The term 'Treated just like another cog in the machine' would not be applicable here. Its a lot worse. - They seem to prey on Juniors/Graduates fresh in the industry. A lot of artists here do not have a clue what it is like outside of airship because they are fresh out of university. They don't understand that the work practices done at airship, and this type of management isn't normal to the rest of the industry, clouding their judgement and even causing people to think that maybe they should just leave the industry because its too difficult or not what they expected. -There is a massive divide between management and the artist, with clear bias and a massive lack of trust. It definitely comes across as management not fully believing that the artists can actually do their job. - HR do bare minimum to support the artists. If you're lucky to get a meeting with them within a week, and not getting it cancelled or moved 4 times, you only have very short amount of time to put across your issues. In personal experience, you just end up feeling like you're wrong, and just get ignored and put aside. If you have issues with the company itself (eg deadlines, workload) you are just told to stick it out. I wasn't even given help with finding resources to help with it all. - Time logging is extremely excessive. No matter what you are doing, you have to keep note of this and log it at the end of the day. I understand that management need to keep track of things, but when you are helping out 5+ juniors throughout the day alongside taking breaks, using the toilet, making calls and making changes to files, this can be an extremely tiring thing to do, knowing that it will most likely not even be looked at and knowing that it is excessive. - Crunch is real. Though you are 'technically' never told that you need to do overtime (and they make the excuse that 'we don't have overtime in our contracts', etc), there has NOT been a time where I and many others have not been worried about hitting a deadline that is borderline IMPOSSIBLE to hit. Deadlines are extremely short. Juniors and even Mid level artists will do overtime in fear of looking bad to their peers and being scared of losing their job, to the point where they will not even tell management that they are doing it. - There is no clear path for growth in the company, especially as it expands. They have constantly promised that there will be a clear path to promotions, and they are always dangling the chances of promotion over your head. There doesn't seem to be any clear path and there is never really a clear understanding of what you need to do to grow. There have even been times when people have received notes on where to improve, that were given to them previously even though they have CLEARLY already improved; this just shows that they really don't seem to have an understanding of their team at an individual level. (Even for some of the best.) - Artists are blamed (usually in a passive aggressive way) for failing to hit project deadlines. This is extremely unfair and the blame should always be down to the management, due to the impossible deadlines and lack of training. - Lack of training. Right from when you get the job, you are placed into the middle of a project with ZERO training. If you are a quiet person, you will just crumble under the pressure, so you HAVE to ask around for help. You will get help, but it's usually other Juniors that will help with second hand knowledge (being in the same situation just months before), because all the Mid levels and the seniors are all busy. - Employee turnover is extremely high. Because of everything that has been stated above and much more, practically all the artists are constantly complaining about these problems and actively looking for new jobs. Unfortunately because of their views on portfolio work, though you have personal development time on Fridays, there is an extremely low chance that you will have any professional work from the projects you work on to show off on your portfolio. The only art they commonly want to show off is work that benefits the company. If its not a triple AAA popular game, nobody bothers; in turn this also makes it really difficult to apply to other companies because you have nothing to show for it. - Extremely outdated/convoluted tools.
