outdated, confusing, and a very slow moving tugboat - Management Keywords Studios Employee Review

This list is quite long given I had worked there for near 7 years: 1) outdated waterfall management style and company structure: The way teams are structured and run often do not coincide at all with the reality of game developers, and that combined with a deprecated view on company hierarchy bogs down all the teams and often causes frustration coming from clients. So many layers of bureaucracy that most good ideas fail to launch. 2) Improperly trained management: Someone can go from being a tester to a lead and even PO (or project manager) with little to no formal training on handling work groups, structuring testing suites and managing clients. Giving someone a position with little to no support from project managers (who in themselves are not really well equipped or trained) and expecting something positive is unrealistic and has been flagged one too many times to be acceptable. 3) Wages across the board are way under what they should be: The first point would be that, on average, management staff is making a subpar wage, not to mention the same for testers. Yes, this seems to make sense given the ease of entry for people with little to no experience, though being offered a modicum of an annual salary review is a joke. The company doesn't lack the funds, far from it, though spent much more of its money on purchasing new studios and expanding, leaving employees there with subpar salaries and work equipment that is, in some cases, going on 10 years old. For a company that works in the tech industry. wow. 4) Outdated equipment: Employees are typically trained using xbox360 consoles, which were released in 2005, and games that are nearly 7 years old, on screens just as old and faulty equipment. How can you expect to deliver quality, which is an oxymoron considering the company offers Quality Assurance, when the tools given are so below industry standard that they litterally die while in use? chairs, mouses, headsets, the lot of it is old and the company is contempt at cutting corners and leaving these things around. You become accustomed to it after a while but looking back, it's pretty sad in reality. 5) Workload and expectations: Given the previous points mentioned, the company still expects such high output and gives praise to the departments for the quality of their work, when most of the employees are disgruntled and upset about the actual conditions. Expectations are set so high, and unreasonably so given what is given in return, that those few people who actually succeed do it through coming close to burn outs and spending most of their time in the office. The people who realize this is a cash cow move on when they realize they aren't appreciated. 6) Level-up system: The intention of this is to give raises and promote within the company, but the grueling process and the monthly evaluations of testers when management is already overworked is ridiculous. From this, you have a lack of good solid constructive criticism, leads who just rush through writing evals, which in turn only rewards those who stand out by doing something out of the norm, not consistency. Leads dislike the system, something more akin to self-evaluations from the staff and quarterly meetings would alleviate the tedious nature of this, just an FYI.