Pros
Some coworkers were amazing, incredibly smart and kind people. Problem is that this place was slowly sucking the life out of all of us. I figure a lot of these people are staying because of the brand name recognition, but considering the waning popularity of IGN and its redundant content, I can see that lure quickly fading. Other than that, very few pros. Salaries are laughable and perks are sparse if any.
Cons
The majority of the engineers and product team have been there for years (~5+) and are uninspired and completely stuck in a rut. No new products, everyone seems too busy trying to fix the existing problems. In my entire time at the company, there was one "new" product that they released which took forever and was about 6 months too late (their "live", streaming channel). Upper management rules from afar in NY and have no idea what's going on in SF. They rarely check in unless there's a problem or the sales team complains They fly in a few times a year, usually to lay off a few people and then talk about the "latest new strategy". Everything seems to be run by the ad sales team, which is somewhat understandable since they seem to be the only team bringing in revenue. But let's face it, how hard is it to sell IGN to a video game client, who else are they gonna go to? Not much selling involved. Huge cultural divide between the content/entertainment team vs the rest of the company and there is little to no integration between the IGN and ZD teams, in fact, an unspoken hostility if anything. After a while, I felt myself becoming an "Office Space" character and dreading every second of being in that office. Working with uninspired, mediocre people who also have attitude is not what I'm about. There was clearly no career path for me and many of my coworkers and management did nothing to address it. In face, in my entire time at IGN, I only came across one manager (who was new and from a different company culture) who seriously addressed career pathing with the team. If they were paying a competitive salary, it might be one thing but between the unreasonable hours (and after hours demands) and the low salaries, I got out of there the first chance I got and it's been the best professional decision I've ever made.
