Yeah, there’s a big fucking surprise: Even the employees at Wargaming are saying the company sucks. What’s more, they’re saying the same thing that many customers have been saying lately.
How do we know this? Well, it’s all over the internet folks. All one has to do to see it is look for it. There are literally dozens of sites where people post about the companies they either work for now or have worked for in the past.
We’re just looking at Wargaming though, and we’re only going to look at reviews done recently. (Links to original site of reviews maintained for verification). Here we go:
February 22, 2017
“Great “start” company but not a forever job”
Neutral Outlook – No opinion of CEO
I have been working at Wargaming.net full-time (More than a year)
Pros:
- Depending on what studio you’re working for, your co-workers become your second family
- Great for experience and connections
- Events
- Free food!
- Benefits are great
- If you have questions, you get answers almost immediately
Cons:
- The problem with Wargaming is that it grew way too quickly which led to a very long list of problems, some still ongoing
- They don’t have any idea about the future and the company is hanging on by one game
- It’s very hard to progress within this company because of the lack of expansion, so if you want to be an artist or a writer, this is NOT the company for you (only one game here)
- If you get a promotion, … be prepared to go through transition HELL and cleaning up people’s messes
- The pay is bad like really bad and plenty of people work unpaid OT
- Clear disconnect between departments
- Be prepared because 70% of your job is downtime (again, there’s only 1 game so…)
- This is NOT a forever job
Advice to Management:
More work needs to be done internally and please, up the pay. Create more than one game and have a solid plan for the future.
You’ll begin to see a theme here shortly. Next up:
March 2, 2017
Neutral Outlook – Approves of CEOI worked at Wargaming.net full-time (More than a year)
Pros:
Great benefits (401K with match and immediate vesting, decent vacation time, health savings account, etc.) and opportunities for advancement were there if you showed the interest and were willing to stick around long enough. Of course knowing and interacting with the right people is key too. They were also starting a tuition reimbursement program around the time I left but you were locked in for 1-2 years if you … used it. Lots of free snacks, drinks and catered food. The holiday parties and company sponsored events were always a blast. Monthly lunch and learns in which you could attend presentations of other people working within the company to learn what they do and how they do it. Good ratio of men and women. Friendly folks for the most part albeit a bit immature at times. Overall decent environment to work in and a great place to get your feet wet in the industry but little room for advancement if you weren’t at the right place at the right time.
Cons:
A lot of the same old, same old. Company was and it seems still is clinging to one IP. As a result environment started becoming stale with a business as usual type of feel. Management lacked proper training and favoritism ran rampant. QA moved to a separate floor from developers making communication more difficult and fostering an “us” versus “them” mentality. No real training available to elevate QA staff. If you want to truly get better prepare to do that on your own time. Environment can be a bit immature at times which makes taking the job seriously a little difficult.
Advice to Management:
Actively train your QA staff and promote from within whenever possible there are some gems among the pebbles if you’re willing to invest. More internships would be a great start. Start developing a new IP not everyone is obsessed with tanks.
So, at the start of the year, all Wargaming has going for it is food and parties. No wonder they’re all a bunch of fat asses. What’s more, the consensus is they’re all immature and there’s little or no communication between departments. Let’s watch how in just a few months, the wheels come off completely and shit goes even more down hill than that:
July 18, 2017
I worked at Wargaming.net full-time (More than 3 years)
Pros:
- Work/life balance. Most employees do their 8 hours and go home.
- Good benefits. Decent vacation time, 401K match and health coverage isn’t bad.
Cons:
- Horrible pay which is far below industry standards (think 50-60%). Cancelled bonuses and very poor pay increases.
- Nepotism. People are promoted based on who they know or are friends with, while others are never given the opportunities they deserve. More backstabbing and internal politics than Game of Thrones.
- Brain drain. All the best, promising talent are either quietly let go or leave to join other companies in the Bay. Those that stick around are the ones that are internally well connected and will never lose their jobs. Office culture is terrible.
- A lack of real leadership. Senior Management offer no real training or processes and no accountable goals, nor do they seem to care.
- Company is clinging to 1 IP for it’s financial security, but those calling the shots are the ones killing the game.
Advice to Management:
Replace Senior Management with people that care about the game and their employees, not furthering their own agendas.
Work/life balance will not make up for terrible pay and treating employees poorly.
Wow. He didn’t even comment on the food. But wait, there’s more. This one makes some fairly good arguments FOR Wargaming, but wait ’till you see his AGAINST comments and an observation he makes at the very end. It will look VERY, VERY familiar to what we all experience on the official Forums of World of Tanks:
August 23, 2017
I have been working at Wargaming.net full-time (Less than a year)
Pros:
- Pay and benefits are good compared to averages in the area.
