Has anyone else read these CIG glassdoor reviews?

Richard Bong · Dec 26, 2021

Diversity is not the way to choose the best team. I'm not sayimg they are hiring the right people, just that skill is a more important metric.

The rest seems like the real problem.

Richard Bong · Dec 26, 2021

GrumpyCat said:
~~Depends on if thats actually whats happening and not that there is a bias of those hiring that diverse hires are "less skilled". I suppose it really depends on how big the discrepancy, as they don't really say, so I won't hypothesize one way or another.~~

Im dumb, thats exactly what you said

No worries.

Lorddarthvik · Dec 26, 2021

Some of these points are expected: overtime, suddenly changing deadlines.. it comes with the territory.

It seems like CR wants his game, not his subordinates game. We knew this was an issue from year 1. I guess with the growing number of teams and outsourcing, he will have to let things go sooner or later otherwise nothing will get done. Maybe letting an outside company work on the planets and locations is a good sign, meaning he has already started to let others decide on at least some aspects of minutia.
On the other hand, I see mentions of directors changing up things on a whim. This somewhat goes against the CR is micromanaging everything narrative unless they just forgot to mention (or don't know) that these changes come from CR himself.

Lack of diversity is a problem if it comes from prejudice/bias against certain ppl. I currently work for a studio where we have more gal's than guys at the moment. All of them earned to be there, all talented and do wonderful art, be it abstract drawings or very technical simulations.
That said, diversity alone won't make anything better, as proven by the entertainment industry throughout the last decade. Talent, skill, knowledge and dedication will.

I'm guessing they are hiring anyone who is willing to join, with the fast growth they had and still push for, or at least that's what I'm getting from these posts. With wheat comes the chaff or however you say it in English... This is a real issue, something that needs to be sorted, internal power struggles need to be stomped out. Less but more talented workers who don't have to think about their "next move" to stay on top of internal affairs are waaaay more effective at getting shit actually done.

"just decent" pay... hahahaha well, yeah, what is a decent pay?
A headhunter found me from a small-ish (60+ppl) company here, that works on all the real cashcow games for EA. The Sports titles. EA outsources the art/3d models and such to a company for games like NBA. This company is supposedly based in Canada, but in actuality it's mostly done by guys sitting in a shitty cramped "studio" in an office building in Budapest/Hungary. I went to the interview, and came out laughing when it was clear I would be earning less in a month than I do freelance when working only 2 weeks. And I would be expected to do 10 hours minimum excluding lunch time and breaks, so 13-14 hours at the studio, and have no free days (no weekends, no vacation, pay deduction or outright firing if fallen ill and so on) for about 3 months straight when it comes to crunch time. It's not bad money in my country, but still it's laughable for what's expected in return. (just for context we are talking about a 1000usd per month)
That's the harsh reality of game development, and a "just decent" pay where I'm from so...
I doubt that things are this bad in any of the CIG studios.

"Complete lack of department budgets, timelines or accountability."
This one I found interesting because it shows a total lack of understanding of the big picture. There is no publisher, no overall budget to work from, no overall deadline! That's the whole fuckin point!
Timelines shift cos they don't know what they are doing, and I mean this literally. No one has the done the same before with the same tools, you can barely give an estimate as to how long things should take.. And thus you can't budget it!
Unless it's the art, guns or ships department. They've built plenty of those already...

Accountability is an issue cos WTF are you going to do with those that fail to deliver, in a company that is struggling to find a capable workforce? You can't just keep firing them...

Communication, endless meetings.. yeah. That's a real issue, and I bet the lockdowns didn't help either.

About the for Fans comments: how old is this?? I seem to recall reading this one years ago when the first dedicated medical ship came out (forgot the name). Sure they are making the marketing material for the new ships as they should be, but I doubt that the marketing team is driving the games mechanics. I just don't see the predatory game mechanics, we would have things like crafting with timers and stat boosters and most importantly XP for our characters to boost, all already worked out by now. Ya know, the usual Timesinks, all that can be skipped by microtransactions or buying subscriptions or something.

TLDR.: While most of the issues listed are probably legit, and should be solved, I feel like most of these people expected to work in a standardized western AAA studio, with the same pay, same hours, same structure, same tools, doing the same old games. Well, CiG ain't that. It might not be better in any way than other big studios, but they are surely making something that otherwise wouldn't be possible to make.

