Fascinating.

I currently work at Zynga. I made the answer anonymous because some of these things are not mentioned outside of the company, but people discuss them inside.

Marc Pincus is not the CEO, but he is still the chairman and Chief Product Officer, so he does have a say. He is partially in charge, even if Don Mattrick is the CEO - and is very accepted as such. The fascination comes from the very different philosophies they both have.

Marc is an optimizer type. He's not a gamer. He's not always trying the latest console game. But he understands numbers and business. He knows what's important to hit for the business to be turned around. He has always been very focused on distribution, and still is. He's not afraid of asking tough questions. That's why Zynga was so aggressive a few years ago.

Don is an entertainment guy. He's worked in videogames for ages. He understands them very well. He's much more focused on making the right games. He wants to really understand consumers and competition, and is focused on making great games, with the right overall company strategy. He also asks tough questions, and requests a lot of accountability. He always keeps the focus on what's really important, whereas sometimes Marc focuses more in the tactics and the details.

Seeing them interact, with Don being the CEO, is frankly fascinating. I think the company is going to be better off now, with Don pushing for a cohesive strategy and unique games that people want to play, while Marc focuses on many of the tactics and distribution.

As for what it's like to work at Zynga now, very interesting.
Some things haven't changed, like working and progressing superfast. I've never seen a company this size take decisions this fast.

Some things have changed. Many people have left and others have joined. Many of the people who were promoted too fast due to the success of the company have now left, and I feel that the people in charge are now much more knowledgeable of how to make successful games. Now there's really clear accountability and lots of opportunities, opened by Don's vision and the space left by those who have left.

Overall, I think it's a great moment to be working at Zynga.

Like anon above, I also still work for Zynga. I also find it pretty fascinating. My favorite anecdote is the books each man wanted people to read and would give to company leaders.

Mark loves the book Ready Player One -- a fictional novel set in the future about a video game that was a virtual reality version of Second Life. Everyone in the world plays the game, and a healthy part of the global economy is facilitated throughout the game.

Don is a fan of Playing to Win -- a business strategy book by the former CEO of P&G and a Monitor consultant. The book encourages companies to set goals to win at certain categories, identifying where you are going to win, how you are going to get there, and what internal systems you need to build to maintain your strategy.

They paint what I think is a funny picture of the history of the company. Mark had the grandiose big picture ideas grew Zynga and basically created a new industry. He has always maintained that his goal is to connect the entire world through games (still Zyngas motto) and the expansive game in Ready Player One is perhaps the pinnacle of that (the dystopian real life world outside of the game notwithstanding).

But big ideas can only take you so far if you cant execute, and Zynga's recent troubles show that. Thus comes in Don from EA and Microsoft, understanding the need for a dedicated strategy at a large public company. Hes taking a much more concerted effort to understanding what games we need to making and laying out long term company plans.

Anon above hit most of the key points I would have hit, so I thought I'd share this instead. Also excited to be working for Zynga with Don at the helm.

My answer to this question has varied over the course of the two and a half years I was there and your experience will vary depending on the team you're on, the GM of the project, and various organizational elements that will probably be completely out of your control.

Short answer:
A combination of excitement (from working on large & interesting problems) and frustration (from dealing with the issues that are created in a large, metrics-driven organization).

Pros:

• Push code to a lot of people, many times a week.
• Game teams are independent units and have a lot of control over the tech stack they want to use (to a degree, read below)
• Lots of advanced tech, both on frontend and backend:
• Games are demanding on the frontend due to the impact runtime performance has on retention and virality. The breadth of problems is pretty wide as well, similar to AAA game work: AI, networking, localization, graphics, sound, UI, tools development, asset management, etc.
• On the backend Zynga has some of the largest scaling problems out there: Handling billions of DB/MC operations a day, millions of concurrent users, cheating / fraud detection, building their own cloud based service layer, developing a world-class analytics system, etc.
• The tech infrastructure / tech investment profile updates fairly regularly. This is more a testament to the tech leadership at the company and ability to notice when there are new trends that provide an edge in either the market or productivity. For example, in the time I was there we switched from SVN to Git across a dozen studios/central groups and made significant investments in mobile, both native and HTML5 because it came to light that we needed to in-order to stay competitive as a company.

