Pros
Riot Games is an established global games publisher. If you like games, the industry and you are starting or early in your career - definitely apply, it will be a great place for you to work and develop yourself. Nowadays, It is more of a corporation than an innovative startup though. It once dared to dream and defied the rules of the game industry establishment, but now it is part of the establishment. So if you are a senior manager and above, be ready for a good old corporate world of politics, incompetent management, zero accountability, and lack of growth opportunities. The good: - Great talent inside the game studio teams including the executive producers. Go there if you can as it will feel exactly as if you were working in a great game studio. - Great autonomy for a self-starter: you will define what you think you should be doing, align stakeholders, ship it, then rinse and repeat. You may even grow over time if your role/level allows it. - The onboarding program is quite good, although be careful with expectations set there. - True flexible hours, remote-friendly environment (3/2 post COVID), good time-off opportunities. The company’s break during December, sometimes company-wide days off to cope with burnout. - The Internal Job Market that actually works. Apply to a new role internally once you fulfill your first role’s mission. Do not stay in the same role for more than 2 years. - The company does sincerely try to be inclusive and some things they do in that regard are good indeed. They do try indeed to improve it. - If you are from other parts of the game industry the comp should feel fine. But the company is not competitive versus top tech firms and is being open about it. Do not expect any serious comp increases with promotions as all of it is heavily regulated by the talent team. - post-COVID, you will enjoy a great LAX office with Bilgewater coffee, snacks, free lunch, and dinner, unless it goes away due to the virus. There is a PC Cafe area, plenty of activities you can do while meeting other people (basketball, ping pong, arcade machines). - The benefits package is good, features a play fund and wellbeing fund as well as good coverage for your family members. - There is a good deal of understanding of what it is like when you have small kids, especially now.
Cons
The bad: - Despite its name (Riot) suggesting a rebellion the company is nowadays a typical game publisher with studios, where unless you are an “industry veteran”, “shipped AAA titles in leadership roles” BS you likely have no future in higher ranks (inversely if you are game industry veteran - you will do great) - No real investment into talent or craft, there are only talks and plans and constant promises with no accountability. No serious learning courses and programs. Lack of mentorship and definitely no proper performance coaching. - The internal knowledge system is basically outdated garbage by now (it used to be OK). So be ready to go through a ton of poorly structured docs and keep in mind most of that can be inaccurate. - Player focus gets weaponized a lot. You may receive feedback that you are not player-focused while in fact, you do 0 work for players to consume. So it is best to be on a team shipping something to players at Riot. - Pretty bad change management during org changes. You can get hired to do one thing and then your superiors will expect you to do 3x more and other things without any reset in expectations. And surely expect no conversation about your comp increase or even title change. - No compensation for overtime. If you are a software engineer and you joined a team with a lot of live incidents, expect to do a lot of on-call duties without any additional benefit (you may take a day off though). - You will encounter a lot of documents describing what good looks like, such as Manager Expectations, and then learn that no one really holds managers accountable for what they should do. Generally do not expect Riot managers to be good people managers. There are a lot of people in the M category with no clue or actual training to manage people or they simply won’t have time for you. - The new talent team hired mostly from Blizzard is basically on an “optimization” mission similar to what Blizzard had after M&A. This means the comp changes and promotions are capped with percentages and quotas as a way to help pay equality (what?!)