A former CIG employee shares their thoughts and experiences:
Is Star Citizen spending too much money on the new offices?
- Thread starter Montoya
- Start date
Watched, all I can remember is something about DMing boobs to people.
I'm indifferent. I think its easy to say they spend too much on an office, even for an employee. I once thought the same thing with my current workplace, one of the big 3 auto companies. I thought "Why are we spending on all of this new office stuff when we could be doubling down on our engineers? We could be investing in our product. We could be investing in some well needed maintenance in our current production facilities." But then the pandemic changed a lot of things including how office space works. We found a lot of engineers, almost all of the finance office, the vast majority of salary in general, working from home.
Since the pandemic and people realizing working from home is in fact possible, a lot of people have come to prefer it. There were some major positives to it too, personal mental health improved, time with families improved, and individual production went up. Unfortunately, there were some major consequences to it as well. Team productivity took a massive hit. Projects consistently failed to hit deadlines. Never mind some projects needed to be hands on, like calibration or road testing. Some employees simply couldn't take advantage of the benefit. And it added yet another minor rift to the already sometimes contentious office space. We ended up losing a lot of talent at all levels of the company because of this. Both Salary and Hourly. That has cascading effects on both project teams and project quality itself when you lose a major member of a team. A great example of this in CIG is that loss of the majority of the team working on the BMM forcing it to get shelved. Plus, now they are losing productive hours now having to train new on-boarded team members. It impacts production massively.
By investing in a good office, we circumvent a lot of those negatives of coming into work. By improving your work environment, you improve your team and work quality, and even cooperation. Sometimes its not just about the money you pay or the amount of hands you have, its about the mindset of the hands who complete the work you need completed. By investing in your workplace, you effectively invest in your workforce by extension. And I think we can all agree CIG needs that talent now more than ever.
Since the pandemic and people realizing working from home is in fact possible, a lot of people have come to prefer it. There were some major positives to it too, personal mental health improved, time with families improved, and individual production went up. Unfortunately, there were some major consequences to it as well. Team productivity took a massive hit. Projects consistently failed to hit deadlines. Never mind some projects needed to be hands on, like calibration or road testing. Some employees simply couldn't take advantage of the benefit. And it added yet another minor rift to the already sometimes contentious office space. We ended up losing a lot of talent at all levels of the company because of this. Both Salary and Hourly. That has cascading effects on both project teams and project quality itself when you lose a major member of a team. A great example of this in CIG is that loss of the majority of the team working on the BMM forcing it to get shelved. Plus, now they are losing productive hours now having to train new on-boarded team members. It impacts production massively.
By investing in a good office, we circumvent a lot of those negatives of coming into work. By improving your work environment, you improve your team and work quality, and even cooperation. Sometimes its not just about the money you pay or the amount of hands you have, its about the mindset of the hands who complete the work you need completed. By investing in your workplace, you effectively invest in your workforce by extension. And I think we can all agree CIG needs that talent now more than ever.
KuruptU4Fun
Vice Admiral
I think that there were people who were hired to work specifically on SQ42 and when their work was done unfortunately there wasn't a spot on a team their skills would speak to was full. There's a history book of game developers letting developers go as the game gets close to release.
To answer the question posed at around 5 minute mark: If I get two job offers from two different companies, where the commute times and the salaries are both within like 5-10% of each other, then I would absolutely go with the one that has nicer office.
Yes, I'd even take tiny bit less pay for a better office. I'll be spending whole lot of time there, so yes, it's important to me.
Yes, I'd even take tiny bit less pay for a better office. I'll be spending whole lot of time there, so yes, it's important to me.
I see it differently...of course, I recognize that as an engineer, I see the world a bit differently than most do.
An office is a place to work. What I want is a place to work that values people and my time. The people and the culture make a much bigger difference to my work experience than a fancy office ever could. I want a company that is willing to make an investment in me so that as they help develop my skills. Of course, they will reap benefits from this. I also want to do work that matters. Stuff that helps my neighbors and people across the nation or even the world.
