Employee opinions of NCsoft

Absolutely... Valve have a reputation for being amazingly good to its staff, from many different sources. They're also a small company considering the ridiculously wide reach of what they do. Lastly, remember that their own head honcho, Gabe Newell, left EA because of horrific business practices - to use such practices himself would make him a massive hypocrite.

Again, Microsoft are known for treating their employees well. A lot of the harsh criticism levelled at Microsoft is unwarranted simply because it's cool to hate on them, but barely any of that criticism is pointed at internal policy - it's all about the quality of their products. When you take a look at what they've achieved for the industry over the years, they're worthy of considerable praise.

Yup - IF you read into it the right way. You can't take the number alone as an indicator, bearing in mind that people are more likely to post on Glassdoor when they're unhappy than when they're happy, and without a comparison figure of how many people actually posted. For instance, Microsoft will have a lot more individual scores up than Valve simply because of their size, which perhaps may make it a more accurate reading from being a larger data pool.

There are two important factors to look at. The main one is the wording of the reviews. Like any review, the score is only there as a concession to convention and to still attract the attentions of people who are too busy, lazy or disinterested to look at the entire picture (like you! STOP CONCENTRATING ON THE NUMBER DAMMIT.) Those points about staff leaving after a day and on an average of 3 months is ridiculous... I've worked in retail and seen better staff turnaround, for crying out loud.

The second factor, though less important, is how each company scores COMPARED TO ITS PEERS. In that light, NCSoft is most definitely not doing well at all.

Yes. Valve has an industry-wide reputation as a friendly, progressive and overall cool company, and pretty much anything that comes out of their offices is nothing but positive, very similar to how it was in Paragon Studios. Gabe Newall has also admitted that the company has no real hierarchy and people are trusted to volunteer to lead or follow as they judge their skills and inclination. That's why, despite being an industry titan and a corporation, you'll just about never see anyone badmouth Valve unless you run into one of the anti-Steam Luddites.

Ya rly. Nuclear Toast works for Microsoft, and I haven't heard anything from him but positive anecdotes. He'd have to comment more in-depth on his own just because I don't want to put words in his mouth, but the company treats its employees well.

Yup. Read the reviews, read what arguments people have made and judge for yourself. It's useful if you care to make use of it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

This shouldn't surprise anyone - both are great to their employees.

Not sure how you mean it, but I swear every time I see you post it looks like you really like NCSoft.

Useless piece of information: The Microsoft collection of 3000+ reviews is across the complete company, and unfortunately isnt broken down by division (so for all you know, the Xbox side of marketing for the company could be *pants* to work for).

I noticed that, too. He's very quick to challenge anything that would frame NCSoft in a negative light.

He may have a point in that, where voluntary user-submitted reviews are concerned, people are more inclined to complain when something's wrong. That's partly why I want to hear what he thinks would be reliable data on employee perceptions of NCSoft. But watching his posts of in the past few days makes me wonder.

I don't work at Microsoft myself, but everything I have heard from people that do is that it's an extremely hostile place to work at. It's not necessarily bad, but Microsoft has a policy of (not sure if it applies to the entire company) score employees and fire the worst performer every so often. Regardless if everyone did excellent, someone will be fired for not being as excellent as the rest.

It can generate a lot of stress and backstabbing behavior in certain departments.

Everyone I heard from also thinks Ballmer is driving the company to bankruptcy, so I find it shocking he gets a 44% approval rating in that site. Would not be shocked if the site is full of PR generated reviews.

Microsoft treats you like a king if you're in one of the cliques. In that case, yes, it is amazing.

If you're a grunt, you will have a different opinion.

(Google and Boeing do way better here in Seattle, IMO.)

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.