Inexperienced & Heavy Crunch - Software Engineer 5th Cell Media Employee Review

When I was hired, I was promised 2 things, they don't crunch and they hire for life. Unfortunately both were gross misrepresentations of reality. My entire team crunched often, sometimes for a few months and sometimes non stop for more than a year. I've been in the industry a while and no other job comes remotely close to the amount of crunch I saw at 5th Cell. People are let go all the time, usually discretely after their part of a project was complete. Don't get any ideas that this is a stable company to work for. One thing that struck me most is that there is no company culture to speak of, let alone the fun atmosphere you come to expect working at a game studio. A lot of this stems from the fact that most hires are directly out of college and that none of the owners had ever worked at a game studio before. This led to many oddball rules like "no sandals because we're better than that" and "no using the game room during company hours." Pretty much expect zero perks for being employed here. Projects are pretty hit and miss. Most final decisions relied on the CEO, who worked sporadically. Tasks for programmers usually didn't come with much of a design, so you were left to make that up as you go. That can be fun, and could be seen as a plus, but you can expect the design to completely change and your work scrapped for something else. This is very common and part of what led to so much crunch. The project I worked on was completely redesigned many times and at all stages. 5th Cell is run by some pretty big egos. There's a very real sense of "us and them" mentality and a ton of company politics go on here. If you're in the "in" crowd or buddies with the owners then you'll get preferential treatment. They really don't like people rocking the boat, so if you disagree or try to change decisions made by the select few, expect to be booted once your usefulness on a project has run out.