The revered culture at Riot is perceived much differently than lived. Riot has a cultish vibe to it that extends from offspring to significant others. The superiority indoctrination begins in the orientation process called "de-newbification", which is meant to be tongue-in-cheek about becoming a better League player, but has gross undertones of how the way you've been making games prior to Riot has been flawed. If you've ever been a part of the interviewing panels at Riot, it becomes abundantly clear where the hiring delays come from. The moment the interviewee leaves the building, the panel of interviewers get together to judge him/her. This literally involves a Gladiator-style thumbs-up/thumbs-down voting system where you all cast your vote in a circle simultaneously. Then you go around in a circle justifying your vote. You've got senior managers in the room who have only ever worked at one company (Riot), on one game (League of Legends), in one role (for which they were maybe qualified for when the company was 40 employees but no longer), who are making judgments like "I feel this candidate would make a decent Associate XYZ, but certainly has some growth left before being Senior XYZ." - it's mins boggling. In this example, the candidate was a Project Director at Microsoft with 10 years industry experience (longer than the existence of Riot Games) with a stellar track record prior applying for a Senior Manager production role at Riot - a company notorious for having production delays and efficiency problems. This inability to recognize their own shortcomings and projecting instead an elitist culture internally is what disappointed me the most about working at Riot.
Working at Riot in any position higher than entry level is a political minefield. Influence and relationship capital means more than merit, and your career at Riot can come crashing to a halt because you wrote one email with a little too much brevity and offended a sensitive lifer. Meanwhile the person next to you could be day trading on their computer all day, be habitually late to meetings, and be promoted because they assimilate to their Director's personality and culture.
