok worklife balance. I work 40hr/wk - everyone here is super passionate about anime and their jobs - unlimited PTO

- Senior management is horrible. A lot of nepotism in this company, surprisingly. - Total lack of growth opportunities. People don't rarely get promoted here. - I was shocked by how the lack of integrity from upper management working here. It's weird how corporate, soul-less and untransparent this company has become while still being so small.

-PEOPLE. Teams all work very hard and are very close. Direct management is wonderful. People are very talented. -Free lunch in the office -Unlimited PTO

-Big disconnect between the teams and executive leadership. -No process. Teams individually create their own and don't sync with other teams so its very hard to get anything done. Leadership will tell teams what the new "process" is but won't do anything to roll it out or put anything into place. -History of Japanese partners & executive leadership harassing employees. Crunchyroll does not do anything to protect employees, as they prefer to protect their executive leadership in place. -Business only caters to its business partners so employees do not get to execute anything that is for the actual content/fans and this causes internal turmoil since the company wants to pretend this isn't the case. -Leadership does not set KPIs and doesn't track reporting unless a business partner asks. -Extremely understaffed & expect teams to still compensate. Many instances of layoffs where they did not restaff/rebuild teams and existing employees absorbed duties. -Since the merger only a couple years ago, there have been 4 reorgs and 3 layoffs. -Information sharing is very bad across the company. Its very hard to get all the information you need to do your job. Goal posts move often. -Leadership hires their friends to fill out teams and has clear bias. -Not a lot of opportunity for advancement. No career development. Not a lot of space to learn and grow. -High meeting culture. Not enough meeting room spaces. -Finger pointing culture and combative. The company does not facilitate community and teamwork.

Benefits Good people at the working level Anime is fun

Poor leadership Absolutely no development or education for your position No innovation Favoritism in growth opportunities Failure to thrive Unwillingness to cultivate forward thinking marketing Reporting or setting goals based on data DO NOT HAPPEN

- Peers I worked with were passionate about the intersection between tech and anime, and we built amazing things during my time there. - Startup culture where you can get a lot done if you're good with barebones AWS and can navigate the politics. - Decent pay

Leadership is either intentionally or unintentionally killing the culture. - They create top-down initiatives that "sound good" but in reality are low-impact at best or downright harmful to the anime community at worst. - Lack of career development. Felt like they cared more about deliverables than my personal development. Especially over the past 9 months, and it's getting worse.

Amazing and talented people open to collaboration and learning from each other in order to produce great marketing assets!

I’m glad to see some have had great experiences working at Crunchyroll - wish I could say the same. Everything is backwards there. If you’re a professional looking to grow and advance in your career, don’t bother! My supervisor constantly used fear tactics to remind our fast growing team that we weren’t wanted by the other departments. Rather than working cross-functionally, we are slowly becoming siloed. On a daily basis, you witness Senior “Leadership” not coming to agreements and pointing fingers at everyone but themselves. Rather than hearing concerns or innovative ideas from their employees to help improve workflow or efficiency, they disregard your contribution and give unclear and often changing direction. A majority of my 1:1’s with my supervisor were cancelled and then that’s when I noticed favoritism ensuing. I often checked in with my supervisor asking where I could improve and offered to do or learn additional things for the betterment of the team and was immediately shot down. If you don’t mind keeping your head down and working past your 8 hours without being paid OT then this might be the place for you. :/ They hire contractors with mention of possible full-time and up to a year contract but extend your contract every few months in case they have to let you go. You’ll have unpaid time off and be expected to provide your working hours. Last time I checked (at least in the state of CA) as a independent contractor, you don’t have to provide working hours or listen to the directive of someone else on how to perform your job. If that’s what they want and expect, hire people full-time! If you apply for a contract position, just be wary of the constant fear of it not being extended. There won’t be any warning and you’ll be asked to not say anything to anyone because they’re likely letting others go in hopes of finding cheaper talent and/or people willing to just say “yessir.” Going above and beyond is not appreciated here. Leadership might type out long emails every so often showcasing the rising amount of subscribers and highlighting great work, which might help you forget how stressed and frustrated you are. But then the looming chaos and disorganization is your reminder that this company still sends and receives licensor content via Google drive. After my time here, I can see why licensors don’t trust Crunchyroll with their content. Crunchyroll needs a serious Senior Leadership overhaul. If they didn’t waste so many resources by not properly communicating, budgeting, hiring incompetent directors and letting go of talented people, Crunchyroll would be an amazing place to work!

- Experiencing continued fast growth and therefore stability in this market - Lots of cool, diverse, and smart colleagues who are easy to strike a conversation with or to befriend - Opportunity to make an impact - Transparent & passionate senior leadership team who genuinely feel like they care about the employees - Continued support of DEI, shown in both verbalized support at All Staffs and in how they show up and put funding behind meaningful events and nonprofits - Definitely a more fun work environment compared to other companies and streaming competitors - Competitive compensation and recognition of hard work / achievements shown in promotions (although this can be team dependent)

- Lack of proactive mentorship / career development programs and clarity on internal growth opportunities beyond promotions - Fast growth led to major culture change, which understandably is necessary for a high growth stage but unfortunately was not all positive. - Some toxic traits were picked up from new hires from big names that can be cliquey and old school, alongside finger pointing when things don't go as expected, which is antithesis to Crunchyroll's DNA and original mission of creating true belonging and community, internally and externally - Constantly changing strategy and direction to a fault. It's good to be nimble based on market trends and data, but this is happening at a frequency and a point when strategy should already be finalized. The constant changes are made to the detriment of working teams who then need to scramble to change directions despite doing work towards it already leading to loss in morale and confusion

1. Medical Insurance 2. Comfortable Office 3. Free lunches and drinks 4. Culture and diversity

1. Low salary 2. No career growth 3. Mandatory office attendance