Niantic

Engineers are mostly friendly and helpful. I've worked with a few folks who are highly technical and very helpful. Before Covid, we used to play some of our games together, which helped to build close relationships with colleagues.

When I first joined the company, I felt great. I had friendly and helpful colleagues, and we were working like a family. The work was challenging but fun. I thought I made the right decision to turn down several offers that could have paid me more, if not significantly more. I even took a pay cut when I left my previous company.

Even though I don't want to say I shouldn't have taken the offer in the first place, at least I should have left earlier.

There are too many engineers who quit or are planning to leave soon. That's a very bad sign for the overall eng org. Promotions are not transparent and sometimes are simply ridiculous.

Multiple engineers got promoted too easily/quickly, and some of them were also promoted to managers/leads with minimal working experience, let alone management experience. Their promotions cannot be justified fairly, given the fact we have many other better performers who are left out time and time again.

Basically, some of the managers who have real power promote the engineers they like better, regardless of their actual contributions. Ironically, a few high performers also got promoted, but not before they showed their intent to leave the company.

We lost some very good folks, including managers, over the past 12 months, and I am not seeing any sign to stop the bleeding soon. They left for different reasons, but when I joined, I heard only a couple of engineers left the company during the first several years. Now it has become a fashion.

There are also concerns such as how the company could come up with the next hit game/product, culture, communication, etc. Admittedly, these issues exist in almost every company, though, startups or public companies.

One day, if that day ever comes, I'll be very happy if the value of my stock options can be measured by counting green paper instead of white ones.