Like a family ... an abusive family - Senior Programmer Ubisoft Employee Review

It's a common joke that Ubisoft Blue Byte pays poorly. Everybody knows it. You'll hear about it in your first month from people that have worked there for 5/10 years. But they'll tell you it's okay because "everyone is like a family". They'll point out that other game publishers have massive overtime/crunch issues and at least the company has work/life balance. When the low pay gets raised by people anonymously during staff meetings, management always looks surprised and mumble the same excuses. But here's the thing: just because you don't expect unpaid overtime from people regularly and just because you don't have toxic working conditions doesn't mean you can exploit people. It's especially sad to see young talented people get recruited from poorer countries in Asia/South America/Eastern Europe only for them to realize with a shock a few months in they're being paid poorly and rent/quality of life is difficult. But by then, of course, their visa is tied to working with the company, they're in a foreign country and they don't have a support structure. So what do they do? They stay. HR and Recruitment know this. They know there's a constant supply of idealistic young people who look starry-eyed at UBISOFT and will send in their CVs. So they don't care about keeping people, they don't care that they give you less leave days than most German companies, they don't care that they pay 40-50% less than the market. Any complaints about pay or conditions is always blamed on "head office" or "Paris", and you're discouraged from raising the issue publicly. I wish I could say that besides the terrible pay and a defensive HR department things are great, but it's not. Priorities get dictated from French upper management who veto at will. Co-dev studios dictate all the terms of engagement, even if they create toxic environments and borderline sexual harassment. HR will not have your back, because they don't want to upset upper management. The internal training platform ULearn is a joke, and internal benefits get dropped or changed at the whim of whoever has a budget they have to make work that year. It's a pity, because most of the studio management are genuinely kind. But it doesn't change the objective situation on the ground: it's exploitative and people are being gaslit instead of the problems being addressed. Unless you have a hard requirement to work in the gaming industry and you have no other options, don't come work here.