Pros
- You have the opportunity of working with people from studios all across the world, and in a few cases the chance to work abroad (either temporarily or permanently); - Most of the staff is pretty nice and friendly.
Cons
- Engineering processes have to be streamlined and brought up to speed with current practices (e.g., no unit/automated testing, check-in procedures at times are ludicrous, no consistent coding guidelines across projects and/or studios); - The crunch time culture (at least in some projects) is not acceptable. Some projects have people doing long hours for months at a time, 7 times a week, effectively destroying team productivity and morale (not to mention their health); - The Newcastle location was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, with no restaurants or cafés around; - Most of the decisions (and good projects) are kept in Paris/Montréal; - Unrealistic belief that you can keep project quality while drastically reducing costs; - The HR/accounting team is a mess.