Pros
Most of what I say pertains to the Toronto Zynga office only. Having worked both at the SF HQ in the past, I can confidently say that the culture is very different. Most of this has to do with the Toronto office starting out as a small app shop that was acquired by Zynga, and is not as corporate as the large SF office with hundreds/thousands of employees. The people here were and likely will be some of the nicest/smartest people I will ever work with. It might sound cliche but working at Zynga truly never felt like a job. I was happy to contribute to the various projects along with other supportive, engaged and like-minded individuals. It also helps if you're into gaming (like I am). I've met many friends and mentors at Zynga that I still see and keep in contact with today. The work culture and environment is generally very good. A healthy work-life balance is actively encouraged at all levels of leadership. Even during the new remote work era, the studio puts in a lot of effort in keeping spirits up and organizes regular team/studio/company wide virtual events. Of course, being a company that builds games and operates live services means there will be occasional crunch times and on-call to deal with. Depending on the teams, there may be stricter service health SLAs (particularly on the backend services teams and highest traffic game teams). Benefits are great, with pretty much all the things you’d want/expect such as good health coverage, RRSP matching, ESPP programs, snacks/food at the office (while we were still in office that is)
Cons
5 or 6 years ago, Zynga paid quite well for a Toronto tech company but over the past few years a lot of big names have driven up the average TC for software engineers in Toronto. Zynga has unfortunately, not kept up (and likely just unable to) in the compensation department. There were cases of some very tenured folks at the studio getting paid around the same as some new grads This is not even a fault of the managers in most cases though, as the pool available for raises and promotion seems to be pitifully limited and it's basically outside their control. It's also just an implicit understanding that in most cases, one would need to be operating at the next level for an extended period of time (sometimes a year or more) before being actually promoted into that position. The Toronto studio has grown in size quickly over the past few years. Most companies going through a growth spurt inevitably lose some of the charm and office culture that only a small studio can offer. You quickly lose the ability and drive to know people’s names as the headcount approaches 200, and the whole studio starts feeling more business-like as the company pursues growth goals. Keeping up a good office culture largely depends on the managers pushing said culture throughout their teams and many of the newer managers don’t seem to care much about this.