Disney

Free park admission, company notoriety, large audience.

Depending on the team, flexibility for remote and hybrid work.

Low wages across the board, lack of promotions, and poor retention incentives.

As a developer, don’t expect the highest engineering standards. Documentation is scarce, and legacy knowledge is constantly lost due to high turnover.

Everyone is leaving because the market is extremely competitive, and Disney refuses to change its policy of paying 15% under market value. That’s right—wages are kept low because that’s how low they are. Their old policy of “you just really have to like Disney to work here” is failing them, and lo and behold, nobody wants to work here.

There’s an old adage here, stated by every one of the many teams I’ve been on: “If you want to get promoted, you have to leave and come back.” Opportunities for advancement here are not a priority, and no one is going to come back once they’ve experienced decent pay elsewhere.

Tech employees (specifically programmers) are offered a long-term incentive package in the form of restricted stock units, which is taxed as imputed income and not even close to a valid supplement for a fair salary.

Park admission used to be the huge selling point for a corporate gig here, but the pandemic has changed that. Getting into a park requires advanced planning/scheduling and a pretty competitive booking calendar. It’s hardly worth it anymore.

They say Disney is a good starting point for your career elsewhere. That seems to be true—name recognition may work to get you a nice job where you actually want to work, and until Disney updates its compensation policies, it will continue to be the main draw.

Middle management has limited ability to change the deep-rooted issues faced by Disney employees. They are often just as underpaid and just as frustrated. Executive leadership, VP and above, are failing to retain talent. Management could insist on a solution to stagnation and poor salary, but they may simply be replaced by someone quieter and more complacent.

Executive leadership is often clueless about this stagnation, or at least very good at acting surprised when it comes up. The solution to this is extremely obvious, and the money is there to make it happen.