Wargaming Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

Pros

Good work life balance. Most of the people are great. Excellent BI organization with solid data and great people to support from various offices. Products that have been working successfully for years

Cons

Could do so much more. Cant only rely on the same products for years and need to invest in creating new things. specially if the objective is to grow some difficult markets like APAC. The top management will never listen to you and doesnt listen to any recommendations for some specific market. Salary was not the best and could do better there.

Pros

- 401k match; decent insurance; salary matches Seattle area - Commuter bonus of $125 a paycheck for not driving - Free snacks, food, alcohol - Challenging problems to solve (because of constraints/cons listed below) - new Bellevue office is right next to transit center, super convenient. downtown bellevue is very clean, has a beautiful park and lots of places to have lunch or happy hour at - Flexible work hours, (10-4 are "core hours") and relatively easygoing about work from home policy

Cons

There are many teams at Wargaming, so it's highly likely not all cons apply to all teams. This was my experience with the Platform team (called Seattle team, but is located in Bellevue office). - No one is held accountable. Accountability is washed away in the face of emergency. - Language/culture barrier... Google Translate only gets so far and not all documentation is professionally translated yet. Indirect vs. direct communication styles are not acknowledged and it leads to unbalanced expectations and a lot of anger against other teams - Development across two vastly different cultures, multiple programming languages and approaches to tech stacks, 10 hour difference in time zones, and 5+ softwares to communicate through, with little to no defined procedure = nothing works well and everything is unstable - Systematic attention to symptoms and never the root causes (from both technological and social point of view) - Middle management tries to re-invent the wheel of communication far, far too often instead of taking feedback from employees at face value... they make new guidelines and policies and proclaim them but never enforce them... strange expectation for everyone to 'self organize' which leads to mass chaos and no sense of direction - Technical issues are only prioritized when there's a customer facing problem / break in production; preventative measures / investigations are not prioritized which leaves engineering team burnt out and on edge - Seattle team has barely any persuasion in the rest of the company. It is a struggle to get appropriate access to machines for troubleshooting or testing. - Because of resource issues a lot of fixing has to be done directly in production: reproducing issues / test cases is extremely time consuming and management prefers results over quality - I do more 'digital paperwork' than I do actual technical work. I would say only 10-25% of my technical prowess is utilized at this company. - Use of agile/scrum is too serious to the point of detriment. Leads to micro management. items sent to backlog are typically forgotten about. If you don't finish something in a sprint it's often assumed to 'no longer be a problem', then there is again mass confusion when issues resurface - Managers often have no social skills or no managerial experience -- 'team lead', 'senior', and 'manager' are conflated. Some people don't even want to do administrative type tasks but are forced to. leads to EXTREME resentment and imbalance of power/persuasion. - Sexism. Woman engineers are frequently talked over, need to defend themselves in unnecessary detail, are excluded from conversations, iced out from decision making, conference calls, business trips and etc. Obviously this is another cultural difference but that does not invalidate the impact on employees. Such a waste of talent. Other reviewers are spot on about this. Yes, these are all very subjective experiences but experiences nonetheless and I doubt it will ever change. - Little to no morale. - Rule by fear/shoot the messenger mentality. For example, we were discouraged from talking about bugs or making jokes in Slack because certain 'higher ups' might see it. engineers not having safe place to vent frustrations kills motivation and passive aggressiveness is off the charts just like in Dilbert comics. Cute at first but gets old quickly. - Bad work/life balance is rewarded (e.g. 10+ hour work days, working on weekends) and implied that it is necessary at times but never explicitly requested. - Rampant nepotism, and favoritism... there's a lot of people who I wonder 'what do they do exactly?' - Gossip, whispering, unclear promotion paths (if any) - Received a bonus, but ONLY after I complained about management problems, and there was no word of anyone else getting bonuses... leading me to believe they are trying to pacify me with money. I would suggest to only work here if you are completely out of options.

Pros

Good work life balance Good communication between peers

Cons

Top management is quite worse HR needs to improve and understand about more local policy

Pros

- Sustainable work/life balance - Many highly skilled colleagues to with, bounce ideas off of, etc. - Being part of a successful game studio - Excellent benefits, e.g., paternity leave - Opportunities for cultural enrichment, working in a global company - Experienced leadership that has shipped many game titles - Clear articulation of the studio's priorities - Located close to major rail lines, easy commute

Cons

- Communication and responsibility gaps result from rapid growth - "NIH" syndrome occasionally present, due to growth, overlapping acquisitions of engineering talent - Like all game studios, opportunities for upward mobility can be somewhat limited, which may cause people to leave in order to advance their careers

Pros

- company in great conditions (profitwise), you will feel that you work for the market leader - Good pay, especially if you work for the leading product (World of Tanks) - established processes and clear line of command and tasks - there are no issues with who does what - top management is great, they know what they are doing and are still cool and care about people (for example when the situation in Belarus escalated they really supported the employees) - you can advance in the hierarchy, change departments and products (although the company is focused on online games, so you might get bored after some time) - WoT marketing is a good place to be in and you can feel a part of the team and work with people who are passionate about what they are doing - free goodies, a lot of events, possibility to travel to other offices - its there - you will have space to share your ideas and they will be considered - data driven company - there is a flow of information between departments - Great work life balance, never had an issue with taking holidays

Cons

- World of Tanks product and the team behind it is great, but from what I've heard from employees in other teams - you can also join a product that is not a company's priority or with managers that are well, not so open-minded and are quite unpleasant to work with - there is still an Eastern spirit in the company (originated from Belarus and its games are a huge success in Russia): it wasn't an issue for me, but if you don't like it - don't go there

Pros

Good work life balance Great location Nice office Nice workmates Overall ok

Cons

Uncompetitive benefits Uncompetitive compensation Management is really bad Lack of great people in the management Management is just not that good

Pros

- Your salary is fully legal, which is unusual for Russia. - Some of the departments actually have some nice folks working there.

Cons

- Very strict and unnecessary harsh late arrivals policy - A very toxic management even by Russian standards. You can easily be personally insulted in front of other employees or person to person. - Managers/Leads are often don't know what they're doing, but if something is wrong it's your fault. - Obnoxious work/life balance. Crunches are usual situations because deadlines are often unrealistic. - Women are being objectified. The overall situation with sexism is quite bad. - Nepotism is a thing. - Uninspiring and dull office.

Pros

+sometimes work with cool professionals

Cons

recruiting not good low benefits and life\work balance

Pros

Competitive salary, teambildings, benefits. Nice office space.

Cons

Bad work and life balance. Poor management - very few real professionals. No long perspective vision within the management. really, there are not a lot of opportunities for career growth.

Pros

The GM and upper management is very supportive and encourages growth and development. Great work life balance with amazing co-workers that are passionate about their job and the company.

Cons

The only con is that job can have a lot of traveling, since the company is based out of Belarus. Other than it's a great company to work for.