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    Konami Gaming, Inc. Reviews

    Updated May 20, 2017
    37 reviews

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    Full-time Part-time
    2.4
    Star Star Star Star Star
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    Satoshi Sakamoto
    21 Ratings

    37 Employee Reviews

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    1. "Over-all"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Culture & Values
      Former Employee - Buyer/Planner II in Lakeside, CA
      Former Employee - Buyer/Planner II in Lakeside, CA
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Konami Gaming, Inc. (More than a year)

      Pros

      Management is very supportive. Company supports life/work balance. Opportunity for advancement.

      Cons

      Upgrade needed on operating system.

    2. Helpful (12)

      "Decent rank and file, but completely cruel and useless management."

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Doesn't Recommend
      Neutral Outlook
      Disapproves of CEO

      I have been working at Konami Gaming, Inc. full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      You get paid on time and sometimes you don't have to deal with management. Pretty much everything except for the corporate culture is alright there.

      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.

      Advice to Management

      Don't act like we're stupid. Your company is declining because you treat your employees like dirt. Start being honest and open and you'll get a much more motivated workforce.

    3. Helpful (1)

      "What Happened?"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Doesn't Recommend
      Neutral Outlook
      No opinion of CEO

      I have been working at Konami Gaming, Inc. full-time (More than 5 years)

      Pros

      Good salary, good location and dedication to product development. Most employees helpful and cooperative. Financial backing to take risks on unique and innovative products.

      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.

      Advice to Management

      Hire talent and foster their knowledge. Don't hire based on personality type or cultural bias. Success isn't something you achieve once and just ride the wave, it becomes even more difficult as the industry becomes more competitive.

    4. "A better place to work for"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Assembly Technician in Las Vegas, NV
      Current Employee - Assembly Technician in Las Vegas, NV
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook

      I have been working at Konami Gaming, Inc. full-time (More than 3 years)

      Pros

      Konami Gaming is growing company and a very good place to work for.

      Cons

      it`s a very good place to work for.

    5. Helpful (4)

      "Will not recomend"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Doesn't Recommend
      Negative Outlook
      Disapproves of CEO

      I have been working at Konami Gaming, Inc. (Less than a year)

      Pros

      Pay is the only motivator in this place.

      No much else.

      Cons

      Everything else.

      Management runs the place by intimidation.

      No work life balance.

      No recognition or reward for a good work.

      Work is dull.

      Advice to Management

      The will not change.

    6. Helpful (4)

      "Good workplace, but needs improvement"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Recommends
      Neutral Outlook
      No opinion of CEO

      Pros

      First off, the post "Your job is what you make it" was a great one, so I am not going to repeat a lot of the stuff said there. It did sound like it was written by HR though.

      #1 pro is the people. I have found most of the people there great to work with and always willing to help.

      -Good 401 K match (but on a vesting schedule, so you need to work 5yrs to get it all)
      - Other benefits good with broad areas of coverage/choices. Since i have been there, they have done a good job to keep employee contributions to healthcare premiums/deductibles from going up. That can't be said of most places.
      - Vacation is average at 2 weeks to start, plus 1 day for each year after your hire date. Unfortunately, they cut your accumulation back to 1 week every year and pay it out.
      - Just built a new Vegas facility addition which is much better than the previous old facility that they added on to - although remnants of the old building still exist.
      - Compensation is about the local avg, but well below the National avg. Probably due to the lower cost of living in NV.

      Bonuses/Raises - these are very tied to the business performance of the company(as they should). Unfortunately, recently the company (and gaming industry) has not been doing well and that is reflected in the company's payouts to employees. When the company meets their goals in terms of budget/revenue/profit, the company is above avg in this area. When they don't they are below avg.

      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.

      Advice to Management

      - Executives need to communicate and interact more with avg employees, not just the dept heads. If you want the company to be one team, this is where it starts.

      - Look at addressing/removing the vacation cash out policy that occurs every year.

