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    Storm8 Reviews

    Updated March 14, 2018
    106 reviews

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    3.5
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    Perry Tam
    62 Ratings

    106 Employee Reviews

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    Pros

    • Good job perks (free lunch and dinner, movies, annual gifts) (in 25 reviews)

    • Work/life balance is generally fair to good (in 8 reviews)

    Cons

    • Mentioned ad nauseum above, but very little concept of work/life balance (in 4 reviews)

    • Any non-live ops resources are put towards "safe bet" new games with no chance of being a breakout hit (in 6 reviews)

    More Pros and Cons

    1. "Good focus"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Storm8 full-time

      Pros

      Team is focused and doesn't need to worry about politics/bureaucracy. Promising new IP to fill the pipeline and strong underlying business.

      Cons

      Better communication still required across all teams

    2. "Fun work, great people"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Recommends
      Neutral Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Storm8 full-time

      Pros

      Fun space to work in and loved my co-workers

      Cons

      Gaming it just not what it use to be so the industry is fading fast

      3. Join the Storm8 team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3. Helpful (1)

      "Artist"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee

      I worked at Storm8 full-time

      Pros

      Great people to work with

      Cons

      Company lay-off hopefully will grow again

    4. "A Company in Slow Decline"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Doesn't Recommend
      Negative Outlook
      No opinion of CEO

      I worked at Storm8 full-time (More than 3 years)

      Pros

      - I had the opportunity to collaborate with very talented and hardworking people
      - Decent pay and really excellent health/transportation/lifestyle benefits
      - Flexible hours and fairly easy commute options
      - Catered meals everyday and access to a nearby gym/fitness center

      Cons

      -The company suffers from poor creative direction. They got lucky very early on with a few initial successes, but never knew what to do next and didn’t know how to adapt to a changing market. First they tried re-skinning their own games to replicate early hits. When that didn’t work, they fell into a cycle of “fast-follows” (clones) of competitor games, relying too much on metric data, but not really understanding the reasons why a particular game was successful. The heads of the company won’t take any meaningful creative risks; they won’t pursue any game concept that hasn’t already been proven out as a market success. If you want to make interesting or innovative games, this is not the place for you.

      - Poor foresight / overall planning. Often times, the year would be closing out and the top leadership had no real idea of what the company roadmap was for the next year, or worse, preferred to keep it secret from their employees until the very last minute.

      - Poor career advancement opportunities. It didn’t really matter how well you did on your performance reviews or if you consistently followed through on managerial goals/directives. You either had to be really chummy with your department head or threaten to quit before your desire for promotion would be taken seriously.

      Advice to Management

      - Don't put so much weight behind metrics and analytics
      - Stop bringing in so many middle managers
      - Start exploring the how and why behind a game's success or popularity rather than just attempting to copy a successful game
      - Throw your remaining resources at a really ambitious project

    5. "Good Times"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Recommends
      Negative Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Storm8 full-time (More than 3 years)

      Pros

      I had the greatest time working here during my early years. Everyone was friendly, easy to talk to, and felt like family than simply co-workers. The perks and benefits were great. All kinds of snacks and drinks and FREE lunch and dinner.

      As for career opportunities for growth, it depends on your manager. Thanks to mine, I was able to learn a lot and grow in my career. She was able to provide a lot of feedback on my work and what I could improve on in the future. If there were any issues or blockers getting in the way of my workflow, she was able to provide whatever I might need to get stuff done.

      Cons

      Although I was able to grow in my field thanks to my manager. I felt it was hard to transfer into other positions that you might be interested in doing. This is based on what other folks expressed to me and I have to agree.

      However, the biggest issue currently I believe is that they aren't making mobile games that are groundbreaking or new. A lot of it is a copycat of another game with some improvements or a reskin of one of our current games. I'm not saying copycats are a bad thing, but it would be nice if they made something completely different with some ideas inspired by other games.

      Advice to Management

      Please listen to your team! Let them come up with some new ideas and trust them! This is what Supercell does and it works for them! I want you guys to bounce back and be one of the best mobile gaming companies once again.

      Miss you all and best of luck.

