Eidos Montreal Employee Reviews about "higher ups"

Cons

Strategy The studio is a middle sized one (the likes of Naughty Dogs or Crystal Dynamics) but suffers from a lack of vision and focus that are overshadowed by excessive ambitions, and ideas not fully thought through. It is developing multi-platform games but relies on proprietary engines, mostly different for each project, preventing any form of knowledge building. This also leads to massive technical hurdles and production constraints that not only impact productivity but also causes significant frustration to the teams. The studio doesn’t have the critical size to handle multiple AAA development and scatters its resources instead of building its strength on a single franchise before looking for growth. It is trying to maintain multiple initiatives, without the required resources, and sometimes against the global strategy dictated by its holding, the Square Enix group. Whether it is by ambition, or to eventually break free from Square Enix, it is in both cases poorly executed and has already caused damages to the studio. Each project ends up being the next adrenaline shot that keeps the studio alive, where it could be building an expertise to help the studio differentiate from the competition. Projects Two of their IPs (Thief, Deus Ex) are now without any publicly known plan for further iterations. This is partly due to the fact that those games are directed to a limited market and can only make so much profit, but also that the potential of the latest entries hasn’t been fully realized. The lack of creative vision and the director’s tendency to always refer to their past experiences prevent the teams from moving forward, take risks and seek excellence in innovation. Similarly to their engines, projects use different production methods, which is fine when making different types of games, but it is done without trying to establish best practices. Each project ends up trying to reinvent the wheel, with all the problems that come with it. Plannings are made up by producers, who barely consult leads, principals or experts, only to redo them completely every 6 month, when they get a reality check. Raising any kind of flags is seen as having a negative attitude and not being solution oriented. As long as you always say yes and are doing overtime to compensate for the made up estimate, you’ll be seen as a true committed resource, and will be granted the right to not challenge the way things are done. Management On a studio level, it is highly politicized. Producers and Directors get hired based on their affinity with the higher management, sometimes even without any proven or relevant background. If you’re a dev or artist, then, like in any other company in any industry, it will depends on the position you have, and the manager you get. You will find the best and the worst. Ultimately, your fate lies in the ends of the studio producers, who manage the resources assignments on the different projects, so… … make sure to have a strong “influence leadership” if you want to be in a good position. If you’re doing a good job, chances are they will make you chase the carrot and work even more, and tell everyone how committed you are for doing so much overtime. If you’re underperforming, nothing will be said to you before you reach the (arbitrary) critical point where you will either, be given a remedial plan, be ramped down on another project, or simply get fired. And sadly, if they don’t have a file to justify the move, they’ll simply abrogate the position. HR This is where things get complicated. From a studio perspective, the HR department mission is simple: to protect the legal integrity of the studio, at all cost, and to cover the higher management. Career management is nowhere to be found and the evaluation process won’t change anything, as scores and their criteria are arbitrarily change to accomodate the project or studio’s current situation. The main issue lies in the environment in which Eidos Montreal operates. Montreal is a highly competitive place when it comes to AAA development. This make for extreme difficulties when it comes to attract talents and build employees loyalty. The studio has such a hard time hiring, that more often than not, it ends up settling for any resource available. This is already a problem on its own, but instead of trying to be part of a solution, Eidos Montreal enforces the issue. Instead of encouraging the most committed and deserving employees, the studio will promote the ones who threat to leave, granting them custom titles to try to make them fit in the hierarchy, messing it up and diluting ownership of the projects in the process. Projects end up having an unbalanced ratio of directors and leads compared to devs and artists. All this entitlement brings so many cooks in the kitchen that making a decision becomes an excruciating process. Also, promotions, even when deserved, are never followed by any real training, except for generic seminars that only scratch the surface. Experts become leads but then have no idea how to manage people, and get blamed for not knowing about it instinctively. In some cases, this can go as far as to have extremely talented resources who end up, after being promoted, be the main reason for which artists and devs would leave the company. The turn over has been high the past few years, despite the relatively good work conditions and numerous advantages. The frustration of being the ones paying for the higher ups mistakes is the number one reason. Finally, be careful, direct criticism of the management and/or direction, even constructive, can result at best in you being put in a corner until you leave, or in the studio thanking you for your services.

Cons

- projects within the studio are extremely clicky. its about who you know rather than letting your hard work help you out to try and get forward within this place. - their current project is a huge mess, all the higher ups on it are power hungry and tyrannical -their previous project was on a proprietary engine that was extremely difficult to use and unruly. yet everyone was biased towards it. - extreme linguicism goes on here. if you dont know french or are just starting to learn, be prepared to not be a part of any discussions regarding the game development - hr (aside from nadine who's a saint) is absolutely garbage, they keep you in the dark and lie to you - this place is extremely cheap as well, pay is trash, and so is their bonus model.