senior software engineer

producer

counsel

system engineer

senior system engineer

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.

I worked here for quite awhile, and got converted. Left a few months back and haven't missed it since. 

You start out as a temporary tester and eventually get converted if your numbers are good enough. Hours were M-F, 9-6. Pay was MINIMAL for QA in Las Vegas. Raises were uncommon, and bonuses are only awarded to senior testers and up. Here's some pros and cons.

PROS:
They emphasize culture. You'll get that. You work with a bunch of overgrown adults, which I will say lovingly and begrudgingly. There are tons of gamers, cosplayers, and fandom enthusiasts. If you're like that, then making friends here will come easy.

Once converted, the health insurance and vision plan are great.

It's cool to have your name in the credits of titles.

You get pizza parties, perks like occasional merch, and the company picnic and Christmas party is cool. 

Overtime never felt like overtime, it felt like a fun late-night hangout with coworkers, and you got paid time and a half.

They offered Linked In courses, fitness reimbursement if you're converted, and a fitness tracking plan with redeemable points systems.

A good portion of the testers, the quiet ones I would spend time with, aren't all bad. As long as you never had an opinion and kept your head down, you seemed fine. A lot of the older testers like myself did that, and we never had issues.

CONS:
Leadership is a joke. They demand professionalism, responsibility, and consistency, yet they can't do it themselves. Favorites and biases are clearly obvious to the entirety of the QA team, but leadership seems to think they're past that. They will promote their favorites to upper roles, even though they are not good testers and are super poor at talking to people. People who got along well with leadership but skimmed video sites all day instead of posting bugs made senior tester. 

The QA manager is very unapproachable. My hiring class expressed nothing but discomfort with him in the room, and we looked forward to weeks where he was out of the office. He often made unkind jokes or acted irritated with other testers, and considered it funny, or just his "humor". 

There is a LOT of drama when it comes to communication. Someone was always getting pulled because someone said something that the other misinterpreted. Some of it was probably reasonable, but any time I heard about it, it was always ridiculous and unnecessary. Everyone was always trying to get each other in trouble, and instead of a professional environment, you get the sensation you're back in high school. This was a common complaint.

The pay is minuscule for gaming QA in this area. Several coworkers left to work for other competitors and left under different excuses. They underpay and do not care about paying. This is also a Take Two Interactive problem.

The HR guy was some dude who hit on women and would buy them things. One girl suddenly stopped even looking in his direction, only to find out it was because he was hitting on her and being incredibly inappropriate. He was far from professional in the office, who always thought he was funny. Frequently talked about his immense distaste for the QA manager to anyone with ears, and made it obvious during huddles.

They kept a tester who was reported by multiple testers for posting inappropriate posts on the company's chat system, said inappropriate things during work, and was caught looking up non-work sites. He probably still works there.

They made a tester mass apologize for watching the wrong video on one of the developer sites who told coworkers about it, and hounded them for weeks after, even making that person cry. Alienated them and claimed the whole department was angry with them, but I wasn't. Nobody was, except I think like one person. Leadership then apologized, but it was weeks later before they took responsibility. Turns out that tester didn't originally spread the video, either. Don't know if they're still there or not.

They fired our Systems Admin/Lead IT even though he made valid claims against another tester and HR. They ignored him and then one day he was gone, his office cleaned out by HR. Completely unjustified, and the guy was actually really nice. Would buy everyone snacks randomly, just because he loved the place so much. Was the saddest thing to see happen to a person.

There was this group of girls who would hang out by the smoke area (one of them was a loud girl with pink hair and glasses) and do nothing but talk about drama. She embarrassed herself in huddles often, and asked a lot of poorly educated questions. She also would tell on anyone she could, and assumed everyone was unkind to her who wasn't saying they loved her. We got along and I never had this issue, but that's because I stayed away. Not my problem, not my drama. Too old for it. She still works there.

