I worked at Hardsuit Labs full-time for more than 3 years
Pros
Appreciated the opportunity to work at Hardsuit and now, appreciate the contrast
Paradox can’t let studio fail yet, so there is some job security unless they don’t like you but they won’t tell you until too late
Devs are pretty cool if they stick around and/or aren’t fired but turnover is high regardless
“They try” and “they mean well” is the best thing to say about studio management usually followed by “but…”
Thankful for new opportunity in Seattle, even if in remote section
Cons
Pay is much lower than other Seattle studios
Studio is also cheap with reviews and raises
While “they try”, studio management and production fails more than they should
Managers are hit or miss – some non-existent, rest micromanage or do not task well
No producer mentorship
Managers are cast-offs from failed positions at other companies or failed companies
Studio listens and promotes contractors more than internal team (until they fire them), pay contractors more, too
Lot of wasted work
Post questionable reviews to inflate their image (check out the glowing HR-written 5 stars below, already reported)
Contracts don’t seem set up well and hurt company because company agreed to something unrealistic
Shift with parent company has caused increasing problems
Parent company “sort of owning us” is a problem because they aren’t fully motivated to help vs. having just enough leverage to force change
Sudden shifts in personnel that make no sense and could be corrected
The we do a “careful selection of applicants” claim isn’t true – often they have difficulty getting applicants because there’s much better opportunities in the area (more pay, more benefits, larger support structure)
Strange art turnover, worse, art department isn’t trusted
Gameplay design (or lack thereof) is enough to give headaches that last a year (or the whole dev cycle). Game designers are pretty closed off and don’t take critiques well
Left hand doesn’t know what right hand is doing. Or the left hand either.
Strangely, contract workers paid much more than full-time and trusted more to be face of product with disastrous results when trust is revoked suddenly
Management says they mean well, and at times, seem sincere…
…until they don’t and do the exact opposite of whatever platitude they’re championing today (below)
Management promotes saving money on one hand while setting fire to it with the other
Growing pains seem to have lasted a while, still going, never seem to end
Problem with fixing culture while trying to grow starting to create bigger problems, growing too fast and losing people as a result
Enter into projects and IPs they know very little about, but don’t make the effort to really learn or care
Drawing eye of execs is enough to guarantee any task will take twice as long as you overexplain everything you’re doing and hope they understand and remember the answer
Writing "deptartment" are stubborn and unwilling to make changes or listen to feedback, seem to take stubborn direction and stance from former writing experiences at studio
High level execs randomly fill in for other producers - unfortunately, makes it hard to do job well
Meetings are like weird let’s read the thing that was sent out and could have read then but now we’ll have a meeting where we’ll read it and everyone else wants to scream because everyone has other work they need to do to finish. the. game.
Studio problem with micromanaging – you have to Justify every single decision to the point you wonder why they even hired you.
Advice to Management
Don’t get HR shills to write reviews on Glassdoor, it makes others in studio motivated to write their own that are far more honest
Execs need consistent behavior - some too hands on and unhelpful, others act like can't ever be bothered and are unhelpful
Figure out why people leave and then ask yourself why they are leaving, and if necessary, why you hired them in the first place
Work on products you understand - because explaining how an RPG works to those who never worked on one but insist on approving and judging each piece of content wastes a lot of time
Don’t work on IPs and genres if you’re not going to hire for them
Stop embarrassing yourself in Paradox milestone meetings because you all sound like idiots who have no idea what’s going on and inspires no trust from publisher
