|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Apr 12th, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
Manager
|
London, England
|
|
Rotten from the top down
|
|
- It's a foot in the door for better opportunities
- There ARE some good people there, they're just powerless
|
I thought I knew what a toxic workplace culture was before I started at Frontier but I was drastically unprepared for what I faced next.
David Braben and his team of direct reports are so wildly out of touch in how to run this company in 2024 that they should all step down.
Make no mistake, David Braben may no longer be CEO, since changing his title to "Supreme Chancellor" or something equally asinine, but he will remind you on every occasion that Frontier is still very much his company, undermining those who work for him at almost every opportunity. I'm not just talking about things you'd expect to be put before executives, but also arguing on the minutiae such as game store copy, logos, social media plans. Things a CEO really shouldn't be dealing with, especially one so far detached from the realities of modern video game marketing.
Mere weeks before Frontier announced redundancies, all but one or two of the senior directors of the company upped and left, never to be heard from again. They literally all walked out or resigned. The only ones who remained to make executive decisions about who stayed and who got made redundant were people who'd never worked with any of the people involved.
My role, among many others, was made redundant following the shambolic mismanagement of the company throughout the pandemic. Among other companies, Frontier boasted of "unprecedented growth" during the COVID pandemic, only to completely fail to predict the downturn post-pandemic and then have to cut and run. Two weeks after saying "We're not looking at redundancies", the news broke.
Meetings were had that I can only describe as "absolutely insane" whereby the CFO would proclaim there was no market for a game that had been mismanaged throughout the process.
Meetings where the current CEO on a 6-figure salary would try to appeal to the angry mod by saying "My daughter is also struggling financially".
There was an intense culture of blame between siloed departments.
Marketing were annoyed at Creative Services because they could never produce assets, Creative Services were annoyed at Marketing for said requests. Devs were annoyed at Marketing, Marketing were annoyed at Devs, There was constant b*tching and blame games between and to every single department and this was actively fed by the managers above.
I must end all of this by saying, I'm not actually bitter about the redundancy and that you shouldn't dismiss this review as such. I was RELIEVED to be made redundant.
I am now in therapy to try and wrap my head around all of the things I experienced at Frontier. I would rather not work in the games industry than work for this company.
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
|
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
Step down or ACTUALLY step back and hire competent people relevant to today's video game market, rather than riding off the back of a game you made in 1984.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
4.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Apr 18th, 2024 04:50AM
|
Apr 18th, 2024 04:50AM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Apr 10th, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
Higher ups suck
|
|
team lead and team members were great
|
Upper management sucks, they are out of touch and make poor descions for which staff on 20k get made redundant for.
Do not join this company unless you want to be made redundant after there next game flops due to poor descions that you have no control over
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
-1.0
|
DISAPPROVE
|
0.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
RESIGN
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
2.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Apr 13th, 2024 08:47PM
|
Apr 13th, 2024 08:47PM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Apr 7th, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
3D Artist
|
Cambridge, England
|
|
Nice Working environment
|
|
Team is great, friendly and pleasant
|
It's ok so far no big cons
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
0.0
|
NEUTRAL
|
0.0
|
NO_OPINION
|
0.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
3.0
|
5.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
0.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Apr 9th, 2024 04:55AM
|
Apr 9th, 2024 04:55AM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Mar 13th, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
Functionality QA Tester
|
|
|
Great company and team with management and HR issues
|
|
- Incredible talent and team of individuals to work alongside with
- Plenty of opportunities to learn from line managers and seniors
- Nice variety of projects, wasn't assigned to the project I asked to be on but didn't have any complaints with the one I ended up on
- Great benefits packages even though I was remote at the time
|
- It often felt like HR was out for blood with folks coming and going or minor issues being blown out of proportion that would bring team morale down, especially when team members would be wrote up for minor non-issues
- Constant issues with retention and people coming and going
- Progression felt slow, you'd put your heart and soul into milestones knowing that not much in terms of progressing further in your discipline would come or that you wouldn't be noticed at the end
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
0.0
|
NEUTRAL
|
0.0
|
NO_OPINION
|
0.0
|
3.0
|
4.0
|
3.0
|
2.0
|
4.0
|
1.0
|
3.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
The team I worked with was incredibly caring and nurturing, though it felt like upper management and HR was more interested in constantly looking over your shoulder at everything you were doing.
