Pros
Decent enough benefits
Good way to get into the games industry
WFH with one-day hybrid schedule and relatively good work/life balance
Cons
Pay is comparatively low for the industry and the city
Mobility is no guarantee, the promotion/merit process was a mess and changed multiple times the 3 years I was with Double Down. Company loves to brag about how much money it has in the bank but when its time to give people the proper compensation they deserve, or fully staff teams, suddenly we have to tighten the purse.
The employee self-review process is unclear and often unfair. Leadership frequently complains that employees give themselves too high of a score and will make up any excuse they can to knock your review down and keep you from moving up in pay grade.
Multiple instances of people getting moved around teams, getting more responsibilities and title changes but with no adjustment to compensation.
‘Soft benefits’ have been cutting back more and more
The leadership team is a disorganized mess and has no creative vision. They want to branch out into different games since the cash cow casino game is old and so is its player base. However, there is absolutely no proper planning, regular communication, or GTM strategy with the rest of the company. It's like they do everything on the fly at the very last minute, which results in sloppy work being done. When I left, the company was in a ‘throw everything at the wall and see what sticks’ phase, trying to develop several new apps at once yet every team is understaffed in part due to layoffs, but gives managers a hard time acquiring new employees. This had led to multiple failed apps and canceled projects in the last couple of years.
The Korean offices are a nightmare to work with, horrible with communication, and have absolutely *zero* desire for collaboration. They regularly fail to communicate on time, don’t deliver projects when needed, and then blame us when things don’t go well. Since the company is owned by a Korean firm, leadership has cultivated this culture in which we are effectively not allowed to/unable to communicate and work with them on a consistent basis or hold them accountable which means the US teams struggle to do their job properly but gets most of the blame. The overseas devs will randomly add crappy new features that no one wants into the flagship game and will regularly do so without telling any of us until a week before it goes out to all players and then are shocked when it fails. And yet when the US office wants to make simple, easy improvements to this ancient game so we can stop resting on our laurels and actually compete with modern games we get told they don’t have the time. Leadership plays favorites and always comes to the defense for their incompetence and unrealistic expectations. It’s like management is purposefully setting us up for failure.
The company’s CMO was so bad to work with that people would complain about working with them on a daily basis. There have been a few instances of people quitting or turning down promotions/title changes because they refuse to report to the CMO. Unrealistic expectations, unattainable goals, hostile attitude, favoritism, etc.
Confusing and increasingly hostile WFH policy has led to very talented and longtime staff departing because managers are not allowed to WFH permanently - but the company keeps hiring fully remote employees. Make up your mind!
Employees are told to use a sick day or come into the office sick on our in-office day instead of just working remotely, and C-Suite forces managers to take attendance on whos coming in or not like we’re in daycare.