R&D department full of great mentors, skilled programmers, and interesting tech
Pros
I was a Tools Programmer for 4 years at Quantic Dream, I left at the end of 2016 purely for personal life reasons. I give this company 5 stars because I would come back and work for them in a heartbeat, the people there are talented and form a collaborative team. Their tech is cutting edge, the game engine is one of the best looking on PS4 - I have yet to see a game that looks as good as the upcoming Detroit : Become Human. Their game-building software suite is now brand new as of summer 2016, the old software has been replaced. # The team leads and more experienced programmers are a pleasure to work with, I learned a lot from them. Great mentorship # Real positive work atmosphere, the people are great # Tech is a pleasure to work with (this wasn't always the case!) # Freedom & flexibility. Not only on what kind of project you work on, but also with which team. One of my colleagues had been through three different teams (Data, Game Engine, and Tools) # New programmers (including more junior) get to work on interesting projects right from the start (not just boring UI stuff) # Recent tech has good user & tech documentation, kept up to date # Mandatory code reviews. Pair programming # Work / life balance # Extra hours are paid. Royalties on released titles scaled by amount of sales # Good complimentary health insurance, generally good benefits # Great PTO, I always managed to reserve on dates I wanted # Tram & Metro stop literally right next to the building entrance
Cons
As always, it's easier to complain than to see the positive in a workplace. The grass is always greener on the other side. Quantic Dream isn't perfect, and as with all companies, it has its problems... but my experience overall was very positive. # Directors could do more to recognize employees' quality work to make them feel valued # Organization around Sony milestones can be improved, depending on the state of the game, most teams will have to be put in crunch mode more than a few times during the project's life cycle. Most game developers have this problem, nothing new. # Some employees prefer to talk among themselves, complain, start rumors rather than go straight to directors about problems. # Some people in higher up positions are a little arrogant / patronizing (again, try finding a place with 200~ employees where this isn't the case...)