Cons:

• Lots of shared technology (some of which I was personally responsible for) which you need to use for business reasons. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except much of this tech isn't self-service and depends on shared service teams; gating your ability to release stuff as fast as you'd like. Also, in some cases, the shared tech work isn't completed, may be buggy, or may lack features you depend on. Similar to the types of problems you'd experience working with external 3rd party APIs.
• PHP is the default language for server-side work. This isn't a knock against PHP but rather a callout for the lack of options. Because of the point above, most of the libraries for these shared components are written and updated first in PHP. While technically everything is REST, when you're on a tight schedule to put a game out, you may not have the luxury of writing a library for whichever server side language you decide to use. However, I think this can change with enough support from game teams and may have already.
• Big org. This may not be isolated to Zynga but it definitely exists. If you want to make a big bold bet on new tech, you need to have the ability to convince others that it is a good idea. It also results in endless pedantic discussions about what direction to take. Ironically, many times just doing what you think is right and asking for forgiveness later (ask for forgiveness, not for permission) tends to work.
• Often, tech debt takes a backseat to short-term business thinking. This is the eternal struggle in live-games development. Given Zynga's metrics driven nature, it's sometimes difficult to prove statistically why certain tech investments will have positive business impact versus developing new features. An analogy here would be trying to prove that brand advertising results in greater revenue, it intuitively makes sense but is difficult to prove.

I worked at Zynga LA and the company treated the employees very well. Working on CoasterVille, we visited Universal Studios & Disneyland for research which were both great team building experiences. Fun, good memories, and it was relevant to the product we were working on.

They sent us to movies pretty regularly, and providing lunch and dinner every day was a great way to encourage employees to hang out together & form a strong bond.

And that leads me to the best part of Zynga - the people. Zynga LA built a strong team that enjoyed working together. The worst part of the studio closing is not having the chance to make another game with this bunch of people who I really enjoyed working with. It always felt like everyone had a good deal of respect for each other. Engineers, artists... even product managers. ;)

On the development side - things move fast. The company doesn't do a lot of needless rework... They make a feature, put it out - test it - and then improve it if needed based on how it performs. Supporting a live game on Facebook is exciting because you adapt it and change it according to what works best... and it all moves very fast.

Another cool thing is -- almost everyone has played a Zynga game, so when you meet people they recognize who you work for and have a general idea of what you do. "Oh, you work at Zynga!" etc.

In the end I'd say the best part of Zynga is the overall work environment, the team you work with, and how they treat the people. Even when they had to close the studios they offered the employees a generous severance package so no one was left in a bind.

Zynga was a class act company to work for and I would gladly work there again. Seriously, it was one of the best experiences of my career.

Really awesome question. Lots of good answers below.

I've been working at Zynga for 3+years. And the answer has changed over time. And the answer depends on where and what you are doing.

At Zynga I've had the opportunity to be a Studio CTO, create our DevOps team, and build out our API platform (Zynga API). Each of those experiences was unique.

What was the same, and is the same is the following

1. It's about outcomes

Zynga values outcomes. Just doing something is less important than understanding what the outcome is and adjusting to the outcome.

2. Being your own CEO matters

At Zynga we expect folks to take control of their outcomes. At other places it's okay for folks to say "I failed because of Org X or Org Y" ... At Zynga that's not an acceptable excuse.

And it's a culture that permeates every part of the org. And it also enables us to have a very distributed decision making culture. We give people autonomy because we have a culture where autonomy implies accountability.

3. Making informed decisions and going fast.

Possibly the most misunderstood concept at Zynga is Zynga Speed. Yes we go fast. But what's amazing is not how fast we go, but how the speed we execute is not random. We actually have hundreds of releases a week, each release is a carefully designed attempt to accomplish a specific goal.

