Ex-Zynga engineer here. I could see a lot of hatred in his post. Couldn't see credibility.
Creepy stuff:
Spying on players. Getting intimate gaming data, their habits, their networks, and how to effectively monetize given X.
This never happened. Zynga doesn't do behavioral targeting at all.
Creepy/bad stuff in my view:
All decisions are short-term. Let us build X games in Y months.
Bad code quality. There is a team which optimizes for the bad code written by engineers at high speed.
Good stuff:
Speed - They are really aggressive. And they never think twice to throw away something if there is a better alternative.
Decisions - Right or wrong, decisions are made with least and things progress.
Meritocracy - I wouldn't call it pure "meritocracy", but when they know you are a smart guy who can ship stuff, they'll love you in $ and positions. I know several young people at VP/GM positions.
Data-driven - I see this as huge plus. Lot of companies are clueless because of not enough feedback-data. A/B testing, phased rollout, metrics are mandatory for any product/feature.
Zynga is 100% data driven. Zynga is not a tech-company, it is a product-manager-company. Product managers are more statisticians than PM. All decisions are from numbers.
This statement seems fundamentally at odds with the following. Could you explain further?
Data-driven - I see this as huge plus. Lot of companies are clueless because of not enough feedback-data. A/B testing, phased rollout, metrics are mandatory for any product/feature.
Zynga is 100% data driven. Zynga is not a tech-company, it is a product-manager-company. Product managers are more statisticians than PM. All decisions are from numbers.
Comments
Ex-Zynga engineer here. I could see a lot of hatred in his post. Couldn't see credibility.
Creepy stuff:
Spying on players. Getting intimate gaming data, their habits, their networks, and how to effectively monetize given X.
This never happened. Zynga doesn't do behavioral targeting at all.
Creepy/bad stuff in my view:
All decisions are short-term. Let us build X games in Y months.
Bad code quality. There is a team which optimizes for the bad code written by engineers at high speed.
Good stuff:
Speed - They are really aggressive. And they never think twice to throw away something if there is a better alternative.
Decisions - Right or wrong, decisions are made with least and things progress.
Meritocracy - I wouldn't call it pure "meritocracy", but when they know you are a smart guy who can ship stuff, they'll love you in $ and positions. I know several young people at VP/GM positions.
Data-driven - I see this as huge plus. Lot of companies are clueless because of not enough feedback-data. A/B testing, phased rollout, metrics are mandatory for any product/feature.
Zynga is 100% data driven. Zynga is not a tech-company, it is a product-manager-company. Product managers are more statisticians than PM. All decisions are from numbers.
Zynga doesn't do behavioral targeting at all.
This statement seems fundamentally at odds with the following. Could you explain further?
Data-driven - I see this as huge plus. Lot of companies are clueless because of not enough feedback-data. A/B testing, phased rollout, metrics are mandatory for any product/feature.
Zynga is 100% data driven. Zynga is not a tech-company, it is a product-manager-company. Product managers are more statisticians than PM. All decisions are from numbers.
Data-driven: How many users are engaging with feature X, how much are they spending on item Y, how many users click button Z.
Behavioural Targeting: User "A" loves lot of "Strawberry crops" let me show him more of that.
So the difference is making changes to optimize for a subset of users vs. optimizing for the aggregate?
Yes
I'm an Ex-Zynga engineer as well, payments team. The guy on reddit is a bit bent, parent's comment is far more accurate.
Can you confirm or deny the comment regarding Texas Hold'em Poker, that he deals are pre-computer 'scenarios' rather than actual randomized decks?
Sorry, I don't know much about Texas Hold'em Poker's details.
Why doesn't Zynga do behavioral targeting?
Honestly I don't know why, but I haven't seen any game doing it and there is no infrastructure to do behavioral targeting.