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Are there any current or ex GW employees here? It doesn't matter if you're a clerk or a designer, just say what it was like! I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

 Matthew wrote:
Are there any current or ex GW employees here? It doesn't matter if you're a clerk or a designer, just say what it was like! I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

Good to hear that they think positively about their employer.

No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

Remember when one did?. It wasn't pretty.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Matthew wrote:
Are there any current or ex GW employees here? It doesn't matter if you're a clerk or a designer, just say what it was like! I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

Good to hear that they think positively about their employer.

I'm 13 year old Swede, not their boss.

 Matthew wrote:

I'm 13 year old Swede, not their boss.

I think he means the GW Stockholm staff's attitude towards GW.

Can't say much about current employees, but GW's not generally well-regarded by ex-employees.

 Matthew wrote:

I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

Not sure what other answer you expected though.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

Remember when one did?. It wasn't pretty.

Nice chap he was, became a DCM and everything.

I'm pretty sure GW employees are told to avoid forums. There probably are employees online but they keep it very quiet.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm pretty sure GW employees are told to avoid forums. There probably are employees online but they keep it very quiet.

Exactly the opposite of what they should be doing.

I used to work for a store about 13 years ago.

Pretty much the only reason to keep the job was the 50% discount.

The rest of the job was crap. Bad hours, bad pay, babysitting and running the cash register were all negatives for me.

There was a chap some years ago, think he was a manager in one of the UK stores but didn't advertise the fact until later on.

Seemed very affable, unfortunately he was posting during the 'summer of terror' (when you had the Finecast launch, price rise, rest of world embargo all in a short period of time) and practically every other thread in N&R and Dakka Discussions was people giving the language filter a solid workout.

 Matthew wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Matthew wrote:
Are there any current or ex GW employees here? It doesn't matter if you're a clerk or a designer, just say what it was like! I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

Good to hear that they think positively about their employer.

I'm 13 year old Swede, not their boss.

That's still pretty boss though haha

 Matthew wrote:
Are there any current or ex GW employees here? It doesn't matter if you're a clerk or a designer, just say what it was like! I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

Stockholm Syndrome?
(sorry, I had to - I'm just surprised that no-one else already had yet...)

 Matthew wrote:
Are there any current or ex GW employees here? It doesn't matter if you're a clerk or a designer, just say what it was like! I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

There are plenty of ex-employees who post on here, but no one with a working brain who currently works for GW is going to stick their neck out.

 Alex C wrote:
I used to work for a store about 13 years ago.

Pretty much the only reason to keep the job was the 50% discount.

The rest of the job was crap. Bad hours, bad pay, babysitting and running the cash register were all negatives for me.

See this doesn't make sense to me. Keep the job if its paying your bills, sure. But for the discount? Unless you're living at home with your parents with no other financial obligations and are spending a large chunk of your pay on the product, you're going to be better off working anywhere else, getting paid better, and paying RRP.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
I used to work for a store about 13 years ago.

Pretty much the only reason to keep the job was the 50% discount.

The rest of the job was crap. Bad hours, bad pay, babysitting and running the cash register were all negatives for me.

See this doesn't make sense to me. Keep the job if its paying your bills, sure. But for the discount? Unless you're living at home with your parents with no other financial obligations and are spending a large chunk of your pay on the product, you're going to be better off working anywhere else, getting paid better, and paying RRP.

That was my exact situation

I had another job that paid well. Kept the GW job for the discount. Ended up moving to the US shortly after, now my "local" GW is 4 hours drive away...

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm pretty sure GW employees are told to avoid forums. There probably are employees online but they keep it very quiet.

I've heard the same, GW employees probably cannot admit it on line, because then their posts might be taken as statements from the company.

A lot of employers are like that.

On the Whirlpool forums, a tech forum in Australia ISPs reps are tagged with their company and post heavily. They tend to restrict posting to directly related topics (mainly in their ISP sub-forum) but not always. So long as they "behave" I don't think some of the ISPs mind them posting outside their fields, such as in gaming and what not. I think it's a great system, the more tech savvy users can quickly bypass first tier support to get more complex problems resolved and so on. The larger/"corporate" ISPs I think are much more restrictive as usual though. My ISP (iiNet, national #3) has always been easy going and continues to be good in this regard I think despite going more "corporate" as they got bigger.

I think employees posting online is only a problem when the company in question has a huge public relations problem for whatever reason... ie. GW ; p Mantic employees in comparison tend to post more actively, especially on their own forum. I remember the traitor that went to GW from Mantic... name escapes me, great guy, could take the bad with the good when posting here. Mantic certainly had/have their problems but actively sought community involvement on how to improve. I think it's gone way too far for that to be possible for GW now though. Too much anti-GW sentiment due to many anti-customer policies.

