Caution: Your Mileage May Vary - Was In A Leadership Function Xaviant Employee Review

I was part of the second round of mass layoffs at Xaviant. I wanted to wait a few weeks before writing this review as surely leaders at Xaviant will try to brush it off as "understandably emotional reaction to a terrible situation all around, not representative of the day-to-day here." So here's my account of the company free from emotion and after many iterations and a great deal of thought and reflection. On the day to day, Michael (The CEO and Creative Director at the studio) is rarely to be seen. He's about as absentee a leader as you could imagine. He's also the CEO of other ventures which keeps him away from the office the majority (greater than 50 per cent) of the work week. And when he's there, he takes what represents many days and sometimes weeks of his staff's work and judges it on a whim, and sometimes fundamentally changes the entire feature without being privy to the days and weeks of iteration the team had put into getting the feature to that point. This armchair leadership is directly responsible for a great deal of the scope creep and schizophrenic design principals that result. Michael fancies himself just about every role. He's been directing the design for over a year, for example, despite that being someone else's job. Michael's autocratic management style wouldn't be so bad if he were around for an amount of time proportional to that type of leadership. When you get down to it, he's actually a half decent game designer despite his lack of industry experience. He's a smart and perceptive gamer, which makes him a creative asset when he's contributing. But given how little he's present, his "I spend my money the way I want" attitude is hurting the company. Other directors tend to struggle with communication among the team. The autocratic management style can clearly be seen trickling down from the top. It's a common pain point communicated anonymously from all parts of the lower organization. Big decisions are made over lunch, dinner, and at the gun range as opposed to in conference rooms with consulted and informed team leads. Executive leadership appeared to hear this feedback, and mitigated the problem with a leadership and communication summit for all the directors. But I can't say a lot has changed aside from some minor incremental improvements, and a bunch of inside jokes forming within the directors group themselves.Though now that the team is much smaller, this will probably be less of an issue. There's a fair bit of nepotism at play at Xaviant. More than 4 instances of "protected status" have been half-joked about in my time at the company. This ranges from stepchildren to nephews to good buddies. To say nothing of the "inner circle" of a dozen or so guys who have been prowling around the Atlanta-based software development community for the better part of two decades. You'd be wise to join this inner circle as quickly as possible at Xaviant. Granted, some semblance of this has existed at most of the large AAA game studios, so it's not that atypical. Just worth noting, this company isn't above it or immune to the cultural problems that are associated with cronyism. It's worth noting how the layoffs were handled, as I think it is representative of a level of professionalism and grace (or lack thereof) that impacts a great deal of Xaviant's core business. With how frequent layoffs are in the games business, it's shocking to find anybody could handle them so insensitively. It speaks to how disconnected Xaviant's executive team is from the real industry. During the most recent round of layoffs, where they laid off just about everyone but the lifers, they literally threw a pizza party for everyone they were letting go. I kid you not, they brought in pizza as some petty offer of condolence as most of the floor packed up their desks. Sorry fellas, nobody had an appetite that day. They also announced over the PA the names of "the survivors" much like the reaping. They read off a dozen names and asked them to proceed to the conference room to quote "discuss the future of the company." Followed by "anybody who wasn't called just sit tight." Which sounded an awful lot like "the rest of you are crap out of luck!" One by one we were taken into rooms and offered severance packages. At least there was that. But I tell you, that's the very least. No more than the very least was offered. My recommendation to every prospective candidate is to negotiate a contract with a strong exit provision in the event you find yourself expendable. This was not the first round of mass layoffs for the company, and unless there are key leadership changes it won't likely be the last. Geographically, Atlanta is a very small games market. Be prepared to relocate again if taking a chance on Xaviant. Because should it not work out, it is unlikely you'll find gainful employment within the severance period you are offered.