Cool tech, great product, poor execution - Engineer Unity Employee Review

3.0
Oct 15, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

People are great, benefits are top notch, especially for new dads. Company likes to be cutting edge, great opportunity to work on fresh tech. Customers are fun. Core business seems solid

Cons

Release process for main products is a nightmare. Flat hierarchy and size of engineering team makes it really hard to work cross functionally. Many roles stay unfilled around the company, poor communication with management, base pay isn't competitive. Focus on self starting and empowerment, however most successful and happy people are those who keep their heads down and don't do anything beyond their core areas. Empowerment becomes and excuse for lack of support. Hypocrisy around titles where on some teams titles are withheld because they're "going away", and others where they're given out. Many have grandfathered titles which makes it impossible to advance. Generally poor leadership at all levels.

avatar
Unity Response
8y
Thanks for the comments. Lots to unpack... Firstly, glad you like the people and think they’re great, I agree! And thanks for the positive recommendation on our company and product. The release process is complicated but manageable given we support more than 30 platforms. Seems like you ran into some specific issues, which I would love to hear from you more about. For the cross-functional work, given how distributed we are, we’re considering a 'network of producers' that reside in each location to assist discovery and make dependency management easier. Would love to talk you though the idea and get your feedback on whether you think it would solve the issues you’re seeing. Regarding unfilled jobs I checked: We added 518 hundred amazing engineers in the past 18 months, including 62 in Bellevue. Overall > 90% of our open roles are filled, both in 2016 and on track for that in 2017. It’s also good to keep in mind that it’s not about quantity, but quality, and we’d rather have a vacancy remain open rather than fill it with average candidates. As you said, at Unity the “people are great”! On titles, assuming you are still at Unity, I suggest you talk to Anders (Global R&D HR). Perhaps he can help with more information. The summary answer is that in R&D the titles work like this: One VP Engineering. Under this person there are 6 Development Directors each leading teams of 50 to 100 or so. Reporting to these global scope Dev Directors we have some folks with Director and Manager titles, and under these a combination of individual contributors and team leads. Just ask, and we’d be happy to share. It’s true we're are all about empowerment. We strive for each person to have a big say in what they do, and how they do it. We think this freedom gets us the best results for our customers. And, we think this is a main reason we’ve grown so much in recent years. We very much have a very open communications policy so if something is unclear or if you feel frustrated, reach out directly to me (VP Engineering) or John (CEO) or Elizabeth (CPO). We’d all be happy to chat thru what is not working for you; after all if you work here you know this is exactly how we evolve Unity!

Explore other reviews about Unity

5.0
Jan 25, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Environment, culture, business, pay, onwers

Cons

Small company, hectic work, some employees do not care

1.0
Apr 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very little positive to say. Nice in office lunches. Peers are certainly passionate, but seem to work 10+ hour days and take pride in being on early and up late every day.

Cons

Onboarding was a disjointed mess, with sessions led solely by my manager. Outdated resources from 2019-2023 used for training. Severe lack of coherent materials to reference. Unclear strategy, talk tracks, playbooks. Frequent role churn which was not made transparent during the interview process. Team operates so far outside of the core Unity product. Frequent reorgs and restructuring. No real idea how my role impacted the larger business. Unity’s adtech products are ultimately very uninteresting. Can’t speak to sentiment about working with their core product, but if you have to sell iAds, Tapjoy, Offerwall, or Aura (their most mind numbing product) - don’t waste your time.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All