A fancy office isn't high on my list. No matter how fancy the office, it gets old and dated over time. What matters more are the tools and staff environment they provide. If the CEO is a holy terror that belittles everything you do, or if the senior officers are sleeping with the admins and showing favoritism, or if seniors constantly take credit for work that you do, instead of recognizing the work you do to their bosses...all these things are signs of a really bad work environment.
Do they provide you the computing services needed, appropriate work stations, including good chairs and desks (this is one thing I disagree with the guy on reddit...office stations and chairs need to be top notch), the tools for the testing team to check out all aspects of the changes they made, the HR support, the 401k, healthcare, and other retirement contributions, etc.
I get the need to show your company is doing well and is not on a shoe string, but there is also the need to show your employees that you are not wasting money on unnecessary fluff.
An office is a place to work. What I want is a place to work that values people and my time. The people and the culture make a much bigger difference to my work experience than a fancy office ever could. I want a company that is willing to make an investment in me so that as they help develop my skills. Of course, they will reap benefits from this. I also want to do work that matters. Stuff that helps my neighbors and people across the nation or even the world.
A fancy office isn't high on my list. No matter how fancy the office, it gets old and dated over time. What matters more are the tools and staff environment they provide. If the CEO is a holy terror that belittles everything you do, or if the senior officers are sleeping with the admins and showing favoritism, or if seniors constantly take credit for work that you do, instead of recognizing the work you do to their bosses...all these things are signs of a really bad work environment.
Do they provide you the computing services needed, appropriate work stations, including good chairs and desks (this is one thing I disagree with the guy on reddit...office stations and chairs need to be top notch), the tools for the testing team to check out all aspects of the changes they made, the HR support, the 401k, healthcare, and other retirement contributions, etc.
I get the need to show your company is doing well and is not on a shoe string, but there is also the need to show your employees that you are not wasting money on unnecessary fluff.
A very fancy custom office environment can serve as both a boost to moral, creativity, and just overall improve mood and productivity if you think you're working for a company on the bleeding edge thanks to your space-age Sci fi desk and such.
It's also useful if you want your employees to forget that they have an outside world, families to go home to On Time, and such unproductive nonsense.
Now where's my laser whip?!
Put your slave into a fancy glass box instead of a grey cubicle, with a comfy looking chair and RGB all over the place, and it won't realize it's still just your slave.
Overall, who cares. If they have the budget, then why not have a space that reflects a much higher standard than the actual work they produce. It might bring I more employees and more customers if you have a better image.
Think Apple. Same thing there with the very fancy UFO building, the all white stores, it's a necessary part of their image, they have to keep convincing ppl somehow that they are doing innovative important things there... while pushing out the next iteration of the same overpriced outdated soapbar for the 15th time.
As for layoffs, it's standard practice to hire on a per project basis. When your work is done, you're out. This how movies worked and this how games worked since day one. If you don't know this as an employee in this kind of business, it's on you, do your research next time.
Now, should cig be sending off ppl en mass at this point when everything is still broken and 90% of the content is missing? Hell no! But I'm sure someone will explain why this is a good thing...
It's also useful if you want your employees to forget that they have an outside world, families to go home to On Time, and such unproductive nonsense.
Now where's my laser whip?!
Put your slave into a fancy glass box instead of a grey cubicle, with a comfy looking chair and RGB all over the place, and it won't realize it's still just your slave.
Overall, who cares. If they have the budget, then why not have a space that reflects a much higher standard than the actual work they produce. It might bring I more employees and more customers if you have a better image.
Think Apple. Same thing there with the very fancy UFO building, the all white stores, it's a necessary part of their image, they have to keep convincing ppl somehow that they are doing innovative important things there... while pushing out the next iteration of the same overpriced outdated soapbar for the 15th time.
As for layoffs, it's standard practice to hire on a per project basis. When your work is done, you're out. This how movies worked and this how games worked since day one. If you don't know this as an employee in this kind of business, it's on you, do your research next time.
