Cool projects, unrealistic expectations
Pros
-Decent pay for senior staff -2 weeks paid time off/year -Reimbursed holiday trip to HQ/ industry events -Talented and friendly team of fellow creators (artists, designers, programmers, etc) -Excellent 401k and employer match (if you can stay on the full 5 years- no one ever does!)
Cons
-Leads who blatantly lie about project deadlines in order to put the squeeze on staff -Unpaid overtime and crunch as a result of the above point, only to have the effort not matter when the real deadline was revealed or pushed back -Lack of respect: after one period of overtime/crunch, my team members were offered a $5 gift card as "thanks for our hard work" -Pay for non-senior staff is pitiful; many of my coworkers had to freelance or take a second job on the side in order to get by -Surprise projects and tight deadlines from marketing department, always at the last minute -Unreasonable demands: a character in the project I was on takes a minimum of 4 months to complete- my team was asked to do this task in a single month -Incompetent managers; for example, a project manager who completely rearranged an effective task management app's organization to the point where no one could use it -Over-reliance on meaningless apps like "Fifteen-Five" for collecting feedback that no lead actually reads or acts upon -High turnover of staff in all departments -Very poor communication; information has to be relayed up the chain of command but the details are always lost in translation -"Silo-ing" of communication channels- different departments on the same project are discouraged from communicating