Wizards of the Coast Employee Reviews about "director level"

Cons

Buck passing as far as the eye can see. The senior manager and director level management ranges from very bad to excellent. The exec team is useless and generally terrible, with a couple members who contribute to a toxic work environment. Zero commitment to innovate and 'risk' upsetting Magic. Any time someone questions ANYTHING, rather than owning mistakes and committing to get better as a group, people retreat to defensive positions and lash out, especially the bottom of the barrel people who are lucky to have jobs at all - the rejects from other companies that will actually take the well-below-market salaries WotC pays. I love the products and hoped after I left that they'd find their way and succeed, but it doesn't look like it's happening given the other reviews here in the last ~18 months.

Cons

Extremely toxic culture. Leadership makes decisions and changes their mind at any given whim. Leadership is always trying to do whatever they can to make themselves look better, especially at the expense of their reports who can't speak up for fear of retaliation. Massive turnover, you can be there for years and have excellent performance reviews and still be let go with no indication. HR doesn't care about people, they only care about covering the companies behind. What made Wizards amazing to work for has been destroyed. I honestly don't know why I'm still here. They continuously promise opportunities for advancement, acknowledging you're underpaid, overworked but never deliver on those promises. They used to pride themselves on the work-life balance but it's been all but destroyed in favor of making money and yet the people who try to put their family first were the first to go in layoffs (of which there are at least 3-4 every year for the last 3 years of varying sizes) Also, the pay is not even remotely at Seattle levels for Engineers while the managers/directors are above Seattle average. No stock options, weak bonus structure which is set specifically at the whim of your manager instead of how you actually perform and what you accomplish. Managers ask often what they can do for you and when you ask for help in career growth or suggestions to help you grow, they completely ignore it because they're too focused on saving their own jobs from the upper management. There's too many layers of indirectness

Cons

This used to be a great place to work I had several managers I truly respected and a team that was inspiring to work with. Truly great leaders surround themselves with people willing to tell them the truth. This creates teams of people willing to take risks and create great products. But, by the time I left that wasn't the case. By the time I left, it appeared that anyone who was brave enough to challenge the CEO and was willing to take a stand for their employees had been replaced by people who must be terrified of losing their jobs. That's the only way I can explain how most of the employees can be treated so poorly by their Senior leaders. Things take a very long time to move forward. Again, I can only attribute that to leaders being afraid to MAKE a decision until the person in the chain above them approves of the decision. Therefore, many things get left undone. I feel the worst for the mid-level managers who seem to merely be doing the dirty work of the Directors and VPs above them. Bad behavior seems to be tolerated and in many cases it seems the loudest bullies get the promotions. I witnessed someone on the Senior Team rip an employee up one side and down the other for a project that (the Senior Leader) didn't like. The project turned out to be a huge success but no one was brave enough to publicly announce that on a day when the Senior Leader was in the office. I also witnessed lower-level employees who came up with an innovative, cost-efficient plan, present it to upper level leaders and have it nastily vetoed. All those employees were laid off (or quit) within 6 months. Later, a Senior Leader took the very same idea and was applauded for such an innovative process. If you do apply for a job there, ask about the turnover rate in the department to which you are applying. Those are the departments with bully leaders. In my experience, if you are honest, work hard and come up with innovation ideas, you are punished with more work, leaders stealing your ideas, and moved to positions where you're no longer doing what you were hired to do. I've observed those who seem to do no work, steal other's ideas, and employ bullying behavior rewarded with promotion after promotion..

Cons

Atrocious leadershipAtrocious leadershipAtrocious leadership (at least at the Director level). They are completely out of touch with the day-to-day, at least insofar as software development is concerned. A string of horrible decisions, due in large part to poor/non-existent communication (or perhaps mostly to incompetence), has left the project in jeopardy. Leadership (at the Director level) does not value employees. This is too bad, since in general WOTC and it's parent company Hasbro, seem to. Simple elements of humanity and decency are sorely lacking. This has contributed to the high attrition rate and poor morale.

Cons

Sub-standard compensation. Poisonous work environment. The wild financial success of Magic has allowed Wizards to become complacent in every department, and that's lead to a stagnation at the director level and above. Rather than rewarding success, Wizards rewards the obsequious, the ruthlessly political, and those willing to obfuscate real, practical status to placate the management class. It's only due to Magic's profitability that an organization so unhealthy is able to survive, and it's shocking how failure at the director level is continuously rewarded.

Cons

Very little upward mobility. Director level managers are running the company with a small business mentality, and have shown no desire/aptitude for becoming a world class organization. PMO director is a joke.