Now, should cig be sending off ppl en mass at this point when everything is still broken and 90% of the content is missing? Hell no! But I'm sure someone will explain why this is a good thing...
The post came across as leaving out some context that wasn't favorable to the poster (which is normal) and I suspect that Glorious Leader touched on at least one of them:
He'd expressed unwillingness to relocate to either of the new offices.
I can't fault someone for not wanting to move, but also can't fault a company with thousands of employees bringing in millions an year deciding to layoff staff unwilling to relocate from an office they're planning to decommission or not renew the lease on. As would be expected, they'd try to time the individual layoffs around their project schedules and well before the office transition so that new staff willing to relocate can be trained up prior to the transition to minimize the negative impacts that come along with office space relocations (I've been through these, they suck no matter how involved in the process the company and management chooses to be.)
It also sounded like he griped about the larger ships, particularly the precious BMM, too much (he couldn't even refrain from doing so in his post.) Considering CIG has stated that the larger/largest ships are intended for large organizations and end-game content, as well are consistent sources of large injections of money, an employee constantly being negative about them, no matter how good they are at doing their job, are eventually going to be removed for one reason or another as they clearly don't want to work on them and just bring down the moral around them for the people that do want to work on them.
All in all, I wish the poster well in their future endeavors but seems to be they just reached the natural end to their time with CIG and now CIG can replace them with someone with more interest in working on the large ships (particularly the spectacular BMM.)
As for the office space, it is not uncommon for tech companies to go a tad overboard with office space design to increase the interest of investors. It doesn't always work out, but isn't uncommon.
The TL/DR for the below rant: Good office chairs are important as bad ones, even if they look cool, can cause damage to the body.
Also, as @Thalstan pointed out, GOOD office desks and chairs are VERY important. I remember when a company I was working for decided to take all the good (but most were old) chairs my department had to replace them with these knock-off brand of decent chairs. After a couple months of using the new chairs I developed severe neck pain as well as some nerve issues, after it got so bad it I had to take time off from work to recover I saw a doctor about it, who sent me to Physical Therapy. The Physical Therapist talked to me about my situation and determined it was the chairs having improper support (put pressure on parts of the spine that shouldn't be and no support for parts of the spine that should) causing the issue after I provided pictures of the chairs and me sitting in them. They treated me, gave me exercises for helping my neck recover, and wrote a note for me to bring to HR to explain that if the chair wasn't replaced then the company would be on the hook for the harm caused by it. HR begrudgingly allowed me to go into the new office space being built out as it had both the old good chairs and new better chairs to grab a chair of my choice. Later HR was told to let all existing staff that wanted to replace the chairs they were forced to use to be permitted to replace them with the chairs in the new space. Additionally, HR had gotten into a lot of trouble as they were found to be intentionally mistreating my department (the money they were given to get us new chairs to replace aging chairs was mostly diverted to buying even better chairs for the new space, while buying us cheap knock-off chairs that looked similar to what Senior Management told them to get in the hopes it would go unnoticed) in search of getting hiring bonuses for both replacing us and the hiring the new staff for the new office space. The new office space was for a new contract the company was going for, but by the time everything was settled the company was only partially awarded the contract so the new space went largely unused and to cut costs it the work was eventually sub-contracted to one of the other winners; HR had been very interested in quickly hiring people for those positions as the way the hiring bonuses worked for HR at that time was they received a certain percentage of the new hire's salary as a bonus for hiring new staff that lasted six months and those positions all paid in the six digits annually. After all of that the way bonuses worked for HR was changed, and ultimately they split off a separate department from HR specific for recruitment.
He'd expressed unwillingness to relocate to either of the new offices.
I can't fault someone for not wanting to move, but also can't fault a company with thousands of employees bringing in millions an year deciding to layoff staff unwilling to relocate from an office they're planning to decommission or not renew the lease on. As would be expected, they'd try to time the individual layoffs around their project schedules and well before the office transition so that new staff willing to relocate can be trained up prior to the transition to minimize the negative impacts that come along with office space relocations (I've been through these, they suck no matter how involved in the process the company and management chooses to be.)
