Riot Games reviews

Same with the pros above, I don't consider these purely negative, but they do present some challenges. Most of these center on how Rioters communicate effectively as the scale of the company increases. - Hiring feels SLOW. The need to maintain Riot culture in addition to finding highly qualified candidates can make it feel like you're constantly searching for a unicorn. It's super important to find cultural fits. But if your team needs to hire 5 people to succeed, get ready to feel like you're short on resources for the next year. - Immature communication channels. Riot is gradually figuring out how to manage team interactions as the company grows across multiple offices, but this can often be painful. There is still some startup mentality where people think they can just call folks into a room/meeting and everyone will be on the same page. This can sometimes lead to a sense that you need to be "in the room" in order to have your opinion matter. - Too many recurring meetings. As Riot grows and it becomes harder to have casual face-to-face conversations with all stakeholders, lots of folks try to schedule meetings as a replacement. These drain the productive juices out of many participants. Be prepared to push back on any meeting invite that doesn't have a set, clear agenda. They will try to take over your calendar. - Weak meeting facilitation. Riot prides itself on being a flat organization. Bosses don't dominate the discussion and all Rioters are encouraged to participate. Riot tries to create a meritocratic environment for surfacing ideas in meetings, where anyone is encouraged to speak up at any time. But without strong facilitation, this often leads to people who are willing to interrupt or those whose style is to "think out loud" to be the majority of the voice that gets heard. This has led to an impression among many that when it comes to getting your vision across at Riot, only alpha personalities are valued. This is an unfortunate (and inaccurate) perception, but it's not helped by lack of strong facilitation during meetings. Riot needs to learn stronger facilitation techniques in order to maintain meritocratic interactions without accidentally promoting a culture that values "waiting to talk" over listening. Be prepared to exercise patience here. - Side-effects of a strong culture of ownership. Usually this is a great thing, as it encourages teams to take responsibility for what they create end-to-end without pointing fingers when they assumed another team would handle something for them. But a side effect one will notice over time is that some teams come to believe they own an entire type of problem space for the company and can become territorial when other teams start to tread in their domain. This is something management seems sort of aware of and is gradually dealing with over time, but it can be a pain point. People who excel at inter-team collaboration and relationship building will be most effective under these circumstances. - Individual Rioters are responsible for maintaining their own work/life balance. This is a positive in principle, but I think the company could do more to arm new Rioters with some practical tools & techniques. Nobody makes you stay late or work weekends, but it's very easy to fall into doing that at Riot if you don't make a conscious effort to stay on top of it.

For anyone who has been in Riot read the class-action lawsuit knows almost every single thing called out in the Kotaku article and the lawsuit are legitimate and real. Although I personally got frustrated more than I would have liked (I tend to be headstrong), my performance reviews were solid and I was never told that there may be issues with my position. Then, out of the blue I was laid off. However, it wasn't even the being let go without explanation that hurt the most. It was the being mistreated at every step along the way. Seriously no one could tell me for over 6 months WHO my manager was. They told me I was not a "strategic thinker" even though they knew nothing about why I advocated for the changes I did. They completely disregarded a woman who left in my dept who called sexism when she and I were both overlooked for a position that was then given to a man who had 2.5 years of experience (when we both had over 10 years of experience). They refused to answer why he was given this role when he clearly had far less experience than both she and I. They then ignored that this man then went on a power trip and would not prioritize any of my work (despite having PROOF that my efforts were in fact paying significant dividends). That man then disinvited me to meetings that I should have been apart of and made decisions about me that didn't actually involve me. He wouldn't respond to communications and questions from me that he knew I need to be successful in my role but he had no problem communicating with the men in the dept. He would then claim he just forgot to mention it (when it significantly would affect how I worked with the team). He forced me to work on things that they knew were outside my skill set just to get confirmation biases that I wasn't good and needed help (they then admitted to me that they had done that). They labeled me "not a big enough gamer" even though I played more LoL than anyone in my department. They told me they were open to finding me a better role and then 3 separate times got started and then shot down the ideas. My then "supposed manager" took nearly 2 hours of blabbing rather than admitting I was being let go. I had to ask him why we were talking for 2 hours with no clear sign about what the conversation was about and had to ask him "are you trying to let me go" in which he then responded "that is what they asked me to do". WHO IS THEY? He wouldn't answer. That man then put his arm around me and tried to coddle me as though I was a child. Being a woman does NOT make me weak and his insinuation that I needed to be hugged is outrageous. Some may misconstrue that as highly inappropriate although I know that was not his intention. Finally, Riot built up a case against me. They only talked to 3 people I rarely worked with any they knew I had contention with, rathering the speaking to the 12 people I worked most closely with to get feedback. I loved Riot with all my heart when I started. It was (I thought) the best company I had ever worked for. I just didn't realize (until after I was let go) that their behavior was NOT related to me, it was related to the fact that I was a woman. I spoke with 6 other woman in the office who mentioned very similar/same behavior that happened to them. What a shame when something you love so much, becomes the biggest nightmare you can imagine. I hope no one ever has to go through that again.