    7. Helpful (10)

      "Not the best place to work but I love what I do"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Las Vegas, NV

      I have been working at Konami Gaming, Inc. full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Making games is a lot of fun
      There are a lot of talented people and nice people
      There is plenty of work to do so you should never be bored
      I personally love living Las Vegas

      Cons

      Many of the cons that other reviews have listed are true. I don't agree with anyone who says the work isn't challenging, however. Firstly, you it does not feel as though the company cares too much about the employees. Konami does the bare minimum for employees. For example, our desk names tags are just pieces of paper printed out and folded in half. If anyone gets promoted they don't even print an updated name tag for you. You would have to write your new title on the paper yourself. It's pretty sad. During the summer when all of this construction was taking place our break room that was covered in dust and insects. The conditions had to be an OSHA violation. It wasn't until someone complained that a new break room opened up for us to use that I wasn't even aware of. These are just a few examples but there are plenty more that I can name. The tools we use are outdated and buggy. There's little documentation available so you have to rely on others to figure a lot of things out. Our development and release process is highly error prone, and management often lacks effective communication skills so you pretty much have to learn things the hard way through a lot trial and error. The problem is that through making those mistakes that you aren't even aware you are making you are inevitably impacting your yearly review so you pretty much get screwed over for making honest mistakes. Management also continually fails to accept responsibility and will blame others who aren't even in the position to defend themselves.

      Advice to Management

      Learn to listen to the needs and concerns of your employees instead of only yourself and your superiors.

    8. Helpful (8)

      "Arrogance and Mismanagement at its BEST"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Software Engineer III in Las Vegas, NV
      Former Employee - Software Engineer III in Las Vegas, NV
      Doesn't Recommend
      Negative Outlook
      Disapproves of CEO

      I worked at Konami Gaming, Inc. full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      I really dont see any pros of working here

      Cons

      I have worked at konami for more than 2 years and there was no better feeling than leaving this God Awful company. The tools used here are extremely outdated , the managers are clueless. Recently the only manger who actually knew how to code left after giving a 3 day sudden notice .The rest of the dev managers are inept and under qualified.I agree with one of the posters here mentioning that Konami games are "Space Fillers". The Japanese managers think they are a GOD SEND and that they can never be wrong. The company is a sinking ship and yet their arrogance has not subsided. Its because of this arrogance KONAMI is having a hard time finding developers.Konami is currently using VS2008 for development. This edition is so old that Microsoft even stopped supporting it.There is literally nothing that you can do for this company that will make your resume improve. The silence and the company politics will make you utterly useless.

      Advice to Management

      Management has lost its chance.My advice to the developers is to leave even if it means taking a little paycut. The dev managers cant leave because its too late for them. I know they have been trying to leave for a while but no other company really wants them.

    9. Helpful (7)

      "Konami is on the decline"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Software Engineer in Las Vegas, NV
      Current Employee - Software Engineer in Las Vegas, NV
      Doesn't Recommend

      I have been working at Konami Gaming, Inc. full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Nothing worth reporting that is out of the normal.

      Cons

      Konami is popular amongst casinos for making very cheap quality games. Lately newer companies with better quality games are taking over the market share of konami. Instead of improving the quality of their games Konami instead prefers on pumping out more games. These games are exactly the same only reskinned with minor math changes.The management is arrogant and blind to the decline of the company.The technology used at konami is ver arcane And does not help a developers resume. The managers would stab you in the back in a heart beat. Employee morale is very low and empoyee turn over is very high. Promotion after an year comes with zero pay increase. Newly hired employees are being payed better than senior employees.this is not a place to stay even for a year.

      Advice to Management

      there is no point advicing the management.

    10. Helpful (12)

      "Detestable and shameful conditions."

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Software Engineer II in Las Vegas, NV
      Current Employee - Software Engineer II in Las Vegas, NV
      Doesn't Recommend
      Disapproves of CEO

      I have been working at Konami Gaming, Inc. full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      You get payed on time.
      Free Cheap Coffee.

