Rakuten Viki Reviews

Pros

- The management is open to new ideas and initiatives from employees to drive engineering improvements - There are ample opportunities for employees to take ownership of various projects and learn from it - Company seems to be building good momentum in pushing out new features and big improvements can be expected in the next few years - Management is creating more learning and sharing sessions among engineers such as project showcases & book clubs & invited speakers to share with engineers the business side of things in the company. - Company is creating more avenues to reward and appreciate employees' work

Cons

- Company needs to work on more efforts especially in HR side to attract more talents

Pros

- colleagues are very capable in their work and mostly friendly and approachable - good pay and benefits (lunch+ happy hour allowances, PTO days, summer hours) - culture is open to new ideas and discussions - generally no politics. credit is given wherever due and mistakes are learnt from and addressed without finger pointing. - able to wfh

Cons

- team is very lean, features are delayed when ppl leave - not many ppl in Singapore know of the product

Pros

- Culture was good up until to 2018. - Smartest people I've ever worked with. - Support during pandemic is quite okay and no employees were laid off from what I know. - Flexible hours although depends on the team you're in. - Most of the people here are really good at their job however... see cons below.

Cons

- Viki culture is the reason why some people are staying for a long time but it's no longer what it's used to be. - Silent workers who are really good at their job are not recognized and Exec team doesn't appreciate them. - We're losing key people (PMs, engineers, regular staff) and it's damaging the productivity due the current situation which is the Execs are either blind or doesn't care about what is happening as long as the monthly financials are above budget. - Staff get blamed a lot by the higher management so if there are issues, you'll probably do most of the heavy lifting and be left alone to solve it.

Pros

- Co-workers are awesome. I love my team. - HR quite good at fighting for benefits. Free lunch, company events, and not conforming to the standard 5 day work week.

Cons

- Viki is not at all equipped to fight its competitors. Netflix is on its way to capture the demand for streaming Asian Dramas in different regions. Other companies like Viu and iflix have also conquered markets that Viki has a low market presence in, stifling our growth. - Product has not moved in the last 2 years. Reskinning the UI with no improvements is not counted. - Career opportunities used to be quite bad, now slightly better. Heard that it took over 2 years for the company to roll out titles and career progression for engineers. - Some executives are more concerned about addressing internet reviews than addressing current employees. All-hands should not be used for issues like this. - Project management needs to be more scalable. Deadlines are consistently not met, due to them being too tight, and not based on each engineers' estimations. - Management doesn't seem to be listening to our concerns. There is an ongoing exodus of engineers departing from Viki - close to 40% since Covid lockdown. If you check the places these engineers are going to, not all of them are going to FAANG - people are not just leaving for better opportunities.

Pros

Used to have free lunches, and regular company bonding events

Cons

- US business teams treat SG engineering team as a factory - just deliver, don't think about what should be developed. Doesn't recognize that engineering needs effort to document / continuously upgrade systems to function properly. - Product leadership just wants to push more and more features out despite fewer number of engineers. Tries to deprioritize engineering fixes which make quality of life better - Lots of incidents & bugs. They do take time to get resolved, but you're still expected to deliver on other features despite having to take time to resolve these incidents. i.e., management doesn't care that you're overloaded. - A stepping stone company - everyone is staying until they get an offer from FAANG, or a higher pay elsewhere. - Claims to be diverse and inclusive, but doesn't actually go beyond changing the logo for one month. i.e. doesn't actually donate to LGBT organizations, just like many organizations that only pay lip service.