They have had numerous arguments and complaints about attendance and keep changing it, but never fired this one girl who was barely at work, and then lied about where she was, only to post her real location on her social media. Everyone else lost out for the mistakes of few. Hope they fixed that.

They talked about how our opinion mattered, but it never felt like it was. At the end of the day, this felt like a corporate job, felt like we were financially getting played, and most of all, felt like children. Nobody could communicate with each other, someone was always crying in the bathroom, leadership was always apologizing for screwing up, and our games weren't that great. They were not that great. They were not worth the poor pay. They were not worth the underdeveloped leadership. They were not worth the favoritism. Most of all, they weren't worth the few pizza parties.

You can't have your phone on the floor and people take the no phone rule seriously. It's a part of the NDA, but it still is technically a con. Never bothered me, though.

TAKEAWAY:
If you're 18 and want a job that requires no experience, and you just want something to take up your time before you decide to go to college or pursue something, work here. You'll learn basic skills. Or, you could just pay for Linked In learning for $30 a month and learn the same skills.

If you're looking to grow professionally, work at a serious and well-developed job, and want to make a decent income that pays bills and allows you to live in a house and not a studio apartment with another person, don't work here.

If you're here because you have nothing left and nobody will hire you, work here. Don't even bother putting in real effort, they'll convert you even if you're a low-quality human being.

I love PD. Mostly, I love the people at PD. I've made quite a few really good long term friends, and made some awesome roommates. PD strives for diversity and culture, and they're great at that. Overall, it's been a really long road, and a very bittersweet one.The pay is probably the hardest. I went from a high paying job to virtually minimum wage. It's full time, 5 days a week and the full 40, so my second job went into weekends and some evenings. Needed it just to survive. However, the amount of work I do in a day, the amount of stress in order to be alert and on top of things, and the time that I take both during the work day and what I take home (mentally, sometimes extracurricular initiative groups, self development, and even overtime) do not make the pay worth it. I tried for a promotion for two years, got denied, and was told it was for relationship/communication reasons. This sucked, because my numbers were fantastic, and even they said I was a great tester, but made people uncomfortable. When I'd ask who I made uncomfortable so I could mend any relationships or fix first impressions, I was rarely told who, which never gave me the opportunity for growth or to mend that relationship. I tried to work on stuff as often as I could, but any slip up was like 4 steps back, and all efforts and actual improvements were ignored. Naturally, everyone talks to different people in a special way. Although I never disagreed entirely that I needed to work on relationships, but it was pretty clear that they had already decided I was not the favorite, so it felt that any improvements I did have were completely skipped over and forgotten about. Imagine a solid year of hard work, dedicating what time you could to fixing yourself, just to have the rest of it dismissed because of one problem and a past issue from an already problematic person (who also doesn't work here anymore for similar reasons - burning bridges). The leads do have pretty obvious favorites, and will even talk to you and treat you differently in comparison to how they talk to others. I think the only thing that made that satisfying was when coworkers would tell me "I don't know why he talks to you this way, he's never said anything like that to me and I made that same mistake however long ago." What was heartbreaking is when I'd go to my boss about it, and it was as if he didn't believe me. "So and so would never talk that way." Well, what about all the people who just witnessed him talk that way???? I felt strung along with an empty promise of "Just keep doing what you're doing and you'll get the promotion!" Only to follow it up with "Ooooh so close, keep going though!" There was so much false hope, it put an awful taste in my mouth. I'm beyond qualified for this position at this point, but they chose otherwise. People that did bare minimum and sucked up to the QA manager got promoted, even though these people had NUMEROUS problems with people and twice as much trouble working with others. What was frustrating there, is the manager told my class when we first started "I don't like kiss A**es." Turns out, he does. We work in a place where there is a ton of drama, and people get their feelings hurt a lot if you talk too serious or your face looks too serious. We use Slack, so every message you type wrong gets you sent into an office for offending someone. The method of attack is not asking what happened, but instead "What did you do to them?". These conversations are always pointed in an accusatory tone instead of getting to the bottom of a situation, which is what they initially say they're going to do. Towards the end, I stopped being sorry and stopped apologizing. They made me the bad guy so often for things that weren't me and were proven to not be me, that when I actually was in the wrong, I just didn't care. I stopped caring a long time ago, and I did a lame job of hiding it. I got pushed around so much, it got so old. I was mentally exhausted. Another thing that was frustrating, as much as I willingly took responsibility, and I didn't want to point fingers back (therefore trying to take responsibility off of myself, which is not the image I WANTED to portray), but it was really hard to not point out that I was punished for the same mistake that other people had, but they never got in trouble. It was an equality thing.They convert and promote people who are reported multiple times to HR, who talk about cooking pets and arguing on Slack about Pluto (and wouldn't fire him for the longest time until Take Two NY got involved). Some of the ALs are great, and the ALs that got promoted to leads all deserved it. Other ALs are snappy and say things like "Read your f**king emails." to an entire department during huddle. Yikes. I think management is really clouded about what's really going on, and asks leadership too much and testers too little. Most of the testers are scared of the manager, because he's got a really tough exterior. It was always something I thought we could relate on, because we're both not good at first impressions and make people uncomfortable, but I guess not. I really wanted him to like me, not because I was a kiss a**, but because I just wanted to do that for a boss. That's what all people should want to do at work, they want their boss to appreciate them and really feel a part of something. Now that it's at the end, I feel unwelcome and unwanted. This was a heartbreaking two years and I wish I had been able to move teams earlier like I wanted. I wish I had been recognized at least for what I did, what effort I put into, and how much I sacrificed out of my personal life to help this startup. 