      Cons

      After reading some of the negative reviews I was surprised that no one really covered the issues faced by the software development department in detail.

      1- You Will be watched and criticized : From the day you start to the day you quit , everything you do on your desktop PC will be monitored , logged and assessed. Konami has a software installed on every developer's computer which monitors everything you do this includes items sent to the printer and instant message you send to your colleagues.You are not allowed to install any software (even if it's open source) on your machine if it's not in the approved list (and NO SKYPE or anything close to being productive is on the "STRICTLY NOT ALLOWED" list. Getting software approved and dealing with IT is a totally different ordeal and even the high level managers are afraid of the IT department. Which is funny because most software companies treat their software developers like rockstars. Over here it is the opposite.You are only allowed to communicate with other colleagues using an age old system called "Lotus Notes" look up just how old , slow and useless it is. Recently two colleagues of mine accidentally talked about lunch using Lotus Notes and their manager was instantly informed and instructed to chide and warn them.All your emails and communication shall be monitored. If this does not offend you then you found yourself a perfect fit.There is absolutely no freedom here.All the websites here are blocked.

      2-Zero growth and learning : Konami develops its games using a very old proprietary framework. You will have nothing to do with this. If you think you will learn anything here then you are living a false dream. If you are under the impression that your C++ will improve here then think again this is not the place for you. Konami is more than happy to pay for reallocation since it allows them to lock you in for a whole year.Recently I have seen a lot of good software developers coming in from different states who regret their decision of joining Konami within 5 - 6 months. One of them literally said "Konami has a special way of curbing your enthusiasm , self respect and development skills"

      3- Zero tools of choice : Going back to development. No matter what team you are in Video Game development you will be working with Visual Studio 2008. You CANT install plugins no matter how hard you try. You'll have the time of your life navigating very messy , ill written code without any assistance from Visual Studio or anyone else. BTW Visual Studio 2008 has been discontinued by Microsoft and yet konami still has no plans of upgrading. The simplest task becomes a headache such as switching between header and source files.If you have no passion for slot machine gaming then PLEASE DO NOT COME HERE. Currently they are experimenting with Visual Studio 2015 they have been doing that since last year. The interviewer will definitely mention that to make a cheap sale dont fall for it.

      4-Benefits and Perks : Benefit wise the health insurance provided by KONAMI is the cheapest kind in NV. A lot of good doctors dont accept this insurance.There is literally no benefit of staying at konami for more than a year as Konami does not reward loyalty.An engineer being promoted to Software Engineer 2 makes about $20,000 less than a newly hired software engineer 2.There is literally no scale that measures how much an engineer gets payed.Once you decide on a pay you are stuck with that.There are no increments (even if they say so).Please negotiate aggressively. Konami pays about 20K below industry level.Please ask about the turnover rate here too.Fun Fact : In 2015 there was 100% turn over rate in KONAMI HR. Currently no one in the HR department has been at konami for more than 6 months.Every engineer in KONAMI is a disposable no. you are not respected for what you do.

      There is a reason KONAMI GAMING is looking for C++ developers aggressively and no one wants to join.There are no company hosted parties. If you are invited to the office in the scorching heat of Las Vegas you'll notice that KONAMI has a huge luxurious underground half filled parking lot.That parking lot is only reserved for the CEO and other senior mostly Japanese management.The software developers / Mathematicians / Artists are expected to park their cars outside in the scorching heat every day. Konami thinks that software developers could instantly be replaced and that American workers are spoiled.The only reason they have an office in vegas is for compliance , attracting clients and bug fixing or developing the same styled simple slot machine games.Each developer is expected to pump out 1 game every 3-4 months. A game in which he has no say in. The majority of the work or the exciting work is done in JAPAN.There is a reason why KONAMI GAMES are called "Space Fillers" on the casino floor.The space fillers are mostly made here in Vegas.

      Advice to Management

      Support your team members and treat the engineers equally.

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