Riot Games

Engineering:

• Engineer-driven
• Very low "paperwork" style tasks other than documenting my code and APIs.
• Other engineers and management are happy to hear "this isn't as good as it could be" and want to improve.
• Culture of continual improvement.
• Engineers understand where we are and where we need to be with regards to technical debt accrued during the startup phase.
• Ambition and performance are encouraged and rewarded.
• The development process for my team is very efficient. We have very few wasted hours in meetings or management overhead.
• Allows open-sourcing code written on the job (http://github.com/RiotGames).

General:

• Very intelligent people.
• Most managers are former engineers.
• Very flexible schedules; don't miss meetings and get your work done. No other requirements, generally.
• Strong gamer culture (as might be expected).
• The vast majority are hardcore LoL players. There are even dedicated training sessions to teach lower and mid-level players how to play the game. Occasionally, we even have advanced training from former professional LoL players.
• Every major game release in the industry ends up with a dedicated group of players who buy the game and play together and discuss it.
• Everyone in the company is encouraged to interact with players on forums and in real life, regardless of title.
• Pay is solid.
• Standard benefits are generally what you'd expect from a company this size. Some nonstandard perks are unique to Riot, however: there are many company trips, big and small. In the past, we've traveled to Ensenada, Mexico, and Las Vegas. For smaller trips, the whole company attended an advanced screening of The Dark Knight Rises and an opening night screening of The Avengers. Riot also paid for shuttles to MLG Anaheim for any Rioter who wanted to go. This year, any Rioter who wanted a 3-day pass to PAX Prime got one free. Other perks include subsidized vending machines in the office (25c sodas, for example) and Starbucks coffee machines in every kitchen. We get dinner paid by Riot and delivered to the office for every night you work past 8 pm.

I could go on and on. It's really awesome to work at Riot.

Riot has growing pains. LoL exploded in popularity, and there are a lot of things that Riot has to deal with and clean up to continue growing.

Underperformers are not always let go as quickly as they should be, though this is getting better.

The quality level of the software is improving, but it has a long way to go before much of the codebase could be considered solid. Many efforts are in motion to raise the quality bar, but there's a lot to be done. Test coverage particularly needs a lot of work for older projects. Newer projects tend to be much more solid.

People can be a little on the immature side from time to time. It's funny and all, but sometimes I just want to get stuff done.

It's not always clear how underperformance is being addressed in other parts of the company.

Keep it up, you guys are great.

Perhaps a bit more direct communication with the guys in the trenches.