Pros
Spring board to other areas of the industry Pole to Win can act as a great springboard to other places in the games industry. It can give essential experience and is the a good first step into an industry that is notoriously difficult to enter otherwise. Many people leave PTW for better things as soon as they feel they have enough experience. This is a tried and tested route into other areas of the industry. Casual work If you're looking for casual work with little commitment then this company is a good option for people with a language other than English. You'll get to work with video games in an office environment and you'll have the flexibility of a zero hour contract. This will allow you to work or study during your time at PTW. Entry level positions As mentioned above this company is a great way of entering the games industry. You won't be expected to have relevant experience. If you can speak English (plus your other language) and use a computer, you'll most likely be given a chance. Easy progression to lead position It's fairly easy to progress to being a lead tester at PTW. If you have the right attitude and a fair amount of experience as a tester then becoming a permanent or seconded lead tester is fairly straightforward to achieve.
Cons
I worked as a tester and a lead tester for a few years in the Glasgow Pole to Win office in their test department. Below are some observations about my time there. Very low pay and unreliable hours The salaries at PTW are extremely low. A tester can expect to make minimum wage and a lead tester will make 18k. A tester will also be on a zero hour contract. It's common to not know until 4pm on a Friday if you're going to be working the following week. All the while the attitude coming from the senior management is that you should be thanking them for the opportunity. Over the top security Expect to have to surrender almost all personal belongings at the door and be forced to leave them in a locker. You will not be allowed any mobile phones, mp3 players, handheld consoles, bags, jackets or anything else you could feasibly use to steal digital or physical information with you at your desk. Prepare to have your privacy invaded by heavily filtered Internet access and monitored IM chats. Hypocrisy is rampant here as it's common to see senior management (and some leads) using their phones on the test floor, browsing blocked sites and having personal belongings at their desks - "do as I say, not as I do". Very little trust or respect from upper management/company The upper management have very little trust/faith in their team of leads. As a lead expect to be micromanaged to the extreme and be forced to run every decision past upper management to have it scrutinised to the tiniest, most pedantic and unhelpful degree. Real support from senior management when leading projects is rare. It's common for them to demand every decision and client communication goes through them first but then they're unavailable or in meetings for hours at a time. High staff turnover It is not uncommon to come in to work and find someone completely new beside you. Due to people constantly moving onto better things or being dropped my senior mgmt for seemingly arbitrary reasons, you will find your teams are mostly always different. This results in people being brought onto projects mid-term, and being chewed out if they have not miraculously caught up with the others. They will be branded "bad testers" if they do not immediately catch on and management, instead of providing guidance or any training, will drop them with no warning leaving them waiting for a call to come in to work that they won't make. Manipulation and exploitation The ethos of the company seems to be "take what you can get and give nothing in return". It is fairly common to be expected to work extra hours without any extra compensation. Staff will be subtly manipulated into making PTW the top priority in their lives by being told things like "well if you're not available this week you might not get hours the following weeks" and being accused of lack of commitment due to their unwillingness to work for free. They also enjoy holding promotions over people's heads and making candidates jump through hopes: "well if you do things like x and y then you'll never properly be considered for z position". The ethos mentioned above also extends to their treatment of clients, as a lead I was personally instructed to lie to a client on more than one occasion. Lack of proper training and inexperience Testers and leads will both be expected to hit the ground running with little to no training. Very little of the staff (if any?) have worked in similar jobs before. Almost none of the staff have had any exposure to the wider industry and as such just have to learn as they go. No formal training other than an on-boarding session with HR will be provided. Leads are expected to learn as they go will little support or direction from the upper management. Bad management As a tester expect to have your orders come in fairly chaotic bursts as the leads try to make sense of poorly managed and poorly organised projects. Overall the upper management seems extremely inexperienced and ineffective, namely the Operations Management and Senior Management team. They do not seem to have any real people management skills, any understanding of how the projects are actually ran or any experience in the wider industry. They will frequently demand to be kept in the loop and insist on implementing impractical, unhelpful and often counter productive changes. The Operations Management is conducted in a way that communicates mistrust and paranoia of their own employees. They get obsessed with tracking tiny details such as recording lateness down to the minute, timing coffee breaks and tiny typos in emails. They'll be quick to lecture entire teams on the importance of these things during "stand ups" (which can last hours) but will often fail to ever deal with the real problems in the department such as failing projects and overworked, under-trained, underpaid and undervalued staff.
