I have been working at Illogic full-time as VR Developer. - VR Developer Illogic Employee Review

Travel good for a long

Time and I’ll travel again

I don’t regret my time spent in Illogic since I feel I’ve learned a lot about software programming and I’ve acquired useful professional skills. RECRUITMENT AND SALARY If you have a university degree it is very easy to be employed and the salary can be enough if you are good at negotiating. WORKING Working in Illogic is mostly relaxed and requires not big efforts, the team is composed by young and talented people. Good opportunities to get into big Italian and European projects. TECHNOLOGIES Good opportunity to: - Learn C++ - Learn about real-time rendering and 3D graphics - Work with AR/VR devices OFFICES AND ENVIRONMENT The building is old but fancy. The area is very nice and close to center, very easy to reach it with public transport.

Ok, here's the rant. I’m writing this review mostly as a warning for young people attracted by the idea of working in 3D, VR and AR, but also Illogic's potential customers and partners who are establishing a professional relationship with this company. I have worked quite a long time in Illogic, enough to be able to say that this company (which proposes itself as an innovative, modern and avant-garde company) is actually tens of years behind the competition in the IT environment and in employee relationship. Illogic (and by extension, the A&G group it belongs to) lacks transparency, professional honesty with clients, professional respect for employees and humbleness when it comes to management and business. RECRUITMENT AND SALARY Illogic offers uncompetitive salaries (a gross annual income of 20K per year for a master graduate, while other IT companies in Turin STARTS at 25K) and they only hire juniors. This choice is dictated purely by financial reasons, turnover is high and there is no interest in investing in your skills. Meal vouchers, bonuses, salary increases and company gifts are totally arbitrary and made for the individual employee, frequently causing discriminatory situations. Overtime is paid but there is little respect for the wishes of the employee in this regard, same for permits. The students working on their thesis are exploited as much as possible for internal projects, with little respect for their actual thesis work. WORKING The strong work disorganization is a huge problem within this company. Periods of intense stress and projects accumulation alternate with periods of very low workload. The employee activity control is sometimes extremely low (high risk of seeing your work rejected during the review, after days or weeks of engagement) sometimes extremely high (CTO and managers tend to ignore the technical and creative talent of a person). Sometimes tasks are assigned with little respect to the competences and passions of the individual employee, claiming that he/she must deal with matters on which he/she has low experience/engagement or that is not expected by the work contract (this is especially true in the A&G group side). Workers’ feedbacks, proposals and needs (regarding the purchase of material, technical/creative ideas, etc.) are ignored in the vast majority of cases. The desire to grow, invest, improve is almost zero. The product is designed to “satisfy” the customer (often ignoring their real needs and project requirements) with minimal effort, at content and final quality expenses. The documents concerning calls of tenders and projects are so full of lies and false promises they look grotesque. TECHNOLOGIES Illogic takes pride in being a company specialized in Augmented and Virtual Reality, with a proprietary platform aimed at simulating industrial plants and equipment. This platform, however, presents enormous stability problems, very low graphic quality and embarrassing limitations in the interface and interactions, features that should be fundamental in immersive applications. Over the years the platform has become increasingly hard to maintain to the point of making the work frustrating and extremely slow, unsustainable for such a small group of developers and graphic designers (we are talking about 5-6 employees). The platform is so full of bad design choices and limitations that adding features take months. The proposals to switch to more modern and efficient technologies have been absolutely rejected. The advantages of having a proprietary platform, such as having full control on source code and creating tailor-made solutions, are eclipsed by the enormous use and development disadvantages. The actual added value of these tools and the effective approval of the client is exaggerated and the feeling is of working on a product that is an end in itself and that nobody actually uses. There is very little interest in experimenting with new technologies, organizing courses, acquiring external skills. They have a good set of VR/AR hardware but there is a ridiculous lack of primary needs (such as headsets, good monitors, good graphic cards and SSDs). OFFICES AND ENVIRONMENT The first thing that catches your eye when entering the A&G offices of Corso Stati Uniti is the elegant entrance with glass doors and parquet floor. The meeting rooms are finely furnished and maintained. But when you set foot in the coffee room or in the offices of employees you can just realize how it is all a fake facade: dirty and broken walls, not up to work standard chairs, poor equipment and general carelessness make the environment sad and heavy for those who work there every day. The desire to have a modern and well-furnished workplace from the company management is zero. The presence of two bathrooms, one of which is more well-kept and exclusive to customers, is a proof that the employees are considered of second category. Shouts and quarrels are a daily occurrence, some employees are treated like slaves and they are strongly mortified. Since junior employees feel strongly encouraged to resign after a few years (or months), there is a hopeless feeling of continuous change of personnel. The rules on schedules and clothing are anything but flexible. CEO AND MANAGERS The CEO is not professional, not kind and he’s not a mature person. His lunatic decisions, his contemptuous commands and his total carelessness in others’ work and will negatively affects the totality of the employees. Every decision MUST pass for his approval and there is a constant dictatorial feeling. His ability to switch from being a ruthless boss to a brilliant and smiling orator in front of the customers reflects the hypocrisy that reigns supreme in the A&G group. The rest of the management group is more relaxed and friendly but there are enormous communication problems and a strong tendency to not respect the junior figures’ opinions in the slightest. Not reasoned decisions are too often imposed and that compromises the quality of work (which is the least of their concern).