But it's also about going ridiculously fast by focusing on the right amount of minimal product. In December of 2011 we decided we need an API platform where we had none. In the summer of 2012 we launched a major re-architecture of our infrastructure with a major game (City2). In 9 months we re-architected our entire back-end and shipped it. And we're still in the process of re-architecting the system.

And one of the funnest parts of working at Zynga is that our distributed decision making precludes centralization. Great ideas come from anywhere and they keep popping up regularly. And sometimes it's wasteful, but more often than not something awesome emerges...

4. Games that millions of people love.

Lost in the haze of metrics and data is that we work on games that millions love. Working at Zynga means being at the hockey rink and seeing someone play one of your games on a mobile device.

It means that you get to argue over "fun" and "what is fun" and "how do we make things more fun". It means 16 way Halo at 5pm.

It means you get to see people be happy and delighted and passionately in love with your product.

It means a cousin calling you 30 seconds after you brought down a game because of a misconfiguration asking you "What happened?"

And sometimes it's easy to forget that...

Other than taking a week off in the summer and a couple weeks off around the winter holidays, I have consistently worked between 70-80 hours a week for the past 21 years. I have worked 3 different jobs in that time. Yes, I have had a few pre-arranged absences to go to appointments or attend to other matters. But, that is a rare occasion.

In my working life, I have called in only once saying that I would not make it in for a scheduled shift. Woke up on a Sunday night in Buffalo ready to make the 6 hour drive back to where I lived and realized a few feet of surprise snow had drifted in from Lake Erie while I slept. The hotel I was staying at was happy to pay me $20 an hour to remove snow from their walkways all night. Made it to work the next day. I have never called in sick. Not even once.

I'm one of those odd people. Doesn't matter what the job is, as long as it a task with minimal human interaction, I really enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes with getting stuff done. If anybody needs time off, they know they can count on me to cover for them. Anytime.

I take days off on weekends to enjoy hobbies, relax (hello Quora), read books, and research whatever my curiosity of the moment happens to be.. and sleep like a hibernating bear. My dog recognizes me when I walk through the door. My family still knows my name. I get plenty of rest. I'm healthy. I'm reasonably sane.

I find humor in the irony that the same people who say I work too much are also the same people complaining about how bored they are.. or how they wish they had some trendy fad that everybody else is always racing out to buy.. or making excuses about everything. People with their secret habits who neglect the priorities. All that stress and wasted energy. No thanks. I have better things to do with my time than compete in contests that will never end. I’m not a big fan of senseless drama. Had enough for a lifetime already.

Maybe someday my own priorities will shift. I don't see that happening any time soon. Although the work may occasionally be challenging. I enjoy that. Life is quiet. Quiet is simple. And, simple is good.

There is work one gets paid for. There is work one must do and not be paid for. There is work via desk or computer done at home and not paid for. There is time for lunch which may o may not be paid for. There are often two 15 minutes breaks in an 8 hour work day usually not used as breaks.

So there is also travel time to get to work and back not paid for.

So paid time ( for example ) 0830 am to 1230 pm (4hours ) lunch 1230 p to 1330 pm ( i hour ) not paid 1330 to 1730 paid ( 4 hours ) There is often a 15 minute break both am and pm shifts ( 30 minutes break paid for ) The drive was 30 minutes there and back ( 1 hour not paid )

So a work week often called a 40 hour work week is really I hour travel + 8 hours + one hour lunch = 10 hours

5 days work week = 10 x 5 = 50 hours .

Now add one hour per night home work not paid ……50 + 1 = 51 hours (paid 40 hours )

Therefore a standard job 40 hours is really 51 hours .

