Disney

Great company overall, great respect for employees' work/life balance, great perks – many of which I pleasantly discovered along the way. Simply being hired seems to further open the already open floodgates of other companies trying to hire you when you work as a software engineer in California (LA area specifically).

For single guys reading this, there is also a good amount of attractive girls, and as long as eye candy isn't a negative distraction for you personally, this can be a good thing.

Really nice campus and people. Not a lot of negatives I can say about Disney.

If you are interviewing with them or were offered a position, take it.

Unless you have an established history of working with the world's largest companies and would need to do more research to see how Disney stacks up against them, then this will be an immediate "pro" that you will feel when it comes to the doors it opens if you are ever in a position where you have to look elsewhere for employment.

With all the constant layoffs that seem to be quarterly from my experience, having the Disney name on your resume never hurts. Although most websites seem to say every 6 months, don't count on it being that long between layoffs. I don't mark the dates of every layoff we had since I started; to me, it felt pretty much seasonal.

What seems to be quarterly/semi-annual layoffs is huge. I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, but this also led, in some areas and to some degree, to a negative and delusional environment at times.

Negative in the sense that certain people seem to be so afraid of whatever they are afraid of that they are willing to lie and throw others under the bus (via reasonable doubt), rather than to take responsibility or get things done. Not to name names or specific projects, but there was one example where team A failed to communicate something to team B, and team B gave team A a failing grade on something they were asked to evaluate. This miscommunication was minor and affected little to nothing, since the task would have been needed down the road when team A was actually ready for it. But the attitude in the resolving meeting was team A's manager coming in hot, trying to put the blame on team B. Team B corrected them and calmly explained how there was no actual issue and that the work in question would simply be done when team A felt they were ready. Team A then felt relief and comfort once given the reality of the situation and assured that it wasn't a big deal or would be a negative mark on their team.

To help paint a better picture without naming names or projects, imagine a manager coming into a meeting visibly upset and on fire, trying to put the blame on team B. Have team B easily and quickly shut this attempt down, then turn to his/her team and literally walk down the line trying to get someone to fall on their sword for a non-existent problem so that they take the blame (and thus get it put on their performance review, which ultimately means you'll face losing your job depending on your manager's personal feelings about you). Just to have the other side of the table point out that the "issue" is such a minor thing that no one was concerned about and simply wasn't a big deal. At that point, the fired-up manager, who was at fault for the actual miscommunication, shows a sigh of relief akin to someone about to lose their home to not paying their mortgage that just won the lottery. That is the type of "I will do anything to protect myself from admitting fault, even when the issue is simply in my head and is not a real thing, or is a real thing but not a big deal" that you might see. Others include using reasonable-doubt strategies to flat-out lie to put another person under the bus, even if that person never did what was said or the person saying it simply has no idea what they are talking about. And when this is proven or shown, don't expect it to matter if your manager doesn't seem to like or respect you anyway. Yes, this seems suspect and sketchy, but once you realize HR's job is to protect the company rather than deal with managers and their suspicious ongoing behaviors (which is the nicest way I can put it), then you can't be surprised to see how certain decisions or actions are taken by those that take it.

Delusional as in, and this is just my opinion and perception, that people would rather BS an issue than own it, deal with it, and move past it. For example, a certain title was rejected by Apple due to its method of trying to use IAP, a violation of rules which any iOS developer should know about (sorry if that sounds arrogant, but Apple's rules are pretty straightforward to those of us that work as iOS developers). Rather than admit time is needed to fix the mistake and just simply delay the game the necessary amount of time, the individual running that project ensured the higher-ups the game would still make the deadline, even though it was obvious to all of us that wasn't a realistic possibility. The day of or the day before the submission due date needed to ensure we could make the release date (I forget which), and it was finally delayed for needing more time. I always felt that this could have been a situation where someone(s) messed up, but rather than just own it and do something about it, they BS'd their way to bidding time that just wasn't there. Of course, I could be wrong, but that is how it looked from my perspective. You'll see a couple of questionable things like this that makes you wonder if the "situation" simply is a case of person A trying to save their own butts from what is likely to be the boogeyman rather than any real threat, even for minor things, rather than being a situation where they thought they could get it done but were wrong. Again, I could be wrong since that was a situation from my perspective based on what I personally observed.

You see a number of questionable things, and it doesn't seem like it comes from the top, since the top in every company I've been to, including Disney, tends to take the position of "it is what it is, we'll deal with it." It is those managers in the middle that treat everything, even minor things, like it is a cause to enter World War 3. It is those managers that fall under what I am describing that DI needs to take a look at and take action against, especially when their competency and even integrity can be easily shown through strong evidence to require HR and higher up's attention at the very least – and this is me being nice about it.

Even with that said, not to mention the ton of things I could say but don't have time nor motivation, I still recommend joining if you are offered employment, if you are okay with the idea that it might only last between 1 and 3 years due to the very unstable nature of the company. Simply working for Disney (in my case, DI) and living in CA pretty much has a number of companies trying to steal you away (which might just be my experience, but it was profound). And not just small companies, but big ones such as Facebook, Google, Activision, Amazon, etc., will eventually have people reaching out to you for opportunities within their companies.

No matter how long you are there, as long as you have a good team of people you feel you can trust (which was true for me until I joined the last team I was put on in the aftermath of one of DI's restructuring where I felt I couldn't trust the majority of the personalities there), then you will likely be fine. Of course, I don't have experience working in every single department or job title, but what I have experienced, I would recommend to others since Disney as a whole is a good company that will have many doors open for you simply by having worked there.

The highest individual I had any direct interaction with was Nikki Katz, and she is, in my opinion, a very smart and level-headed woman that is great at her job. Most higher-ups like her at DI gave me this impression that they are good people with a lot of talent, drive, work ethic, etc. My only issue is with a few individuals lower than them on the hierarchy. Any run-ins I had with the CEO were random and candid, like holding the door open for each other, but the impression I get is that he is also a good guy and works hard to try to make the company the best it can be.

Stop cutting from the bottom and start looking at the people who typically squeak by because they are seemingly protected via their management status, especially when employees can make extremely damaging arguments, at least about their manager's work performance, and can beg the question if said manager has ulterior motives. When serious accusations are brought up and they have evidence to back them up, then HR or whomever should investigate the manager in question rather than play peacekeepers that seem to take the stance that the manager, even if they are flat out wrong, are exempt from repercussions and responsibilities.

Also, demand more code quality from every single team. Ultimately, I might not have been the best at playing corporate bureaucratic games, but the code I've had to fix, extend, and look at, etc., was usually riddled with amateur mistakes that led to bugs that caused them to get rejected by QA initially. Clearly, skill is not a requirement for advancement as long as you know how to play sketchy corporate games and have friends in higher positions.