    6. "New/Fresh Start - Great Opportunity"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Storm8 full-time

      Pros

      Lots of reliance on people and their autonomy. Management funds teams and then relies heavily on each individual to act in the best interest of the company. Great pay. Collegial atmosphere. Exceptionally talented people.

      Cons

      It's a tough market and the company's attempts to find a hit have been expensive. The company is now retooling and restructuring -- basically starting up again. The culture and products are all in transition. This is fantastic news for those inclined to build something new from the ground up.

      Advice to Management

      Continue to be transparent despite the difficulties and to put energy into those who are demonstrating their commitment to our recovery and beyond.

    7. Helpful (2)

      "Lead Engineer for several years"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Lead Software Engineer in Redwood Shores, CA
      Current Employee - Lead Software Engineer in Redwood Shores, CA
      Recommends
      Negative Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Storm8 full-time (More than 5 years)

      Pros

      Storm8 is an great company to work for. You really get a lot of flexibility to find the best solution to any problem, and the entire engineering team is amazing. Everyone is very supportive, and everyone helps everyone else to learn and grow. If at some point Storm8 begins hiring again, I would 100% recommend anyone and everyone apply. Your personal growth is only limited by your ambition and abilities. I went from engineer to lead very quickly simply because I wanted it and I really applied myself; and my efforts were recognized and awarded.

      Also, when things were good. They were really good. They took the whole company to Hawaii! And bonus's are amazing. Like my first bonus ever was over 30% of total salary.

      Cons

      Storm8 has been having trouble finding another hit success game since their initial success. We recently went through a massive set of layoffs and we're struggling to find something to really get behind and make amazing.

      Advice to Management

      Listen less to the product management team about new game ideas, and listen more to your engineering team about what we can accomplish easily and quickly. Going all in on ideas pitched by people who's entire career is about smooth talking the numbers is always a risky proposition.

    8. "Great place to work!"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Redwood City, CA
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Redwood City, CA
      Recommends
      Neutral Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Storm8 full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Great people, great atmosphere. People for the most part genuinely like each other and the environment is one of a bunch of close friends working together. The senior management care about the employees and offer generous perks and a hefty profit share bonus.

      Cons

      Storm8 had a major reduction in force due to recent lack of new game successes.

      Advice to Management

      Keep the culture going and rebuild with even more creative products. I'd love another chance to work with you guys when the time is right!

    9. "Sucks to be laid off"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee

      I worked at Storm8 full-time

      Pros

      • People/peers
      • Catered food
      • Fairly laid back culture
      • Standing desks easy to request

      Cons

      • Most people were laid off
      • Middle management felt like a waste of resources

    10. "Great times marred with difficult times"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Software Engineer
      Former Employee - Software Engineer
      Doesn't Recommend
      Negative Outlook
      No opinion of CEO

      I worked at Storm8 full-time (More than 3 years)

      Pros

      - Great set of people to work with, some of the smartest and nicest people
      - Free lunch and dinner
      - Flexible schedule
      - Relatively easy parking
      - Generalist role will allow you opportunities to gain knowledge about different parts of the code base (PHP and C#/Unity), giving you a good breadth of knowledge
      - Architects, lead engineers, and staff engineers willing to educate and mentor and help engineering team succeed.

      Cons

      - Fear of using new game ideas because of lack of metrics to prove said new game idea, new games ended up being combined ideas from existing games on market. How can you become a market leader if you are unwilling to take risk.
      - Pressure and expectation to work hard and fast, and sometimes even ended up having to do overtime regularly.
      - Overly rigid adherence to agile process became overburdening and at times hampered productivity of entire team, despite efforts to mitigate it.
      - Was micromanaged to attempt to increase productivity.
      - Too much reliance of product's adherence to data which ended up making decisions detrimental to new games' successes.
      - Feedback from non-product not given enough weight.
      - Lack of transparency from executive level and management. Decisions about projects and games made behind closed doors and then dropped suddenly on teams either without warning or without team able to give feedback. Teams had to obtain news sometimes from private conversations!
      - Work from home approval difficult.

      Advice to Management

      With the layoffs, I hope that the executive team will take this opportunity to be more bold to try out new game ideas outside of the mold of existing game ideas in order that they might have more success. It will be much more difficult to do so with such a small team, so I wish them the best.

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