The bigger problem I'm seeing is that we are not getting things that probably could have been already done, and got pushed back because of a "change of plans" from the top brass. So wtf, are we really just suckers being stringed along, and this game is never coming out? Or are these just shortsighted comments coming from a lack of understating and lack of communication?

Mich Angel · Dec 26, 2021

The only real problem I see and get out of this is .......

---------------------- Quote my self ---------------------
- Opinions! -
Owning the right as an individual to speak its view comes from respect.
Because to express its view is not difficult. But to express it for the right reasons are few who succeed with.

//Mich 2009
-------------------------------------------------------------
CHEERS!

Mushin · Dec 26, 2021

Shrug, not here for the company, here for the game.

Doyzer · Dec 26, 2021

In the past, trolls have made these up to make CIG look bad.

Mushin · Dec 26, 2021

GrumpyCat said:
Well I mean the company makes the game? If these reviews paint a correct picture of whats going on inside, it sounds like a madhouse.

**EDIT**

Also we really SHOULD care about the working conditions of the employees... they are people too with lives and families, not star citizen oompa loompa developers

Glassdoor is by no means a clear indication of what the conditions are within CIG's workplace. Before assuming the worst and pulling out pitchforks, slow down, look at the source, and take into consideration the nature in which someone would leave a negative review for such a divisive project. Ultimately, the game is why we are here, and I focus on the quality of the product as that is the one thing that I can give feedback on before it's released. I just hope that you, TEST, and CIG staff have a great holiday season. Best wishes.

vahadar · Dec 26, 2021

Glassdoor is usually a heaven for disgrunted or former (usually fired) employees. So I do not pay much attention to most of those reviews there.

If people cant manage pressure at work, they should simply not work.
People complaining about pay compared to better pay for same position are just bad at selling themselves when negociating their own payroll. So they usually complain after...

vahadar · Dec 26, 2021

To counterbalance the OP of this thread which is full of negativity, here is an interview with former employees of CIG :

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65m6WHvYOoE

The real situation at CIG lies in the middle I guess. Which is simply the norm for every business out there, nothing different than any reviews for business I have experienced in my carreer.

Shadow Reaper · Dec 26, 2021

I don't personally think you can learn from such generalizations without looking afterward for specific examples. There is no reason to trust any of the complaints as made. Everyone complains. If the worker bees are not complaining, odds are management is not riding them properly.

I am surprised at the complaint that some workers are not pulling their weight. That certainly needs to be investigated. That could be a single person doesn't like another single person, or it could be a real problem. I would want to know how CIG rewards highly productive workers and whether that can be improved. They should have a couple dozen people each night stay late to work personal projects. If someone had spent 2 hours each night for several months working on the X1, that person should get a nice bonus and the players should get the X1 a year earlier. That's what bonuses are for. They inspire enhanced productivity.

I'm not surprised at complaints about inter-departmental communications being bad. Fixes to this require more time spent off task, so knowing the proper balance is a constant challenge. The proper balance is going to leave a small amount of communications lacking, so even in a perfect situation you could get this complaint.

I take complaints about micro-management with a grain of salt. Consider for a moment the legacy of Kelly Johnson's Skunkworks.

Kelly Johnson realized that Lockheed Martin had grown so large there was no way to do nimble, creative work, so he took from the very best at the larger company and built a design team, and removed ALL of the middle management. He sat all his engineers down at a single table and with slide rules they designed the U2 spy plane, the F117 stealth fighter-bomber, the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, etc. All of the planes designed under Kelly came in on time and under budget. They even designed a super-sonic bomber based upon the SR-71 in competition with the XB-70 Valkyrie, but neither went into production since ICBMs made such bombers obsolete.

Kelly did this by removing all middle management. He sat at the table with his crew and told them what to do 10 hours each day. There were no communications meetings. There were no project reports passed up the chain of command to make middle managers seem important. Everyone worked on task all the time. It's not surprising when you do the opposite and pander to the needs of supporters, you get the opposite result. I doubt there's much room for improvement from what I'm reading above.

Lack of diversity is only an issue if someone identifies sexist hiring practices. I would not be surprised to learn 97/100 workers graduating with the proper degrees are men. Whatever the figure is, once suspects the hiring ought to be similar.