It also sounded like he griped about the larger ships, particularly the precious BMM, too much (he couldn't even refrain from doing so in his post.) Considering CIG has stated that the larger/largest ships are intended for large organizations and end-game content, as well are consistent sources of large injections of money, an employee constantly being negative about them, no matter how good they are at doing their job, are eventually going to be removed for one reason or another as they clearly don't want to work on them and just bring down the moral around them for the people that do want to work on them.
All in all, I wish the poster well in their future endeavors but seems to be they just reached the natural end to their time with CIG and now CIG can replace them with someone with more interest in working on the large ships (particularly the spectacular BMM.)
As for the office space, it is not uncommon for tech companies to go a tad overboard with office space design to increase the interest of investors. It doesn't always work out, but isn't uncommon.
The TL/DR for the below rant: Good office chairs are important as bad ones, even if they look cool, can cause damage to the body.
Also, as @Thalstan pointed out, GOOD office desks and chairs are VERY important. I remember when a company I was working for decided to take all the good (but most were old) chairs my department had to replace them with these knock-off brand of decent chairs. After a couple months of using the new chairs I developed severe neck pain as well as some nerve issues, after it got so bad it I had to take time off from work to recover I saw a doctor about it, who sent me to Physical Therapy. The Physical Therapist talked to me about my situation and determined it was the chairs having improper support (put pressure on parts of the spine that shouldn't be and no support for parts of the spine that should) causing the issue after I provided pictures of the chairs and me sitting in them. They treated me, gave me exercises for helping my neck recover, and wrote a note for me to bring to HR to explain that if the chair wasn't replaced then the company would be on the hook for the harm caused by it. HR begrudgingly allowed me to go into the new office space being built out as it had both the old good chairs and new better chairs to grab a chair of my choice. Later HR was told to let all existing staff that wanted to replace the chairs they were forced to use to be permitted to replace them with the chairs in the new space. Additionally, HR had gotten into a lot of trouble as they were found to be intentionally mistreating my department (the money they were given to get us new chairs to replace aging chairs was mostly diverted to buying even better chairs for the new space, while buying us cheap knock-off chairs that looked similar to what Senior Management told them to get in the hopes it would go unnoticed) in search of getting hiring bonuses for both replacing us and the hiring the new staff for the new office space. The new office space was for a new contract the company was going for, but by the time everything was settled the company was only partially awarded the contract so the new space went largely unused and to cut costs it the work was eventually sub-contracted to one of the other winners; HR had been very interested in quickly hiring people for those positions as the way the hiring bonuses worked for HR at that time was they received a certain percentage of the new hire's salary as a bonus for hiring new staff that lasted six months and those positions all paid in the six digits annually. After all of that the way bonuses worked for HR was changed, and ultimately they split off a separate department from HR specific for recruitment.
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One good point I saw being raised is that of taxes.
Office lease, rent, furniture, equipment etc... all tax deductions!
Im not sure of the tax laws in the UK and Manchester, but if you spend $X million on business expenses, there is very likely some juicy tax write offs that CIG is taking advantage of.
Office lease, rent, furniture, equipment etc... all tax deductions!
Im not sure of the tax laws in the UK and Manchester, but if you spend $X million on business expenses, there is very likely some juicy tax write offs that CIG is taking advantage of.
I'm a little confused was this guy a Q&A tester or did he work in marketing? His comments about telling people that the Cutlass Steel was overpriced and they didn't listen to him doesn't make any sense to me, all positions in a company are important but I find it odd that he thinks that as Q&A the marketing team should listen to him.
He does not specify his exact role, just "7 years of experience in multiple departments".
If they were in Derby which was the only other UK office as far as I am aware, that was the previous Mo-Cap dept if I remember correctly.
Radegast74
Space Marshal
Came here to say that the door was probably paid for by the UK taxpayer, via tax incentives or deductions.
I think people are getting spun up too much about silly stuff...there are reasons to not be happy about stuff, but this...
Finally my tax is actually being spent on something.