What happened to this place? - -anonymous- Kabam Employee Review

It's sad to say, but the biggest con to working at Kabam is 100% the executive leadership. When I refer to the leadership, I am really referring to the President, who is in charge of the day-to-day. The CEO is a nice guy but he has gotten less and less involved over the years - to the point where most of his time is now external facing, preparing for a potential IPO, talking to investors / board members, etc. The president of the company has been a one man wrecking crew for the past several months. I've lost count of how many well-respected Vice Presidents, Directors and other high ranking employees have either left or been laid off due to the toxic politicking going on here. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that just about every single one of these employees would point out the same exact things about this "company leader". The problems are that A) he's extremely short sighted, B) it's either his way or the high way, C) he lavishly wastes company resources on his personal travel & entertainment budget and D) he is a terrible people manager. Extremely short sighted. The company leadership, led by the President, have constantly squeezed the life out of new pipeline projects by ensuring all new games conform to the standards of either the current top grossing game(s) in the market or to the whims of his supposed product leadership experience (of which he has none). Teams of artists, engineers and PMs will work for several months concocting a new title and in the 11th hour the President will show up with a bunch of BS theories about how these games should be designed because only he knows best. All the previous work gets thrown out and what you end up with is a patchwork quilt of crappy game mechanics and monetization practices. Management also piles unrealistic revenue goals on top of all the game teams to the point where the "customer focus" is now, "how do we rip off our top players?". I can't remember how many times management has directed teams to use aggressive promotions and gimmicky sales (cutting to the bone) just to make quarterly revenue goals (hey our business has been damaged, but we're going to Vegas for meeting goal!). Then they panic when the beginning of the next quarter/half underperforms, and the whole cycle repeats itself. Customer complaints are not taken seriously unless that person has spent thousands of dollars with the company. His way or the high way. Self-explanatory, but let's just say I've witnessed several evolutions of: 1) some employee rises through the ranks, 2) employee gains the President's favor and becomes one of "his guys", 3) employee is given more responsibility to lead a department or project, 4) department or project either underperforms, or is not led in the style that the President likes 5) employee is passive-aggressively moved further away from priority projects, 6) employee either quits or gets laid off as they're no longer working on core products. The executive in question never has the guts to look somebody in the eye and communicate honestly. Instead, rumors start swirling about how someone has fallen out of favor, and by that point all is lost. Lavishly wastes company resources. Again, self-explanatory. It's a poorly kept secret around the office that the CFO has had to confront the President on many occasions for his 6 figure + expense account. This guy then has the audacity to post pictures of his international bottle service excursions, 1st class flying experiences and 5 star hotel stays on his facebook account while trying to lecture the rest of the company about how we need to conserve budget and control expenses. Terrible people manager. It's already been mentioned that a whole slew of well respected employees have left the company as a direct result of their interactions with this person. It's also been mentioned that he has "his guys" who pretty much get all the perks you'd imagine (off-cycle pay & title raises, choice of best projects, impromptu bonuses etc) while others who are just as good but not as well known (by him) are continually passed over for all of these benefits. His communication style is the worst - most leaders have an open door policy, this guy says only to email him. Ok, maybe understandable, but why does he have to be so smug & passive aggressive in his emails? This is a universally shared view across the company. But in his own words, "that's just how he rolls". I think everything mentioned above captures the essence of what is wrong with the company. Why hasn't anything been done about it? For better or worse, Kabam, until recently, has historically grown at a decent clip. The board & CEO automatically attribute all of this success to the President. Did it ever occur to these decision-makers that the hundreds of employees working under the 1-2 main executives might have something to do with your success? At one point, I believe the President might have been the right guy for his position (2-3 years ago) but it's clear to anybody working here now that he has 1,000% lost the faith of the employee base.