What about jobs with on call and variable hours ( a physician clinic and hospital )

Doctor is clinic from 0830 to 1730 five days ( 40 ) plus on all one evening per week clinic till 7pm to 10 pm ( three hours per week )

Plus once per month 12 hours call night or day shift . ( often more than this ) add three hours per week 12 hours / mos divided by 4 = 3 hours pee week

Thus a standard physician week would be 40 +3 + 1 hour travel + 1 hour lunch ( usually a working lunch or in meetings ) plus 1–2 hours of work each night x5

So 40 +3+1+1 +7.5 = 52.5 hours per week ( most MDs would say they work 60 to 65 hours per week )

There are many jobs which don't get paid money ..mothers of home schooled children except they get home and food and car and gas paid for by their partners I suppose .

Very hard to know.

Technically, my work week is Monday 7 AM to Thursday at 7 AM. It’s a continuous 96-hr shift. On top of that, I occasionally pick up a Friday morning 1–2 times a month doing independent medical evaluations. that’s the least stressful thing I do: chart review, interviewing + medical examination, then report dictation.

I don’t feel like I’m working that entire time I’m on, though. Usually, I’ll get to the hospital around 7:30 and leave… well, it depends on how many patients I have to see. Sometimes, I leave super early, like noon. Other times, I’m working until 6 PM. After that, I’m on call by phone. I never have to come back overnight, but I have to be available to field questions and deal with emergencies.

Overall, this still amounts to no more than about 45 hrs on a busy week and sometimes as little as 30 hrs on light weeks. Of course, the less I work, the less I make, so it's not all joy when my days are extra short. I’m going to be picking up more work next month. We’ll see how it goes.

I do not currently work for Zynga, I used to work for the company while the good old “Farmville-o-mania” days.

Besides any perks or salary, I’ll talk about a different aspect. The joy of “working on a extremely big cloud / VM environment”.

Don’t get me wrong, Zynga was not the biggest environment I worked, before Zynga I was working for Facebook. However, unlike Facebook, Zynga was not using bare-metal servers. Instead, they were using virtual machines and managing them is a completely different story.

Furthermore, the cloud providers were not sufficient enough to satisfy Zynga’s needs due to enormous growth and we had to install Zynga’s own cloud environment from the scratch. I can say confidently say that Zynga is one of the best companies that knows how to build and manage cloud environment in the whole planet.

That experience was my real gain besides any $ amount from Zynga.

I worked at Zynga for about a year and a half. I was hired right around the same time as the current CEO. I will give a pros and cons list :

As I was joining there was almost a 100% turnover in the executive team including CMO, CDO, CDO, ect. This certainly made things interesting.

Pros :

• Ability to go out and get stuff done, you see a problem, you have the ability to go out and fix it. I worked with a bunch of different teams and the amount of turnover allowed me to build out a ton of tools and get a ton of experience in more of the day to day operations of a digital marketing team (before this I was 100% on the data side)
• Good network of other great individual contributors to work with. Everyone I worked with on the individual level was great at solving problems and cared about the driving the company forward.
• Relatively clear vision from the top to focus on efficiency.

Cons:

• Management changes were rough. Went through 3 managers in 18 months. Some great that really had my back, and others that cared more on their own political ambitions then helping their team grow.
• Would have preferred more resources, but as the company was focusing on doing more with less, we felt understaffed at times. This was made harder but all contracting companies’ contracts being eliminated.

Zynga is a young company with a transition year right now. It's probably a great time to come on board if you want to be handed a ton of responsibility very quickly and be able to shape growth and products for the next couple of years. It still has many of the classic perks that large startups typically offer employees based on a couple of people that I know still working there. Focus on what skills you can build as part of the Zynga team and how that can be a springboard later in your career to other opportunities. Also (I say this a lot) focus on getting access to the C-suite and how you can learn from them and/or get a mentor. Getting C-level exposure and skills early in one's career can be very rare.

I joined my current employer as a software engineer fifteen years ago, when it was a startup. More demands were made then than now, and there was a definite impact on work-life balance. There were understandable reasons for those demands; we hadn't developed the mature infrastructure that we now have, and we made up for it by doing whatever needed doing, whenever it needed to be done.

