Riot Games

Good benefits.

Talented people across disciplines.

A real passion for making great games within game teams.

Career progression is legitimately terrible. You can slave away, get positive feedback, and be stuck at the senior level forever, in spite of outperforming those a level above you for years (I've seen this happen to multiple people in multiple disciplines).

Leadership favors hiring at the highest levels but doesn't manage to fill out our ranks with promising associate/mid-levels. Half the people they hire don't end up performing.

It feels like every director just fills out principal roles like Supreme Court justices.

Vertical.

DEI kinda sucks. Teams aren't very diverse, especially in design and engineering. Everyone is white or East Asian, and basically no women.

Hire more people at junior levels and stop trying to recycle the whole org when you get hired into a high-level management position.

Hire managers with actual experience making the product, not just people who've cycled through management roles their whole career. Most senior managers don't hold a candle in skill to your average senior engineers right now, and you could test that.