There's not enough time to enumerate all of the negatives with VGT. But let's just start by saying that it was, prior to its acquisition by Aristocrat, a great place to work. People griped about Yarbrough having his hands in every pie, but I was able to get an awful lot done under him with minimal fuss. I am not suggesting that the acquisition in and of itself caused the current culture crisis at VGT; however, when Jon left and the tide went out, it was evident who was swimming naked. Ironically, it was the mediocre folks causing the most problems who evidently rose to the top.
Non-EC leadership is the worst I've ever experienced in my career, and I've been in some bad positions before. Vacillation is the first word that comes to mind. Quixotic would be the next. Most of the problem is the gross inexperience of the Managers, but that also falls on the Directors and VPs. You have both literal and figurative children running IT. Lots of promises were made and I came to the conclusion that it was not dishonesty, but naivety that led to none of them coming to fruition. Simply put, for all of the faults of the Yarbrough Era leadership, at least they stayed out of the way of the "individually contributing" software engineers. Not so anymore.
Free lunches and the annual bonus structure are still in place, but it's only a matter of time for one or the other to be eliminated. You simply can't have VGT functioning in such a manner when Aristocrat Mother Ship employees don't have the same benefits. Furthermore, the bonus really just covers a portion of the difference between market rate salaries and what VGT compensates its employees; in other words, it's a wash.
In a nutshell, if you don't mind poor leadership and if you want to do point-and-click, declarative CRM "development" or very uni-faceted .NET work, VGT is the place for you. It does not have a startup or small company feel anymore. If you want that, go to work for a startup. There are plenty of them in metro Nashville. Many of them are wonderful and you will save yourself a lot of gray hairs if you miss the VGT train.
