Fast paced scale-up - Anonymous employee 10 Chambers Employee Review

Employees are friendly and talented. Nice office. The first few years was great.

When I joined, the company stood for something real, people was happy and kind. That didn't last. What followed was a masterclass in how to destroy a functional organization. Management couldn't run a company, set a structure, communicate, or delegate, and instead of fixing that, they doubled down. The solution? Layer toxic, inexperienced people on top of talented seniors and call it leadership. Those who pushed back were pushed out or sidelined into irrelevance. This is the most toxic workplace I've ever encountered. A small group of people is poisoning the entire company, and they're doing it with Ulf's full blessing. He's built himself a wall of yes-people/cheerleaders: zero game industry experience, zero leadership ability, but plenty of appetite for power games, manipulation, and backstabbing. Major business decisions made on gut feeling. Senior talent discarded. Competence punished. Compliance rewarded. I could write a book. But the short version is this: the people running this company have no business running a company.

It was good until the CEO stopped trusting the employees they hired and wanted to do everything themselves/ with a small group of 10 people.

It's a very draconian and top down "only do the work you're told", where work was assigned by the project managers. The PMs were even doing the work of the lower level employee roles instead of letting those teams do the work they were hird for. The department managers had no say in anything. PMs had authority to deny promotions. Promotions were handed out to those who were "yes men" and friends of Ulf or in the inner circle. Executive coordinator/PMs often all went with the marketing team on roadtrips leaving the rest of the studio in the dark on what they should work on since we couldn't do anything the PMs did t tell us to do. Not even the managers could assign work. They pushed out all their loyal employees and overspent budget partying and mismanaging the projects.