Pros
- There are still some very passionate anime fans remaining at the company, although this number is quickly decreasing - Anime fandom has grown exponentially and has potential to keep expanding
Cons
- Strategy is constantly changing month to month without a cohesive vision. Every time quarterly plans are made they always change within the quarter due to last minute initiatives that should have been brought forth sooner but come in late due to poor management - Most of the work that gets prioritized comes in the form of “[insert VP or executive name here] wants this” vs actual data or metrics. The people executing the work don’t know if that’s actually something the leader in question said or if the requestor is being liberal with their interpretation of what they said and force others to execute to earn brownie points for themselves - Upward mobility is nonexistent for high performing ICs. The people who usually get ahead are the ones who spend more time engaging in workplace politics and fraternizing with leadership than doing their actual work, which then falls on ICs to fix issues caused by middle management - The Directors and VPs who are being hired from other streaming or traditional media companies don’t care to understand the nuances of the Japanese Anime industry and try to apply traditional Western media practices - Employee feedback is monitored and non-anonymous so people are afraid to speak out publicly, especially post layoffs. The only truly anonymous feedback is in the form of a yearly employee engagement survey submitted in May but the results yet to be presented in an all staff meeting, most likely because they keep trending downward and rating leadership poorly - Leadership claims to care about the fans but decided to remove popular fan features like comments on episodes. A year later fans are still asking for the return of the feature but no actions are being taken to bring them back - Pay is below market and has no stock options to offset the lower salary. Benefits are mediocre compared to other tech companies. Given the current company culture and leadership ignoring the feedback of actual anime fans at the company the pay + benefits are not worth the struggle now.