Vantaggi
I'll start of with saying that the products being produced by Structure Studios fill a needed niche and in that way are a great idea. However, with lack of any sort of standards, planning, or end goals, the success of the company seems to be due more to lack of any significant competition in the space than anything being directly done. There are a few pluses to Structure Studios, but most pluses come with catches or downsides. You get free snacks, mostly chips and candy. You get "free food" which mostly consists of frozen microwaveables and instant soup. You get free drinks, but mostly soda. On fridays they bring lunch into the office which is nice to have but its frowned on if you don't go and you are expected to thank them sincerely for it. There is a pool table, which for over a year wasn’t touched at all and only recently started being used. There is a media room which is sold as a place to play games or watch movies but is only used for company meetings and awkward disciplinary meetings. There are occasionally games at friday lunches if you enjoy bingo or pictionary and to be looked down on if you choose not to play. Management does on average take the entire company to some kind of an event once a year. These are usually expensive trips that include hotel and meals. It is frowned on for you to decline these trips or for you to not adequately appreciate them. You start off with 19 days off per year, which seems like an odd number, especially when every job posting they have on the internet claims 20 days of paid time off. That is because management really wants the friday off after thanksgiving, so it was deemed a “mandatory pto day”. When several employees asked to work that day and keep their pto, management made it an actual company holiday, and took one day of pto from everyone. In 2013, the company hired several new employees and by early 2014, most of them had quit and moved on to better jobs at other companies. Management is under the impression and has stated that they hired poorly. In fact, one of the very few things that management has done well was put together an exceptional group of employees most of whom are still in touch today. The office space looks very nice in pictures, it is very artsy and initially that has nice wow factor. However, employees are forced to use cheap office depot chairs, most of which are falling apart and only a few employees have any real privacy or separate space. If you require quiet to get any work done, you won’t find it here.
Svantaggi
Some of the challenges of working here include management who constantly asks you what you are working on even directly after twice a week "scrums" which consist of software engineers justifying their work to management instead of just quickly telling each other what they are working on. As a software engineer, you will be told to implement a feature, exactly how to implement it and have very little to no room for discussion because all the design of features is done by a tag team of management and QA, none of which have any software design experience. In fact, the collective knowledge of computer science is often disregarded, and it has been stated that, "Just because everyone does *that* a certain way, isn't enough reason for us to." As a new employee you will be forced to "prove yourself" with none of your opinions holding any weight regardless of your experience. If you are looking for a place to make a difference, this is not the company for you. At Structure Studios, different is bad and needs to be eliminated anywhere it is seen. If you have ideas on how you could make processes better (and you should), keeping them to yourself is the best course of action because anything other than praising the way things are done is seen as undermining the company. This is even true on processes that are only created or initiated since you have started working there. In fact, past accomplishment, no matter how rose colored, is weighed more heavily than anything else. Including expertise, experience, common sense, and standards. In short, your opinion will never be as valuable as someone who has been there longer than you, despite the quality of the work presented. Management defers to QA in every design decision, even when opposed by the developer working on the feature, modern software design principles, and common sense. Management also often gives developer direction through QA, making QA appear to be above dev, causing internal conflict. The salary is below par for Las Vegas, especially when you add in the inadequate health care. Management counts potential bonuses as part of salary, except when you are given raises. The cap on bonuses never changes. Management goes above and beyond to never make a decision. During a period of 3 months in 2013, development crunched up to 100 hours a week. Crunching was never acknowledged, no comp time was offered, and no meals were offered during that time. It wasn't until after the team complained, several months later that it was even acknowledged. Don’t expect backing from the the senior dev team members either. They hate managing just as much as upper management and chooses not to get involved in any decisions or fight for any new tools or processes, and rarely even sees the need for them. You get 19 vacation days per year, and you need them since any time you want to take off is deducted from PTO. Need to go to the doctor? PTO, need to pick up a prescription or meet the cable guy? PTO. Very rarely it isn’t if you can squeeze it into your lunch hour, but you still have to make up the time. Meanwhile, management will disappear from the office on a whim for days at a time. Everyone else is required to log time off in the company calendar. You are also required to give several days notice for things like going to the doctor. Management is also incredibly inappropriate, disparaging former employees in front of others. They will also praise you in private meetings and then talk about your lack of performance with your co workers when you aren’t there. Management convinces themselves that employees are out to destroy them and systematically targets one after the other trying to cleanse the company of evil. Management has also been known to yell and scream at hourly employees, call them stupid in front of their co-workers, and encourage them to quit, presumably, to avoid paying unemployment.