Naughty Dog Employee Reviews about "great people"

Pros

Work on amazing games with great people

Cons

Insane crunch hours, little to no recognition or acknowledgment

Pros

- Great people. Some of the most inspirational, passionate, and dedicated I've worked with. - Games are second to none in their genre. Contributing to them was a constant source of inspiration and satisfaction. - Benefits and and additional compensation were great.

Cons

- Absolutely no creative scope planning and scheduling which leads to an irresponsible amount of crunch and waste. There seemed to be very little acknowledgement by studio leadership of this issue. - Review and career development processes were clearly informal, and a bit of mystery.

Pros

Great devs: You can tell these are some of the best of the best they rarely mess up meaning you work less. Great people: Most of them are funny, fun to hang around, and make for great friends. Great engine: Their engine is incredible to make 3D person games and a lot easier than something like unreal 4. Money: I got promoted 3 times during the 4 years I worked there (3 TIMES!) and they really sort you out and can tell who works the most and single them out. Started around 80k a year and went up to around 170 k a year in the end of employment before I got a better offer.

Cons

Crunch: A lot of crunch before a game is released, but a higher up said they would sort that out later so it could of changed. Management: Not very organized, but that could've changed in the time I left. I don't want to point fingers but one of the higher ups isn't very organized, of course you said you were gonna rehaul the system so it could of changed.

Pros

ND is a top studio with some of the most talented folks in the business. Lots of great people, really passionate about doing great work. Sony the parent company, seems to take a pretty hands-off approach and avoids meddling with the studio.

Cons

Most everyone works in an open office plan environment. The noise can be very distracting so pretty much everyone has noise-cancelling headphones. It is a high pressure environment, like many game studios. And there is pressure to work long hours. While the studio has expanded greatly, the management style has not changed much. The net result of this is that there are people in management roles who shouldn't be.