There needs to be less of an 'all eyes, everywhere, all the time' monitoring approach to make people feel more comfortable with their work environment whether they're remote, hybrid or in-office.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
1.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Mar 15th, 2024 07:19PM
|
Mar 15th, 2024 07:19PM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Feb 29th, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
Graduate Game Designer
|
Cambridge, England
|
|
Love working here
|
|
Hybrid working, understanding of work-life balance. Great benefits
|
I haven't found any cons so far
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
|
|
1.0
|
APPROVE
|
0.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
4.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Mar 2nd, 2024 06:21AM
|
Mar 2nd, 2024 06:21AM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Feb 21st, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
A Mixed Bag
|
|
- Some deeply committed, hardworking people.
- No crunch (a rarity in the games industry).
- Opportunities to make significant contributions to projects.
- Opportunities for progression (but be prepared to demonstrate you can deliver in the role you want by doing the job for months without a change to your job title or salary before being formally promoted).
|
- Nepotism and cronyism are rife, and sometimes people are promoted because they’re friendly with the right people rather than because of their talent.
- Overwork and high levels of stress are commonplace (the aforementioned lack of crunch notwithstanding). You’re made to feel like the projects you’re working on are of life-or-death importance.
- Certain disciplines, like design and narrative, are regularly sidelined in the decision-making process. If you work in a creative discipline, be prepared for management to treat you like they could do your job better if only they had the time. Production is seemingly the most valued discipline in the company.
- The company has a not-insignificant number of toxic individuals, some of whom hold very senior roles, although it can feel like raising this issue could jeopardise your career.
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
0.0
|
NEUTRAL
|
-1.0
|
DISAPPROVE
|
0.0
|
2.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
I suspect the company’s current slump is at least partly a result of a myopic focus on metrics. Consider making room at management level for those from creative backgrounds. Great games are more often a product of creative passion than of cold-eyed commercial strategy.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
0.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Feb 23rd, 2024 11:04PM
|
Feb 23rd, 2024 11:04PM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Feb 5th, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
3D Animator
|
Cambridge, England
|
|
Cool enviroment, bad management
|
|
Nice work culture, good team leads, kind people all around
|
Bad managment that lead to the lay off of a bunch of people, poor comunication between teams
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
0.0
|
4.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
0.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Feb 8th, 2024 06:58AM
|
Feb 8th, 2024 06:58AM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Feb 1st, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
Excellent teams but needs to improve integration
|
|
Flexable, supporting and encourging.
Passion is everywhere
|
Project teams are isolated from each other and need better connections
|
|
|
0.0
|
NEUTRAL
|
0.0
|
NO_OPINION
|
0.0
|
4.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
4.0
|
3.0
|
3.0
|
5.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
Some department heads are pushing more for independence then unison. Which helps each team to achieve great results but at the cost of everyone having to repeat the same mistakes and finding unique solutions.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
4.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Feb 3rd, 2024 10:20AM
|
Feb 3rd, 2024 10:20AM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Jan 22nd, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
Tools Programmer
|
Cambridge, England
|
|
Great Colleagues
|
|
Great office atmosphere.
Enjoyable work projects.
|
Company in recent is going through some rough times.
Cambridge is expensive to live.
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
0.0
|
NEUTRAL
|
0.0
|
NO_OPINION
|
0.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
3.0
|
3.0
|
5.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
2.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Jan 25th, 2024 07:47PM
|
Jan 25th, 2024 07:47PM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|
|
lon:fdev
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=372218
|
Jan 17th, 2024 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Frontier Developments
|
Senior Designer
|
Cambridge, England
|
|
Great people, great games, but often a stressful atmosphere from management/direction
|
|
Work with incredible, talented people
Work on great games.
While I would recommend Frontier as a place to work, I would advise going in with your eyes open, and prepare to be potentially treated very badly.
|
Tools can be a bit antiquated
Mis-Management has produced boom/bust cycle, the company has repeatedly grown and then had to do redundancies
Game directors can be quite disrespectful of expertise and developer's time. I faced several occasions where we had to throw out entire milestones of work because the GD didn't "get it".
A lack of opportunities to give or receive career relevant training.
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
0.0
|
NO_OPINION
|
0.0
|
4.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
372218
|
Open
|
Use and trust the talent and expertise of your employees when planning (and do market research too).
Create training opportunities that will help your developers improve each other. If developers are getting more skilled, everybody wins!
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
4.0
|
Open
|
|
|
Jan 19th, 2024 05:17AM
|
Jan 19th, 2024 05:17AM
|
Frontier Developments
|
|
|