Great people to work with and a great atmosphere. Lots of variety in projects to work on, and many interesting challenges to overcome.
The people who work here are great for the most part. Everyone is happy to help each other, and not many try to dump work onto others. At least not at this branch.
Employees were awesome and friendly
Camaraderie. The staff and middle/upper-middle management all get along really well. When deep cuts occur, you can expect a director or senior director to open a tab at the bar.
The good is vastly overshadowed by the bad, however. Multiple people speak of horrible business decisions, favoritism, racism mistreatment, disrespect, and from one person, greed:
Bad business decisions, well above my pay grade. Money over quality was the general attitude there, and we missed out on some great opportunities.
Forecast doesnt look great. There doesnt seem to be much opportunity for growth.
Lots of disorganization and internal office politics conflicted the productivity level. Also lots of animosity across different departments. The anxiety of security also affected work on a negative level. As it was my first established publisher QA gig, I didnt know what to expect. But coming from a background that is more varied now, I could see the weaknesses that were all around SEGA. SEGA Japan and Europe were more of focuses until the mass layoffs and it seems they still are focused on those other regions now.
Increased pressure. There is a new directive that everyone be 100% busy 100% of the time. Its pressing people to invent busy work for themselves so they never appear to be dawdling, or risk getting the stink eye from the new VP as he helicopters around the office.
Deteriorating morale. The new oppressive environment, the constant fear that youll be the next to go. Its poisoning the camaraderie that was always the saving facet of this company. Everyone is on edge, everyone is fearful. No amount of enthusiastic floor speeches are going to keep people happy when theyre constantly looking over their shoulder and waiting on the axe to fall.
- Treated like a number
- Suck ups get to stay longer than hard and dedicated workers
- No Benefits
- Low Pay for California
Management
its always the same. They manage thru fear and threats
why cant we get good managers?
the reset ran out of steam and the products didnt sell. Some didnt sell because they werent any good and that wasnt addressed by many people involved, but there were plenty of products that were good too. While the market does play a role in this I have to say that its not fully to blame. Most problem products werent righted and the organization in general just didnt collectively have its stuff together to change that. It wasnt for lack of good people or even processes, it largely appears that the output from such things was ignored or people even covered problems up fearing their own failures would see them out the door. The big downside of working at Sega America is of course having to work with Sega of Japan and Sega Europe, in particular having to work under the management from SOE over the last several years
which lets face it, hasnt worked out and on reflection appears to have not been a good idea. Yes, Im biased
but its also true isnt it? There are some great people within those overseas places yes, but there are also many failures, politicians and ineffective managers (managers, directors and VPs) too. SOJ typically falls in line with what youd expect of any Japanese company, essentially an organization that looks down on anyone who is not Japanese. Racism. There, I said it. As for SOE. The management (particularly that which has been managing or overseeing the entire Sega West business) has run the entire thing into the ground. A lot of those same people appear to have been doing nothing but empire building for themselves and instead of trying to make the business work have been securing themselves. Better people were ousted unnecessarily in order to pave the way for such empire building. Im happy for the recent change of guard at Sega West, but it hasnt really gone far enough and we needed more directors, leadership and decision-making back at SOA if only to curb the lack of insightful direction, decision-making and interfering from overseas. Why? Those involved just didnt understand the problems from afar, thus couldnt fix them. Ultimately its been difficult to get any products, business or other efforts off of the ground because of the stalemate and lack of decision-making in place and we lost so many good people because of that. Theres a lot of reason to not work there nowadays. Its a good gig to have if you dont have anything else going on of course, but thats as far as Id recommend working there.
Poor performance on new and existing game titles. Reputation as a whole has been dropping like a rock. Many people do not even know they still exist.