Pros
I very much enjoyed my time at Crystal Dynamics, and I still miss it after moving on. As an engineer, I worked with some very motivated people in all departments. Overall, I felt the process of building games was fairly efficient compared to my past experiences. There was a lot of encouragement from team leads to share knowledge and that traveled in both directions. The feature game was immensely satisfying to contribute to, and most of those I worked with really wanted it to succeed as much as I did. The culture is quite family friendly, where the Halloween and Thanksgiving season have been particularly memorable where the Halloween parties usually involve child costume contests or parades. The newer top floor location looks amazing and has a lot of natural sunlight. I appreciated the transparency of the periodic town hall meetings, clearly identifying past goals hit, missed, and everywhere in between. Weekly Friday Awesometowns are brief social gatherings (with a keg) where the state of the game is showcased. This does more for motivation than you might realize.
Cons
I'm sure many have said it, but the limited bathroom situation really sucked. A few times the stalls were all full, so I had to take the elevator down to the public lobby/cafe, only to find those stalls full also, forcing me to walk to an adjacent building and pray there was a free stall. There's a little bit of a dust problem, though it's possible it just looks like it because of all the sunlight exposing it. It felt a bit cramped at times, and I can't imagine things getting much better as they seem to be continuously hiring. Anthem Blue Cross HMO plan is extremely restrictive, but they do offer Kaiser, so I advise you choose that instead since it's so prominent in the Bay area.
