LAIKA Reviews

Pros

Laika is a creative and fun environment

Cons

Laika struggles with mundane but necessary business practices

Pros

They were a wonderful company to work with from start to finish. A pretty relaxed atmosphere filled with dedicated professionals who help create awesome movies. Laika stands alone and is truly a unique place. Would certainly consider working with them again in the future.

Cons

Because of all the above pros, the pay isn't super competitive but that comes with the "dream" of making movie magic. There was also a Union "scare" while I was there. The whole company had a shitfit for a couple of weeks as it was made clear union = death. So we had a vote which inevitable failed. I don't really have a strong pro or anti-union.

Pros

Some of my former colleagues are great, talented people.

Cons

-This is the most toxic work environment that I have ever worked in. No amount of money could ever bring me back here. The best thing I have done for my career was to leave this company. -People are regularly and openly treated poorly by their supervisors/managers. -There is no loyalty from the company, but it expects loyalty from its employees. -There is a massive lack of skillset as the turnover is so quick. Most of the people running the production floor have no idea how to do it. Everyone qualified and with experience is long gone, resulting in constant caos and uninformed decision making. -The main producer in the studio will drag you into meetings to gossip about your colleagues. -Best practices, on how to run a stop motion shooting floor, are continuously ignored. This is exhausting to anyone who has ever seen these films done by people who know what they are doing. -You can not trust anything management or supervisors tell you. They will simply lie to you. -Any suggestions or ideas to improve or change things are pushed back on by management. -People are exploited here, many employees are doing two jobs and they load work on people until they break. -The company has no way of dealing with criticism, even when constructive. When I left, I was offered free healthcare for one month if I did not write a bad review on Glassdoor. Pathetic. HR encourages new hires to write positive reviews, those are the overly positive ones. -You are asked not to discuss pay rates, which is illegal. Once you accept a pay rate you will never get a proper pay rise. You will have to leave and come back. Rates are all over the place, and it is common to hear stories of people making quite a different pay for doing the same job. I know a few women who made way less than their male colleagues, doing the same job. Again, you cannot trust anything these people tell you. -You can almost touch the fear in the studio. Many people are constantly afraid and on edge. This makes it very hard to do the day to day job. -There is zero respect for the management and people running the show. People work well and hard for people they respect, not for people they fear. -LAIKA is not a result based company. You can work very hard, go the extra mile etc and it will not make one bit of difference. You will not reap any benefits from this. This is why so many people here simply hold back and keep to themselves. -Managers/Supervisors throw people under the bus all the time. It's despicable.

Pros

Stop motion animation and its creation are highly revered.

Cons

Stop motion animation is so highly revered it gets encumbered by a need for absolute perfection and realism.

Pros

Creative freedom. Pool of creative technical talent and great atmosphere, benefits and perks are good. It is a special type of filmmaking not done many other places.

Cons

Unique opportunity is over valued.

Pros

Nice coffee, hi-tech, access to almost every phase of the stop-mo process from design to fabrication to shoot

Cons

It’s a difficult place to thrive. The location is pretty isolated/bad, information is generally slow to travel, piecemeal or inaccurate, people look (and are) exhausted. At times, it’s feels like there’s an atmospheric anxiety that bleeds into your consciousness and ends up permeating every facet of your life. At other points, they give you buffet bbq so it’s really all about perspective.

Pros

Well funded, complete Stop Motion and CG studio - creating some of the most fully realized worlds. The practical and digital blend amalgamate to create a unique and beautiful visual delight.

Cons

Story has a tendency to be less powerful than the visuals. Movies take many years to create. High stress and challenges with coordination of elements(and people) in order to get shots looking amazing and ready on time.

Pros

Great projects, loved the work

Cons

Bad leadership, treated as an amateur

Pros

-animation/film industry work without having to live in LA or NYC -flexibility with hours, duties, and time off due to my specific team -creative, totally unique, innovative, open-minded environment inside and outside of work -pretty great benefits and studio events -amazing coworkers, who are genuinely good humans, who are invested in everyone's success & well-being as a whole, but also as individual people -finally starting to invest in DEI/ERGs and going green but still needs a lot of work

Cons

-extremely out-of-touch senior management -disorganized, confused hiring system/recruiting dept that has hired problematic management and not offered enough $ to the good ones, who passed on us. -if you are hourly, you are required to use your PTO on already-chosen production breaks, or go unpaid. -i think the pandemic really severely threw the studio off-kilter and we're trying to get back on track. almost there by now in April 2022.

Pros

Everyone I worked with directly was lovely. The inside of the studio is the coolest workshop/movie set I have ever seen. Good benefits

Cons

Salaries are too low to live comfortably in that area. They treat their artists as expendable because they get so many applicants. Management hierarchy is odd, not much contact between workers and upper managment.