I got another job for what I'm worth. And now I get to be paid well. Maybe PD will get better if they pay better, then it makes all the BS-get-along-with-everyone-or-else issues worth it. I'm too broke for what PD asks to emotionally invest.

Great place to go if you are starting out in the Game QA testing field. However if you are very experienced at what you do, I would much recommend employment elsewhere. 

Awesome Culture, Diversity, inclusion, super high marks there.... also the co workers in testing are super helpful. everyday even! new people are treated like fam day one. 

I didn't leave on my own accord.... still doesn't change what is the "truth" of my time within that building. 

Loved that place, and I never saw anybody that didn't. 

If you get through the interviews, its an excellent starting place for a Video Game QA Testing career.... On-site leadership gets a 9.2 of 10 from me

Learned a great deal at T2, both soft and hard skills. T2 strives to hire the best employees in their field, and there is a focus on cultural fit. Unfortunately, the culture of each department is not unified, and changes depending on current leadership.

You can never escape office politics, and T2 is no exception. 

CEO is an exceptional person.

I loved being a QA tester. The job isn’t hard but it can be tedious at times. Training is clear and easy to understand plus you really have your team support. If you have questions, you can ask the veterans and your team leader. The company culture and perks were solid even for seasonal workers. My only real complaint was the hours during peak months (sometimes you might not get off til like midnight if you work second shift). 

Most of your work is subjective in terms of the quality assurance.
There is a certain degree in how you can write software defects that you have to find the right justification if it is a defect. Quantity over quality mostly benefits you as the employee if you want to stay there.

A great place to work at ! If you love solving complex problems together/ individually and make a difference at work, this is the place ! You always have support. We have fun at social events and you meet different people. Our management team is supportive and they have a good sense of direction steering the company. Compensation is fair and people are valued at their competency. 

In this company it is really easy to build a professional work experience for someone who is starting. It is not very well paid but it is compensated with good work environment and coworkers who help you to reach your goals.

I love video games and knowing how it's all created made it the dream job.
NoHo is a great place to work.
Best Buy attached is also nice.
Sitting playing video games all day is a great job but not a high paying one.

Literally; best job and coworkers I ever had. Can't help but look back and think about how great of a time had there. Just wish I was paid more during the time and don't agree with how everything went at the end, but that's the industry.

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