Pros: Work-life balance. Visibility into the entire organization. Passionate workers. Good benefits. Family and pet-friendly.

Cons: Management can feel overbearing. Pay is low. Upward movement in engineering is more difficult than necessary. Engineers under senior level must use time clocks.

Pros: Blizzard is far and away the best company in the game business. They allow their game teams enough time to make their games great before releasing them. Every single game they release is top-notch, and they are all hits. Crunch/overtime is minimal to non-existent. They pay well. They treat employees well. They don't have layoffs. The Irvine main campus has every perk you can imagine. If you want to work in the game industry, Blizzard is absolutely the gold standard. Other companies will rise and fall, but Blizzard has been at the top forever and will be there long after all the others fall to the wayside because they do things the right way.

Cons: The 401k matching is pretty underwhelming: a 25% match. I was disappointed with that, but I think that comes from the parent company (Activision-Blizzard) rather than Blizzard itself. It's in Orange County. The weather is great all year round, but it is a very conservative area, so that may bother some people. Within Blizzard itself, however, it feels much more progressive. And how often do you really need to know or care what the political beliefs of your neighbors are?

Pros: Everyone I have worked with is always helpful and dedicated to the work they're doing. My managers trust in my ability to get the work done. We work hard, but having a good work-life balance is always encouraged.

Cons: Experiences vary from team. I've had many opportunities in my department, whereas I've heard of less opportunity for growth in other departments.