- Unique… so many different cultures and applications
- Exposure to game development process, also get to meet a lot of gamers
- Parking benefit, or commuter bonus
- Week off in Winter + full holidays
- 401k match
- CEO and larger part of the company make effort to send emails, engage on Facebook@Work, and have festivities (though, a … lot of it is irrelevant to the Bellevue office)
- Free gold in game, insider access to new games/items etc
- nice office, nice hardware
- Got to learn and play with lots of technologies, and got experience working within constraints
- lots of board games in-office to borrow … sometimes there are team outings
Cons:
- I wrote out an honest review, but I don’t have the guts to post it because Wargaming rules by fear, and HR is temperamental. I can’t risk that right now if something I wrote is identifiable.
- Dilbert strips are pretty similar. If you work here, you’ll relate to almost all of them. It’s cute at first. Until it’s not.
- I will update my review later once it is safe.
Advice to Management:
- Upper Management: If you’re going to make promises to publishers that you can’t keep, at least be transparent about it so we know what the future will hold. Or, reinforce the current status of things more often.
- The shifting gears and priorities changing all the time ends up on the engineers shoulders. And it is unfair.
- Don’t punish people for complaining, joking, or brainstorming about bugs in the application because “someone higher up might see”. Stop making unrealistic promises to publishers. Software breaks. That’s the reality of it. Stop treating this application (new, still growing, still changing) like it’s a fully-fledged game.
- By the way, half of the reviews on Glassdoor look fake… formulaic: One or two sentences in poor English, in similar date ranges, all with one or two things to say but neutral to positive outlook. Hmmm.
Yeah. That’s VERY fucking familiar, isn’t it? The official forum works the SAME, EXACT WAY: You say something bad or question an aspect of the game and INSTANTLY 20 accounts show up trash talking, bullying, breaking every forum rule there is without ever getting punished and talking about how great the game is and how stupid you are.
And how fucking bad is it when you can’t even ANNONYMOUSLY post a full review for fear of your job? How fucked up is that?
And here we go to finish it off from just two days ago :
September 5th, 2017
I worked at Wargaming.net full-time (More than a year)
Pros:
- Surrounded with talented people. Found a few good friends.
Cons:
- Sexism is rampant.
- Dirty jokes, snide remarks, cold shoulders, icing out.
- Women aren’t taken as seriously as men at Wargaming.
- As a woman you will not be treated fairly.
- After being harassed, screamed at and threatened, I was told if I cried in front of someone there, I would be treated worse. That I would be seen as weak. Because I had human emotions. So I left.
Advice to Management:
Be nice. Be compassionate. Be more open minded. Women have valuable ideas they can contribute if you let them. Don’t isolate them and ignore them. We are just as equal. Create an environment where you can curate a healthy culture for women and men. Where women and men feel safe to express their ideas without ridicule. That is how innovation is achieved.
You mean Wargaming, that protect and promote child pornography, don’t take women seriously? You mean the company that actually bans people that stand up and fight against all the disgusting shit in their game and on their forums treat women like shit? Well, forgive us for NOT being the least bit fucking surprised!
In the end, folks, they run their company about the same exact way they run their forums and game. If you’re a perverted, racists, sexist, Nazi pedophile pig in the IN crowd, you’re taken care of. If you’re not, you’re treated like shit. If you’re a woman, you’re treated like a 12 year old Asian girl with big tits that giggles a lot and wears underwear to work and bends over a lot.
That, ladies and gents, IS Wargaming.
Awesome. A company like this would never ever rig games either.
Of course not! They wouldn’t THINK of it!
Now pardon me…I have to go wash my mouth out with soap.
And guys,, This tells you much. More than you can ever know. It tells you just a small preview of what goes on in the NA offices, (and this is only giving you a glimspe of Belarusian mindset, and Victor Kisyli’s view on how he treats people beneath him, including his very own customers for which he takes money from.
It take’s a special kind of person to turn their back on type of way your business is operated and run.
Another thing, if you guys look even deeper and go back to some of the earlier dates farther back on the Glassdoor you’ll see more former employees that made more remarks farther back warning that the problems have been an issue for a long time, and correlate to now.
Well, not surprising at all to find women are mistreated there. Given the basic mentality of the entire anime, little girl, perverted thing, I’m surprised a woman would ever even apply there, let alone actually work there.
Turns out my thoughts to that end were correct.
I hope “World of Dilbert” has the courage to tell everyone what’s going on once he/she’s settled in a new job. I’m very curious to hear these behind the scenes stories.
What a stupid company!! They know full well to address a number of issues, including a faulty spotting system, and these morons are losing people by the year!!! As much as I love World of Tanks, I have to be harsh in my criticism of this piece of crap company for leaving a number of problems, including failing to stop bullying, leniency on cheaters, mediocre penetration mechanics(yeah, just came back from a battle in my SU-85 TD and I shot a KV-2 TWICE BROAD SIDE!!! Guess what? 0 damage!! And I have a tier 7 gun!!), delusions that the game is fine, poor management of this game, and absolute failures at giving a decent amount of pay to its workers to name some problems. It’s amazing that this company still exists.