Even then, the amount of work you can usefully do in a week as a software developer is limited. If you work every waking hour and go to bed dreaming about code, you stop thinking clearly and start making expensive mistakes which you're then too zonked out to notice, let alone fix. Ask me how I know. Productivity peaks at a certain number of hours per week, and that number will be different from person to person and from job to job. You can exceed that limit for a day or two in an emergency, but not routinely; and, if the urgent deadline then turns out to have been arbitrary or the work gets wasted, the worker involved will become seriously hacked off, possibly to the point of sabotaging future work. (For the record, I've never done that.) A culture of presenteeism damages not just morale and physical and mental health but also productivity and quality.

I'm currently an individual contributor engineer on a game team at the SF office.

The job is great. The company is full of talented, passionate people. People you want to make something excellent with.

As far as a day in the life stuff, its pretty normal for the type of job. I have meetings - usually 1-2 hrs a day depending on the coordination needed for whatever I'm working on and how long the team architecture meetings take.

The rest of my day is spent coding or planning my code. I work on both client and server code so I'm usually running an instance of each, editors for the data and paying attention to the team chat.

Perks are great but they are really just representative of the core company culture - which is to put the employees first. Its very clear that the leadership cares deeply about the people and the business. Thats a huge win.

If you'd like me to expand on anything or if you have more detailed questions, please ask.

Nothing much. The first days in Zynga are purely orientation. They should be confident have their ears and eyes open, and ask questions. Meet new people. Understand who is doing what and who is really leading the pack.

Try to figure out what people really think about your manager and/or hiring officer because this is something that may affect the way people treat you too.

When asked what their plans are now that they joined they should stick to “helping, learning and understanding”. These questions are often asked in order to assign you to a “box” “friend/foe” so don’t be “boxed” from your first days. ;) It will eventually happen but try to avoid it as much as you can.

Zynga like any large company with so many smart and talented people has its fair share of politics and values the people who are there longer, higher than potentially more experienced ones.

I once had a boss at Activision tell me that if you are not working at least 60-hours a week, even when there’s no deadlines to meet, you’re not a real game developer. Note that he was a fairly young guy who had no kids.

However, the truth is that it varies by company and by circumstances. I’ve worked at some game companies where I’ve worked 40 hours a week most weeks, but there were times at other companies when I worked over 100 hours a week. There are also some people who do game development as a side gig and work on their games only during their spare time.

Question answered: How many hours does a game developer work a day?

My experience: 2 full-time Fortune 500 internships in the summer. 3 internships during the school year.

During the summer:
Expect to work 40 hours a week. However, many companies allow you to have a half-day Friday, with some companies even allowing you to make up these hours during the other days of the week. Many interns will try to earn overtime pay (1.5x normal pay), so they end up working around 45 hours a week. I have worked from 8:30AM-4:30PM and 9AM-5PM.

During the semester:
Expect to work 10-25 hours a week. People who do a co-op and not an internship work even more hours than that. However, if you're a full-time student life is hard with an internship that requires a lot of hours.

Work Life Balance and Startup may be oxymoron.
Haven't ready any story about somebody providing it as a cool benefit/feature to attract talented employees.

It also depends on what stage the start-up is in and the role you're tasked with.
Dependency on the culture, city, country's working style also matter.

In the initial days if you're among the first 10 employees who're breaking things, it may be more demanding due to the dynamic nature of the tasks.
Once after you grow to close to 100s when you've stability on different functions, people taking ownership of those areas, the balance of time spent between work & personal life may get better.

About the role, IT may be most sought after immaterial of the stage the organisation in.

About the culture, if you're brought up in 6AM state since your birth and during your core part of growth. you may wake up early and try to have a good sleep by signing up around 10ish. If you're from a 'sarkari-chalta hai' 10am state, you may slog late after midnight, have a little sleep to wake by 7/8ish.

ask your indian friends to know which states are 6am ones or and which ones are 10am ones.

About the different country's cultural differences also, it's applicable to some extent.