Obviously it's just an anecdote, but I work for a large(one of the largest) AAA video games companies, and that's literally our entire modus operandi - hire early, usually before people even finish uni, and then get them up through the ladder. It promotes career growth, loyality, personal development and job satisfaction - I'm literally surrounded by people who have been here for 15+ years(29 is the record currently) - personally I'm at 8 years, went from intern to junior to intermediate to senior to lead in that time, and I have no plans on going anywhere really.
>>I read and heard from managers they prefer to recruit externally for management positions.
That's absolutely not the case for us, in fact I'm struggling to think of examples when this happened recently.
> Obviously it's just an anecdote, but I work for a large(one of the largest) AAA video games companies, and that's literally our entire modus operandi
Interesting, because the public perception of gamedev companies is opposite: "hire-crunch-downsize-repeat"
Because it's true for a lot of places. We do have an extremely strong anti-crunch culture and value work life balance a lot. In those 8 years here I worked maybe like.....2 weeks of overtime? Around launch of one of our biggest games, I stayed in longer to make sure things were running smoothly. But like outside of that? 8am till 4pm every day. Never worked weekends or anything like that, and I don't know anyone who has.
(well, that's not strictly true - I know from those old timers that 20 years ago that was pretty much bread and butter and people lived in the office more or less. But that was before I ever started here).
Most of the actual large game studios are just normal places to work, and any of them that have been around for more than a few years will have "lifers" for want of a better word. This isn't unique to games at all.
Ubisoft - just(disclaimer) keep in mind that we have studios in (almost) every European country and all of them can approach this differently. Here in UK the policy is what I explained above.
I'm not 100% sure about Ubisoft, but I think Gameloft is part of the same group. At least in Romania, Gameloft definitely does not have a good reputation concerning overtime and such.
"reputation" is a hard thing to assess. In a company with 20k employees, there are goign to be teams and offices that differentiate from the norm, in both good ways and bad ways.
Clearly depends of where you work, and what you do Inside Ubisoft. My rule of thumb is that the closer you are to the game itself (Dev, gameplay designers, sound designers...) the more you will crunch and the less you get paid. As if the labor was a perk in itself.
Again, only talking about my own experience - I'm a programmer myself and I don't crunch, and no one in any other team that I know does. Programmers also tend to be most well compensated out of everyone(in my experience).
There are some old school companies left in the world. Almost everyone at my company has been here at least eight years. I'm currently at 28 years myself, there are several who have been here almost 40 years, and the longest run employee we've got currently is at 51 years (although, to be fair, he's the founder, and at 83 years old now only works a few hours a day, a few days a week).
>>I read and heard from managers they prefer to recruit externally for management positions.
That's absolutely not the case for us, in fact I'm struggling to think of examples when this happened recently.