Pros
Esprit de corps is high, with lots of enthusiastic and hard-working co-workers. The employees are creative and intelligent, and the overall atmosphere is very pleasant... at least on the surface. The gaming industry's notorious sexism didn't seem to be in effect; female employees were treated with respect and appeared to have ample opportunity for advancement.
Cons
* Bait and switch employment. When I was first hired, I received a lengthy song and dance about how Riot was different than other game companies. They claimed they respected work-life balance and that, while crunch times did happen, normal employment hours averaged 40-50 hours a week. This was a flat-out lie; 80-100 hour weeks were expected. Long work hours are forgivable; deceiving people about them isn't. * Poor work-life balance. Along those lines, a number of the company's smaller "perks" disguise their desire to have you live, eat and breathe Riot all the time. They offer subsidized dinners when you work late (which is often), plan vacations and trips to the movies as part of company outings, and otherwise monopolize as much time as possible. If you're young, single and devoted to work, this can be a good fit. If you're in a relationship or like doing anything outside of the office, stay away. * Bad management. Management seems to have little idea about how to handle employees, and tactics shift almost day to day. What's expected of you on Monday may be 180 degrees different on Tuesday, then back to the beginning on Wednesday. Meetings take up a huge portion of the work day, with little or no practical impact coming out of them. Some people seem to spend all their time preparing PowerPoint presentations about what they do instead of getting down to the business of doing it. Resources are poorly spent, and an overall lack of leadership pervades. In many cases, managers were perfectly happy to lie about employees under them rather than take responsibility for mistakes they themselves had made. * Arrogance, bordering on narcissism. Riot encourages "go-getters" and "leaders," which often translates to people who put their own ambitions in front of the greater good. Internecine politicking is rampant, and employees are often tossed under the bus based on agendas that have nothing to do with the company's business or product. There's a lot of back-biting and factionalism... though less in the rank-and-file workers than in middle management and above. Riot tries to bill itself as "anti-corporate," but its overall culture is corporate in the extreme. Furthermore, a general egotism pervades among all levels of employment. The company seems to feel that a hit game gives them license to treat others with contempt or dismissal, which cuts them off from a lot of potentially beneficial people and ideas. A general fraternity atmosphere occasionally turns into the actively cruel. For instance, a company party was held on St. Patrick's Day 2012, featuring little people dressed up as leprechauns. The "performers" hid their faces behind ski masks that clearly weren't a part of their costumes, to save them embarrassment and humiliation. It made for an awkward and unpleasant event, compounded by senior management's seeming obliviousness to the issue. *Lack of product diversity. Everyone there loves League of Legends, and obviously the game is doing quite well. But there were no signs of trying to diversify beyond that core product, or do more than expand it as far as it can go. They'll be fine as long as sales remain high, but should the market change, this company doesn't appear to have a contingency plan in place.
