Epic Games

Epic has some great benefits, and some of the most competitive pay in the games industry to date. They want the top talent and are not afraid to pay for it.

The average people working at the company are great to work with. They are passionate for what they do and are often great at it too. They love to talk about their work and what makes them excited.

It was a very large company, but it almost never feels that way. You'll know most of the people who work on your project, even if that's 600 people.

Epic QA has a real problem in it. When I first started in QA, most forward progress was slow and often difficult due to one tenant of Epic: “Everyone has a voice,” but often forgets that when everyone has a voice, no one has a voice. Decisions were filibustered to inactivity, with no one being able to agree on a path forward.

That problem is now made worse with the current department. Progress is completely and totally halted and, in some places, regressing. We at least knew what the problems were; we just couldn't fix them. In today's Epic, QA has lost sight of what the problems are, and most people don't even know how to fix them.

Where everyone had a voice, now its direction is dictated by people with the most minimal of understanding, and often very thickly covered in sexism and favoritism.

Beyond all the favoritism and sexism that runs rampant in the department, get used to the idea of Toxic Positivity, where no one is allowed to have individual thoughts or emotions without getting punished for them. Education and innovation are punished; people are told to figure things out for themselves, while others have their work hand-held.

The hypocrisy and overt favoritism demonstrated daily will make good workers lose their sanity. No decisions survive the day, as direction for the department seems to fluctuate by the hour.

If you are one of the few people willing to work after hours, be prepared to be taken advantage of. If you don't work after hours, there are zero repercussions.

Return to the company's core values and value the work of the individual, not the politics. Managers need to dig in and not take feedback at face value. Provide good and useful feedback to those around you. People don't always get better by "figuring it out" and need insight on how things should be done.

Epic used to value different approaches and different ideals. QA needs a return to that mentality. Epic needs to also ensure its departments are run based on merit and not favoritism.