Pros
* Unlimited ovt - Santa Monica office provides unlimited time off for employees. I find how some people are abusing it, but just hope that the management doesn’t take this perk away because of those few who are abusing the system. * Lunch service - The company provides lunch service at the office campus cafeteria. All employees and visitors are given a preloaded lunch card which you can use at the cafeteria. Lunch selections vary by day with all week salad bar. It’s a pretty good system. * Health benefits - Health insurance changed annually since I joined. This year (2020) health benefit is quite complicated to understand and cumbersome to use despite it being the better option. The insurance requires you to pay it upfront for doctor’s visits at the office (unless you negotiate it with your doctor’s office to bill the insurance directly), wait until your EOB is mailed to you, and then request for reimbursement with the proof of EOB. I don’t understand why the employees are required to do the paperwork after visiting a doctor’s office. This means that if I don’t have lumpsum cash on hand for an emergency procedure, I can’t receive health service regardless of how awesome this insurance is. * Business forecast - I believe PUBG as a game and as a company is quite steady financially with a positive business forecast. It’s a well-known game, with millions of players including PUBM. They keep trying to introduce new features to entertain the players and I think it’s a good effort. * Office - The location is very convenient, located near the freeway entrance and exit. It has enough space and conference rooms for the size of the company. It has a nice kitchen space with snacks and drinks, where HR hosts happy hour every few months. The company also provides good spec PC for you to play and test games and execute projects without any hurdle. Employees get to choose their choice of laptop and accessories within a set budget when first onboard as well.
Cons
* Frequent reorg and high turnover rate - Because it’s a young organization, reorganization happens very frequently including HQ, as well as many new hires in HQ. We receive a reorg announcement almost every month and it’s very difficult to find out who is the most up-to-date POC for projects. In addition to reorg changes, the team and department names change as well. Changes in counterpart in HQ complicate simple tasks and having new hires with language barriers definitely drag down the execution. Santa Monica office already had 3 different office leads in the past 3 years, trying to solve the problem. - In 2020, only a few months in, Santa Monica office had a massive layoff including executive team leads as well as multiple voluntary resignations. The layoff was handled very poorly, with no immediate communication with the remaining staff, resulting in a panicking and hostile work environment. * Salary and compensation - The bonus payout is based on the performance of January to December. However, the bonus payout does not happen until mid-April. The performance evaluation is done once a year in January/early February, with frequent delays in schedule. Many employees who left the company, despite their input and contribution in 2019, they never received any incentives because of their resignation dates being before the April payout day. Also, the bonus is first prorated and then distributed in a 3-year span, as this is their way of keeping employee retention. Little do they know. - Your salary increase rate is prorated based on the number of days you worked in the previous year. Office lead mentioned that salary increase does not happen dramatically unless it is accompanied by promotion. * Degraded benefits and perks - Many benefits and perks were removed since the establishment of the office including incentive workshop (where employees were allowed to attend any global events post their 1st anniversary) and international business trips in business class for every other flight (heard that it was business class for any flights beyond 8 hrs when the office first opened in 2018). As the company size grows, some of the decisions are understandable, however, for the incentive trip, it was removed as many people were abusing the system according to the announcement. The company’s decision to negatively affect everyone, rather than holding those abusers accountable, shows the culture and mindset of the company. * Incompetency - A lot of people have more than one title and are in charge of more than one or two teams. Sometimes when they fail to hire the right person for a position, instead of continuous searching, they make an internal transfer. No proper interview or review process takes place for internal transfers for some people, and it does not get to be shared with team members. Such lack of transparency demoralizes people who try to work hard and excel at their job. * Lack of autonomy - The company promoted accountability and guaranteed autonomy during my interview. Little did I know, it definitely has low accountability and near-zero autonomy. Everything needs to be reviewed, although the company policy states that team leads can approve expenses up to a certain amount. A lot of the things need to be approved by HQ, even if it’s specifically for the NA market. I don’t understand why HQ needs to approve something when they do not have a clear understanding of what is going on on the other side of the globe. * Culture ignorance - Some senior leadership members are sent from HQ. They do not have a clear understanding of American corporate culture. Despite their years of experience in the gaming industry, they lack experience in operating an office in North America. Heard that a delegated lead went over an anonymous survey results on leadership, disputing how submissions are not true and how he does not discriminate against Koreans by gathering Korean speakers only. Ever since that incident, it feels more difficult to share my opinion and feedback when even an “anonymous survey” results in rebuttal. * Poor understanding of its own product - Many team leads in Santa Monica office don’t play PUBG. Their understanding of the product is by figures and numbers, do not know what the new patch entails, how players accept or reject new features and how to benchmark from other games. HQ does not understand the situation in the NA market. * Absence of mentorship or personal growth - The company has no internal training or mentorship program. If the company can’t source mentors internally, it wouldn’t harm to look externally, utilize online tools and resources. It seems like the company has so many other things to attend to, individual growth is not on top of its priority. - It is really difficult to find a senior leadership to look up to and be inspired, and of course, it goes without saying that there is any motivation to work. * Poor HR support - HR has no understanding of the business operation, nor has the expertise in the game industry, hence fails to recognize business needs and actively hire competent individuals. Many positions have been left empty for months and years, regardless of the level of seniority – from leads to junior coordinators. The HR provides support in a passive manner, after the issues are raised by employees. Even with the recent COVID-19 situation, rather than deliberately coming up with the contingency plan, WFH action plan was implemented post-pandemic, after multiple employees raised up the critical issues to the management. They failed to recognize the issues, and how making employees to come into the office could be a potential exposure to virus not to an individual but also to families, including infants and seniors.
