Konami Gaming, Inc. Reviews

Cons

work-life balance isn't easy here. They work lean so everyone is putting in extra energy. This is causing burnout

Cons

Strong tolerance for poor management and poor management decisions.
The halls stink. When they redid the building, they did not consider appropriate ventilation for any of the restrooms.

Cons

Benefits were slowly being changed and more expensive for the employee as opposed to what they were initially offered.

Cons

Where to start? Konami just went through a pretty brutal layoff about a month ago. Every department was axed. The CEO filed everyone into one big room and told us that we had to can these people because the company was still profitable, but not as profitable as it was last year. He refused to answer questions from the few employees who actually had them. At the same time, he said that they needed to create money to hire new people in Games R&D. Only they laid off at least half a dozen employees in Games R&D. This is after the department busted their tails to meet the annual goal despite a huge shortage - from a lot of people leaving over the past fiscal year. Games R&D overachieved despite being hamstrung at every turn by management's inability to find and retain quality people, and they were rewarded by getting a few of their comrades canned because the CEO thinks the company isn't making enough money. And to top it all off, he basically told every other department that they should be mad at Games R&D for the layoffs.

After saying goodbye to everyone in the room, he told us to take solace in the fact that the company is still profitable. As if that's what we care about when this is how it treats us. I agree with previous reviewers: this company thinks that every single person is replaceable. Everything about the work culture here is so strange and rigid. Micromanagement abounds at all levels. Taking time off is frowned upon, even though it's both your legal right and part of your benefits. The executive management has an entirely separate enclave, with their own elevator and everything. You'll see one or two of them occasionally walking around the halls, but that's it. They have a big underground parking garage that's for their use only. Everyone else is expected to park out in the sun with not even tin shading. You can stand in the parking lot and look at all the adjacent office buildings and all of them have covered parking. Except for Konami. And after the layoff they put a couple of security guys down there to protect their expensive cars in case someone came in with a tire iron or something.

The rank and file employees are smart and decent people. Even the first level of management is largely OK, but even they have only stayed so long because they've started to internalize the bizarre thinking of management. Ask people how long they've been working here and you'll be surprised to find how many have only been here for a year or less.

Cons

Very disappointing experience with this employer. favoritism, and expectation of low quality work the norm. Made lots of promises that no intention of keeping.

Cons

Upgrade needed on operating system.

Cons

Poor working environment and culture. Way to much paranoia and employee monitoring. Seems to becoming more of a "me too" organization the longer I am here.

Cons

it`s a very good place to work for.

Cons

Everything else.

Management runs the place by intimidation.

No work life balance.

No recognition or reward for a good work.

Work is dull.

Cons

- The 401K is vested for the company match at 20%/year. That means of the company contributed funds, you only get 20% per year. Until year 1 none of their contributions are yours, and you need to work to 5 years to be entitled to 100% of what Konami provides. I am not sure if this is intended as a employee retention ploy or just for financial reasons, probably a bit of both.

- On your anniversary of your hire date, Konami cuts your accumulated vacation in excess of 1 week and pays it out to you. This tends to discourage planning/taking any vacation longer than 1 week, particularly if you want to travel after your hire date. Other companies I have been at have ceilings that are double your annual accrual rate. An idea that other companies have used is combining sick time and vacation time into "paid time off". It adds a week per yr to the time off and lets a person use it as they need to. It eliminates people taking sick days because they are "use it or lose it", as well as indirectly rewarding healthy employees. That would be a bold step for the company to take , but I don't see it happening any time soon.

There is a very stratified culture in the company.. Executives, Engineering, Sales/Marketing, and operations are very separate entities and rarely interact unless they need to. The new building has magnified those separations. When you hear people talk of departmental "silos", that is what you have here. Executive interaction with employees is unheard of outside of all hands meetings(every 6 mo). There is a very "us and them" attitude in this company that could easily be fixed with the right attitude form the top.

When the new building was built, the executives gave themselves nice underground parking with an exclusive elevator to their exclusive floor. That's OK, executives deserve some perks. But it would have been really nice to cover the outside parking stalls for the average employee. Many good companies in the Vegas area do this. Considering the millions spent on the new addition and exec garage, covered outside parking stalls would have been a relatively minor expense and worth 10x that in showing commitment to the avg employee.

Konami is always developing new products, but that development always seems to be lagging behind others in the gaming industry. Everything I have seen developed has always been shown in similar form by competitors in the previous years trade show. While that does minimize risk, it will always limit the growth potential of the company.

There are very few company wide events, parties, etc. The explanation has always been cost, but this puts the company in the minority when compared to other firms.