I was in GW Stockholm in December, it's a great store.

Yeah, it's a shame GW doesn't engage in research or internet presence IMO.

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

For multiple reasons.

1. If it was determined who they were - they would likely be let go.
2. Someone revealing themselves as a GW employee or representing GW ... the way the community would treat them would be like when they hooked up Malcedor to The Golden Throne. They would quickly delete/abandon that account.

 cvtuttle wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

For multiple reasons.

1. If it was determined who they were - they would likely be let go.
2. Someone revealing themselves as a GW employee or representing GW ... the way the community would treat them would be like when they hooked up Malcedor to The Golden Throne. They would quickly delete/abandon that account.

Internet jousting while on vacation in Maui? For shame

 Eldarain wrote:

 cvtuttle wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

For multiple reasons.

1. If it was determined who they were - they would likely be let go.
2. Someone revealing themselves as a GW employee or representing GW ... the way the community would treat them would be like when they hooked up Malcedor to The Golden Throne. They would quickly delete/abandon that account.

Internet jousting while on vacation in Maui? For shame

Waiting for dinner!

 cvtuttle wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:

 cvtuttle wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

For multiple reasons.

1. If it was determined who they were - they would likely be let go.
2. Someone revealing themselves as a GW employee or representing GW ... the way the community would treat them would be like when they hooked up Malcedor to The Golden Throne. They would quickly delete/abandon that account.

Internet jousting while on vacation in Maui? For shame

Waiting for dinner!

Enjoy! More than a little jealous.

I worked for one of their major competitors, there's a fair amount of industry on here, but we don't talk about it.

You're in a room full of 1) wargamers on 2) the Internet. It's a pretty tough crowd.

The problem is that there is no social media with which GW communicates with its customers. The actual guys who write the rules for the game post on the Infinity forums, plus others from CB, if I have a comment about Dreadball or Deadzone I can go and write on a blog and get a reply from Jake Thornton himself.

Every other wargaming company I can think of has forums and other form of social media. The end result is that, without this valve by which customers can communicate (and especially when it is so evident in other companies) community pressure builds up like a zit, and any opening, no matter how small, then gets the full outpourings from that community.

Therefore, anyone coming on to a forum and saying they are anything to do with GW, ends up like this:

In a way it is a shame that many are so anti-GW that they take it out on an employee. Not saying I am a fan of GW buisness practices and management decisions (I am anything but.), but I'd like to think that I have enough sense to know that an average employee isn't the one calling the shots. The big wigs do that and all the poor little people who work under them have to take the abuse most of the time. Granted a few employees like the ones writing the codicies due receive deserving and sometimes undeserving criticism. But the average shop manager ect doesn't deserve the abuse they often get imo.

I am an ex GW Employee.

I worked for GW as a store manager and I have to say in all fairness in terms of the actual job itself it was one of the best I've had.

The training was second to none, never worked for any other company with such a great management training program and the support from head office and regional managers was fantastic.

The job back then was also very rewarding and as a manager I pretty much had autonomy over my store to a certain extent.

Obviously things have changed a lot since then but back in the late 80's early 90's they were a great company to work for, supported their staff and offered an amazing training program and i developed a lot of great skills during my time with them and made some great friends who I still regularly have contact with.

However there is a big "but" coming. And that was the wages. The pay was just awful for a retail store manager. GW's answer to this was that they gave an amazing discount (and it was really amazing back then - being able to buy at lead weight and getting your plastics free was phenomenal) but our argument was always "you can't eat toy soldiers - especially lead ones".

The biggest issue was that all the HQ staff are based in Nottingham which is an incredibly cheap, low cost of living, area in the UK and they simply couldn't understand that staff in other parts of the country simply couldn't support themselves.

So eventually I took all those great skills they had taught me and took a manager's job for another large UK retailer, this time in books.

All the skills they had invested in me were fully transferable and I tripled my wages in a month simply by leaving GW.

I didn't want to leave, I loved the company and still do and have very fond memories of working for them but a GW job is only really suitable if you are independently wealthy and doing the job as a hobby or are living at home with your parents! (no offense to current employees).

I think high staff turnover suits GW but if they seriously re-looked into their wage structure and tried to retain staff they have spent time and money on training they would have much better, more loyal managers and wouldn't lose good staff to other companies.

 NorseSig wrote:
But the average shop manager ect doesn't deserve the abuse they often get imo.

The average ANYONE in retail or service industries doesn't deserve the abuse they often get. (The people who deserve it are the ones who don't come into contact with customers.)