Very sadly, Wildstar does not live up to its previous reputation of being one of the best Indies to work for.
Rates of pay for junior staff are lower than BBC and other Indies. Have confirmed with colleagues that Researchers at least are paid less now than they were at the company when it was founded. If Senior Management actually had conversations with junior staff, they would learn that very few, if any, are able to save, some are even having to dip into existing savings, and overall they aren't happy. Permanent staff positions are only available for senior staff. This, along with compensation being significantly worse than it was a few years ago, is a huge barrier for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds trying to enter the industry: those who don't have existing savings or family to rely on have an uphill battle trying to establish themselves.
Apparently there is no money to compensate people fairly for the days that they work for free, yet the number of very senior positions with presumably very large salaries (and better benefits) seems excessively high and unnecessary.
The way that I have observed Senior Management speak to some junior members of staff is shocking. There seems to be a lack of respect for their them and their intelligence. Staff have recently been encouraged to use the internal suggestion box rather than leave public reviews - however previous attempts to raise serious issues in this manner have been dismissed. Reasonable requests to explain management's decision-making or false statements have been met with "I don't need to explain this to you" or "we can do what we want" - this is verbatim. Issues brought to HR have been met with, on more than one occasion, "if you don't like it, leave". There is also an apparent lack of respect for people's time and personal lives - in the past few weeks, Senior Management attempted to impose shift working on the edit assistant team without even having conversations with them beforehand.
Lack of transparency, refusal to publish salary bands and empty promises appear to be used as tools to manipulate people into accepting lower rates. Significant pay disparities between people of similar experience levels exist in all departments across the company. People are not naive, and know that there will be differences in rates within roles, but requests to address any significant differences without reason are ignored, despite the word 'parity' being consistently used in any rate negotiations.
Awful handling of an investigation into alleged sexual harassment, where the senior employee in question (no longer at the company) was neither suspended, nor asked to work from home during the course of the investigation, meaning that alleged victims and people giving evidence had to face them in the office daily. Have also heard of complaints being handled inappropriately, and in the worst cases women who have raised concerns have had their careers negatively impacted or opportunities taken away from them - hardly an encouraging environment for people to speak up.