When you see complaints like "the work can be highly repetitive" you know you're polling children who have no base to compare against. That is the way work is. That's why it is called "work".

Talonsbane · Dec 26, 2021

I hope that this doesn't come across the wrong way. I'm so damned sick & tired about people saying that diversity is so important when it comes to race, gender, etc, especially when it comes to technology. To me, the best form of diversity doesn't come from any of those but diversity of creativity & ways of coming up with solutions to advance things further as well as streamline things to help them flow more efficiently. Anybody of any race, gender or whatever can be the right person for the job based on what they're capable of mentally. Am I wrong?

vahadar · Dec 26, 2021

Oh @GrumpyCat that is not against you, my reply was to counter balance all the negative points raised by the quotes in your OP. Hence me linking the interview made by BoredGamer with some former employees. BoredGamer was himself surprised that there was not so much negativity.
So the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Talonsbane · Dec 26, 2021

GrumpyCat said:
I can understand your view point, but working in tech and with many women friends in tech (all the way up to directors and VP level), the bias is still pretty pervasive. At the end of the day those inclusion initiatives are because without them we have seen time and time again a sort of "boy's club", where women obviously cannot be as skilled as men when it comes to technology /s.

Is it the right answer? I dunno. However I can say with certainty I have seen and heard many a disparaging statement regarding women and others in tech, even right in front of me, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

I've heard the same about ladies in the automotive field, yet some of the best automotive techs that I've trained were ladies. I didn't know squat going into that career field, so when I'd start training them, I'd state that & tell them that if I can learn, I have no doubt that they can. Then ask them to help me understand what they know so far so that we can start from there & they don't think that I'm treating them any less than anybody else with the same knowledge as they have at that point. Maybe I'm just odd.

Shadow Reaper · Dec 26, 2021

I'm not sure what country you're talking about, but I assure you modern initiatives are completely unnecessary and most are illegal. Gender discrimination has been illegal in the United States since 1964. All that is needed is enforcement of federal law. Private company "initiatives" most often violate anti-discrimination laws and produce discrimination, by promoting people hire by quota rather than by merit.

Coarse small talk between men is not evidence such racist, ageist, sexist, etc. initiatives are necessary, nor even morally acceptable. Additionally, there are times when those hiring have prejudices that are warranted.

I have a close friend who is a retired USAF Brigadier General. At one time he was the head of Air Force Material Command and had 80,000 people he was responsible for. He is the greatest leader I have ever met. Test pilot, Trainer of test pilots. White House Fellow. Astonishing guy.

Two years into his retirement heading up the Cybersecurity department at a large stock trading company he in exasperation complained that he is done hiring millennials. Apparently he had so many of them come for a year and leave, and contribute NOTHING for the time they were trained, that he just decided to discriminate. Who can blame him? If it takes a year to learn to do a job and before that time is up you take a lateral transfer, you have not actually contributed anything to those who are paying you. Why should any company repeatedly subject itself to that sort of fraud?

There are reasons to discriminate and course language around the water cooler is not one of them, nor is it discrimination. I have never met anyone who thinks women don't belong in the workplace nor that they're just as good as men, and I doubt ALL the stories of this. I think 9/10 they're made up lies that do insane damage to companies and society. This from a guy working 51 years. I call bullshit. There is no doubt that boys create boys clubs, but that's the way life is. That is not evidence of sexism, etc.

Final story: I was in the last season of the undergrad program in philosophy, taking a class offered by the department head who is notoriously hard on grading. I have a perfect 4.0 because I'm trying to get into the most selective graduate school in the country--Notre Dame. So I actually show up at the group study sessions, especially before tests. At one session where six of us are quizzing each other, a girl from class comes through and we invite her to join us. She responds by filling us all in, that she doesn't need to study. She's already guaranteed a teaching position at an excellent school, because there are no women philosophers.

With that attitude there should be no women philosophers. Western Civilization is a meritocracy. If you're not okay with that, go live somewhere else. We get and keep our jobs because we are good at them, not because we were born a specific race, sex, or have a handicap. We perform or we move on. That's the way Western Civilization is. That's what meritocracies are. Hiring quotas are immoral and in many instances, illegal.

Has anyone else read these CIG glassdoor reviews?

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