Pros
You'll be surrounded by many passionate and very talented people, you'll get some insight into what goes into creating youtube content, they are very pro-WFH, and even when you suffer debilitating burnout, you will leave this company far more skilled than when you were started. I got to work alongside one of the best editors i've ever worked with and it pushed me to create work I never even imagined I was capable of creating. The work I did do is literally some of the best work I've done in the entirety of my career and I was insanely proud to be apart of the team I was on. It's always incredibly satisfying to watch a video you work incredibly hard on get posted and see the positive engagement it receives. In many ways, I'll always be grateful for the time I spent here and the people I met.
Cons
Now for the not fun part. ●TLDR Bullet Points -Pay is bad, and will likely be well below the market rate for whatever field your in. -You will need to work many unreported hours to keep up with tight production schedules that remain unchanged even in the face of production delays you had no control over. And if you weren't "specifically instructed to work those hours", your request for overtime compensation will be denied, even if it was a necessary measure to get something out on time. They will look the other way as your slack bubble stays online well past 11pm. -The reviews that mention clique-culture are unfortunately accurate, many employees have plot armor and will never be questioned about creative/production decisions or the convenience of their PTO -- certain people in the company are allowed to take as long as they want to deliver something while others will be met with reprimands for falling behind even a single day. -You will hear higher-ups wax on about fostering a mental-health friendly environment, but you find out pretty quickly that it's all performative and you'll see no such sentiment in the thick of a production. -As a production worker, holding down your role at this company will leave you frazzled, anxious, mentally and physically unwell. ● Extended Review If you do not prioritize this company above everything in your life, you will see virtually no growth or recognition during your time here. Deadlines are debilitating and will not change even in the face of a significant production delay. Nobody will verbally tell you to work unpaid overtime, that would be illegal. But if you don't? You won't make deadlines. And if you don't make deadlines? Your abilities as a worker are immediately called into question, and in some cases, you will be let go. A lot of creative or artistic workers fall victim to this thing I call the “fun job tax” at places like this. These jobs are perceived by the world as highly desirable, sexy and cool (meaning eager replacements who are happy to work for low pay are waiting in the wings if someone falls short) so staff has little to no negotiating power with how little they get paid, how unrealistic deadlines get, and the end-result is basically a never-ending crunch and an excess of burnout management that will erode your personal life. They say they don't want you to work weekends, but if you're still working on something on a Friday evening, they will impose a monday morning deadline (and i'm not saying "you should work over the weekend" but I am saying you'd better not miss it *wink*). In addition, creative workers are incredibly passionate about their job and will often pull countless additional unpaid hours to get something done right -- it's one of my favorite things about working around such talented people. IMO, that's one of the marks of a truly passionate person, but in the creative professional world this unfortunately translates to staff being expected to show this level of enthusiasm for burning the midnight oil -- kind of like an unspoken rule (this is true for most production studios, but especially true for RT). You will only move up the chain at this company if you can successfully withstand these incredibly strict conditions , and if this has any affect on your output, all of the "we're a family" or "always be transparent" and "please be taking care of yourself" rhetoric they wax on about unsurprisingly morphs into "we're a business" and "at the end of the day, we have to do what's best for the product" and your hours will get reduced as they seek out a replacement and end your contract -- make no mistake, there is no work-life balance at rooster teeth and there are no meaningful measures being taken to change it. As an editor at this place, I basically NEVER left my home desk, whether it be waiting for researchers to complete a shot-list (which, I repeat, never once had an effect on deadlines when it was time for me to edit) or spending hours and hours building 7 to 12 solid minutes of complex RAM-intensive motion graphic animations (or else your work will be considered sub-standard). Every call I got from a friend past 7, I was working. Every event I was invited to, if I was able to go I brought my laptop with me just in case. There were nights where I had to beg my fiancee to sleep on the couch behind my desk so I didn't have to be alone while I stayed up until 6 in the morning to have an edit done, and the weeks where I opted out of doing this resulted in work that wasn't up to their standards followed by a period of QC that almost always resulted in cancelled weekend plans. Something more anecdotal (I don't like doing this in glassdoor reviews bc it makes me sound like a bitter ex employee, but I feel like this scenario is worth mentioning) I was surprised by my groomsmen with a bachelor trip. Despite taking my laptop with me and spending nearly every moment of that weekend addressing notes, in the end it had a substantial affect on my ability to stay up through an entire weekend to deliver something (during my time there I had essentially worked every weekend up until that point, but no reporting because "nobody told me to do that" smh), this single weekend made them decide I was unfit for my role and my contract end date was pushed to the day before I was supposed to be taking a week of long-approved PTO to get married and enjoy my honeymoon. Really messed up stuff. Worse? They expected me to complete my remaining projects, but having just been told I will no longer be apart of the company bc my groomsmen threw me a bachelor weekend, I ended up just leaving and handing off my projects and making an early exit. My producers showed a lot of bitterness towards this but I couldn't be more happy about that decision. If you're someone who's considering applying for or accepting a position at this company, understand that this will be your life. If you can handle it? Awesome -- Buckle up. I and many other former employees could not handle it, and to be frank a weight was lifted off my shoulders upon my departure from this company. And I got to enjoy my wedding without lugging my work-laptop to the venue which I most certainly would have been forced to do had I stayed.