Epic Games

• Great coworkers; they are brilliant and fun-loving people.
• Competitive pay.
• Unlimited PTO.
• Great healthcare plan.
• Remote work and flexibility.

The pros you just read sound great, right? Who wouldn't want all those benefits?

Well, I'm here to tell you that you better be prepared to work for it.

As someone who has worked in FAANG before but is fairly new to the video game industry, I am absolutely shocked at how things operate here at Epic. Priorities are constantly shifting, and you will be given incomplete or unclear requirements during the course of any project. Things will happen often where you will have to completely shift your focus to something new while working on something that was planned. You're going to be working with important people across various time zones that make it hard to communicate and collaborate effectively. In my teams, there is no clear ownership of certain services/areas, and the processes we have are a mess.

There is a serious problem here at Epic when it comes to leadership and upper management, who cannot commit to priorities and organize work. People here work in a culture of fear from senior leadership, and it's a chaotic place to work compared to my previous experiences. There are gaps in headcount and resources in design and product areas that cause massive headaches for the engineering department. The work in engineering is also disoriented because we can't seem to break down the work in an effective manner. Things will get missed easily, and there's a lack of clarity on the deliverables. Work will start even without all the prerequisite docs/specs that outline how things should go. There's a constant chase for answers during the course of work, and it's up to you to figure it out.

Be prepared to play office politics because it is something you will need to do well at to succeed here at Epic.

This is the most chaotic tech workplace I've ever been a part of.

Give more trust to your teams and stop throwing so many wrenches onto our work. I understand that business will need to pivot and change priorities, but almost every single time that has happened, it's because of disorganization and miscommunication upstream.

You need to invest more into certain areas. Our teams need more product and design involvement. The projects we are expected to tackle are beyond our bandwidth. We are forced to do hacky things to deliver, which will eventually come back to bite us.

The company's ambition is massive, and we need the resources and organization to make it happen.