Zynga Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Zynga full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – -Compensation + generous perks. Zynga has a lot of financial resources and the ability to make Blockbuster titles. Whether they use those resources intelligently is another story. Free lunches, dinners, gym, health care, etc.
-Opportunity for advancement - a lot of it, if you can manage to get recognized by the right people. That last sentence is key.
-Average production cycle is a lot shorter than working in console development, which means more shipped titles in less time (if your team does it right)
-Dynamic workforce - fairly easy to transfer within the company.
-Has gotten better at recognizing games that won't succeed, and killing projects early. This could still use some improvement.
-All star IT department that bends over backwards for employees.
-Dog friendly environment usually makes it a joy to come to work (as long as the dogs on your team are well-behaved)
-Overall, I really liked my experience with Zynga. I was lucky to be well-recognized within the company, and felt like my voice mattered and that I was contributing a lot to the projects I was on. The sense of ownership diminished substantially over the the 3.5 years that I was with the company, in part because of rapidly growing team size, and in part from the increasingly negative morale that permeated the office.

Cons – -If you're not a programmer, product manager, or high-ranking designer, you're a second tier citizen. The company not value each discipline equally. From a ground level, you can see this in the referral bonus drives (2x bonus modifier on getting a PM or Developer (engineer) hired versus any other discipline).
-Hectic and disorganized. It's hard to filter the noise sometimes; games in my experience have never shipped on time; we constantly thought we were two weeks out from shipping, which meant a lot of crunch towards the launch of the project.
-Company size has grown substantially and explosively since I started; because of the lack of organization and general chaos, I don't think we grew intelligently. This resulted in several studio closures after a very aggressive.
-Work environment encourages politicking. Meritocracy = sometimes you get recognized for your skills and contributions, but you better make sure the right person sees it. Can be cutthroat, to the detriment of the quality of the game, as individuals plan terrible, un-fun features that maximize quick revenue but ultimately tank the game as we bleed users who can't put up with it anymore.
-Impossible to get recognized if you're not on a succeeding project. Zynga funnels resources into its blockbuster teams, and the pool for bonuses/promotions/etc seems dependent on how well your game is doing (monetization, DAU, etc).
-Extremely hard to get recognized at a remote branch, unless you're working a lot with people at HQ who can vouch for your talents. May be a moot point, anyways, since many remote studios were closed.
-Cynicism, jadedness seems to have infected a good portion of the workforce; depending on your team, morale can be a bummer.
-Thrash. A lot. There's been a ton of reorganization among upper management; I think part of it was to reduce the churn in projects to get fewer dissonant voices in on the greenlight process.
-Tendency to let projects run on for too long, with too many resources, only to can it 9+ months later.
-Extremely risk-adverse. "Innovation" is a joke, as every project seems to have Frankenstein'd each successful element of every previous title until games are hard to differentiate from each other and mechanics don't make sense in context; seems like stuff makes it in just to satisfy the green light checkboxes.
-Work/life balance is what you make of it. It's easy to live at work when you get catered lunch and dinner.
-Feature cadence on live games can get unreasonable. Your team needs to be good about recognizing when to dial it back; if you've got an aggressive General Manager who's 100% about meeting numbers, enjoy sleeping at Zynga.
-Weird animosity between departments, depending on your team: Product Managers and Designers don't seem to get along. You should be working in tandem to make a game that is both fun and profitable, not against each other to get your way.

Advice to Senior Management – I think you're at a crossroads - you have the opportunity to succeed in a major way, following the successes of your former titles. But if you don't wake up and take some risks, a smaller, more agile company is going to smoke you. Get back to your roots with smaller team sizes; the huge teams are too disorganized and not everyone's able to contribute 100%. Throwing as many people as you can on a project does not make it wrap up any faster or better; recognize those diminishing margining returns and keep your teams leaner. Get over the IPO. Just, get over it and don't fret about the near-term stock price- if you start looking more towards the future.

Or you can keep doing what you're doing; but I don't think it'll continue to work. I think the company's values aren't aligned with its employees' anymore, and you need to address that. Some of your top talent is being ignored simply because they aren't actively working on your biggest hit, and that's a shame. I'm pretty sure you can see the iceberg in the horizon - it's not too late to steer the boat in a different direction. Don't be the Titanic.

Also: Consider reducing the swag budget. By a lot. After over three years with the company, I'm pretty sure I could go a month without doing laundry solely by how many Zynga-branded t-shirts I own.

– I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Zynga full-time for more than a year

Pros – The work environment is quite chilled out. You will get to work with crazy, passionate & self driven people.

Cons – The Job roles however, are not so well defined here.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Zynga

Pros – Good perks, free food, snacks and drinks

Cons – Horrible internal structure, quarterly based fiscally, no cohesion

Advice to Senior Management – Needs complete restructure internally

Former Employee – worked at Zynga part-time for less than a year

Pros – They give you a lot of money

Cons – They work you very hard

Advice to Senior Management – Be more creative

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Zynga full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – As a full time employee you receive awesome benefits, free gym membership, free lunch, dinner and snacks.

Cons – Dishonest employees taking advantage of the system and getting away with it, and with the knowledge of the manager.

Advice to Senior Management – Some of the supervisors should be monitored more closely as they were seen harassing their employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Zynga full-time for more than a year

Pros – A lot of meeting/discussion, fast pace, free foods/drinks. Nice people working around.

Cons – overwork daily and a lot of change during your development. Some managers are lack of basic management skill, let you feel bad.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Zynga full-time for more than a year

Pros – There is no good reason to work here. Good food & coffee, free snacks. Video games and nice gym on main campus.

Cons – CEO has no idea how to run a large company. Constant thrash and pivots. CEO says stuff like, "When you come to the conversation understanding that I'm always right you'll have a better outcome." This company cannot succeed with current management in place. Highly, highly political environment, not a meritocracy as they say. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Advice to Senior Management – Fire yourselves.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Zynga full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – It is a big company with big brands. You will learn a lot about how to run a successful business and how to keep users entertained with as much content as their hearts desire.

Cons – You may experience poor management that has risen to the top a bit too quickly due to the massive turnover of talent. You may also experience a lack of focus on quality design and innovation due to our fast following methodology and analytically focused design principles. This can be a great place to work but also can make you feel a bit stuck. It really depends on your job title.

Advice to Senior Management – I would recommend creative types stay clear away. Designers, artists etc... This is not the place for you nor will you be accommodated with an aggressive salary or career path. If it's your first job then yes take it but if it isn't go elsewhere. There are better places to work where you get the same if not better experience.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Zynga full-time for less than a year

Pros – Great, high quality, highly motivated and straight-shooting folks
The Zynga spirit drives the company to be successful and pushes through challenging times
The constant quest on how to be more successful, make better games, increase value for our players
Yes, the food is amazing

Cons – The outside reputation and perception of Zynga are at least one year behind the reality of the current culture, which I have found very positive.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep building up a more game development centric culture
Push to hire the best talents

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Zynga full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Super brilliant and hard working people, fast advancement for those who work hard and know the politics game well, great benefits, flexible work schedule, love the mission of connecting the world through games, and long term growth potential is great.

Cons – Too many cooks in the kitchen with everyone thriving on competition and politics to get ahead-at the detriment of the companies long-term mission. It was a great company 2 years back but since, a lot of turn over of veterans and new management.

Advice to Senior Management – Focus on a central goal and make sure all teams stick to it. Think long term and hire people who are there for the long haul.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend