Zynga reviews

People in the industry whisper stories about Zynga like cautionary tales, and most of what they say is correct. It's a dysfunctional company caught between its start-up roots and a burgeoning traditional American corporate culture. There's a huge disconnect between the corporate-oriented aspects of the business and the game-making oriented aspects of the business. It's possible to slide into a job at Zynga and be ignored for *years*. Opportunities to advance are uneven or plateau quickly. The company won't hesitate to can your project even on the edge of completion. Shipping a game at Zynga is a constant challenge—I know people who worked on several different games teams for 5-6 years and couldn't put a single shipped title on their resumes. All that said, every department and every team is different. I had great managers in a department that lacked direction, but that didn't make up for the overall low pay and inability to advance. People might go to bat for you when necessary (like anywhere else), but their ability to change your circumstances are limited. Managers caught in the middle have very little power and are getting pushed around just as much as folks lower on the ladder. It can be very challenging to make lateral move into a new role if you decide you want to be involved in a different aspect of game development. Don't be afraid to befriend your team's upper managers and HR Business Partner—having them on your side can go a long way toward you receiving the bonuses, raises, title changes, etc. you need to advance your career. Bottom line: complacency will kill your career at Zynga. The best way to survive a dysfunctional company is refuse to engage in the dysfunction. Come to the business hungry—with strong goals and a calculating, looking-out-for-#1-attitude—and do everything you can to meet them. Then, leave.

-Anybody that joined after April 2011 are all misinformed and will get peanuts for equity. In fact, if you joined after December of 09, you have missed out on several stock splits already. Stock might be single digits per share. -No automatic annual pay increase, so you better level up if you want your salary to go up. -Very fast pace with a lot of internal competition. -People are pushed to the max with aggressive deadlines, but employees often don't believe in the products they are working day and night to deliver. -Incompetent managers -Company spends money like crazy, but no necessarily to the liking of the mass. -The whole culture is very stressful with little in terms of nurturing the right type of employee motivation. -Terrible work life balance -No free parking around building -Very unprofessional HR department -Actively slashing employees -Hack jobs instead of good designs often rule the day -*******WILL KILL YOUR SOCIAL LIFE!!!******** -First company going public to have mainly RSU. Management is screwing over employees big time in terms of equity value, but few actually realize this. Issuing RSU and deducting 40% for tax reasons is essentially the company forcing employees to sell stocks back to the company at a price that the company determines.