translator

game tester

customer service representative

production manager

human resources advisor

Pole-to-Win-International

I have many issues with this workplace, but I will start with the good aspects.

You will be hired with next to no experience, no need for a degree, and trained from nothing into a competent tester. You will be able to work with video games, which can be fun. Because this is a very multicultural workplace, you will meet a lot of different people and genuinely have a good working atmosphere.

However, there is no job security, very low pay, and next to no rewards for hard work. You can put all your efforts into a project and then be out of work for weeks on end because "there is no work". You will be bumped about projects and expected to adapt overnight. You will be pressured to work against very tight deadlines on very stressful and difficult tasks and told that the future of the company relies on your shoulders but still get paid minimum wage for your troubles, because apparently risk/reward is something that higher management don't want to consider. Your bilingualism will not be valued as a skill. Project managers are overworked, underpaid, and stressed out of their mind just as much as low level workers. You will be given one-to-ones which give you the opportunity to raise any issues with the company, but this is just for show as higher management have no intention of actually changing anything. If you go into project management, you will still not be given a permanent contract despite being expected to handle communications with people working for famous multi-nationals. If anything goes wrong, it will be a personal failing, but if anything goes right, it'll be a company victory. Don't expect any respect or recognition for your work.

This place is good to work over summer when there are many projects so you can be guaranteed work and build some experience, but for your own sanity as well as a decent wage use and abuse this experience to get something better and more stable as soon as you possibly can. This is a stepping stone to better prospects, nothing else.

Ptw have a huge turnover of staff, they are constantly hiring and yet despite this fact, they aren't all that generous on offering shifts to those who already work for them. 

The rota is sent out on a Friday afternoon so you don't know until the very last minute if you will have any work for the following week. If you are offered work you are being consistently rated as a tester and how highly you are rated or not will then determine if you get put on the rota. Basically, the work is always unstable and insecure. There is nothing good about a zero hour contract however much they may spin this as a positive for "flexibility".

Some of the team leads are really nice and friendly and most of the people who work there are really nice but it all depends on which team and project you get put on. You are jumped from project to project which means it's difficult to get a grasp on what you're doing since it's all new and once you do get the hang of it you'll be on a new project. 

Team leads are nice but they are pretty much on the same level as you with the tiniest of pay rise. Upper management will have no idea of your existence and only speak to you God forbid you're not wearing your id badge. 

The work is not exactly difficult but you need to be fluent in two languages and have a thorough understanding of the grammar of both languages. Being bilingual (and trilingual in many cases) is not unskilled work, why are employees being paid minimum wage? My advice would be to go work at supermarket or shop, better wages and at least some basic employee benefits. Ptw offer you nothing, not even a stable contract but they will tell you how great the company is doing, opening new offices around the world. Might be nice if the employees were given even a gesture for their contribution to the company.

Skilled labour isn't cheap and cheap labour isn't skilled. Ptw needs to recognise the good talent they are losing by being a cheap company.

If this is your first job out of school, PTW is a great stepping stone. Just don't get sucked in and keep looking for something better because in this company there is hardly any room to grow and you'll never be appreciated for what you bring to the table. Great people have moved on from this company to work for TPCi, Nintendo and the likes so don't settle! Because unless you want to be a project coordinator - a very thankless and not much better paid position than QA, translation or customer service - you won't advance anywhere.

Most departments are run like school classes. You will have your fixed breaks you need to stick to and will generally not be valued for your opinion or skills. Just do the job and shut up is the mentality. Works for some people, I personally found it soul destroying. 

In QA the turnover is high due to zero hour contracts, so be prepared to not work full time for an extended period of time unless you speak German or French. If you think "playing games all day" is fun, think twice though. If you've got even a shred of work ethic you'll quickly realise that you'll be picking up the slack for other people on a daily basis with little support from the totally overworked project coordinators. You'll hardly get any recognition for you work btw, actually ending up in the credits is a very rare thing to happen.

A note for anyone wanting to work in the translation department: Again, if it's your first job congrats, it will help you gain some experience but prepare to be utterly underpaid and hardly supported. If you have any other option to work as translator, don't go for PTW. They don't deserve you and you won't even have anything to show for yourself because getting credited in a game happens very rarely.

It's an absolute joke of a company, I have no idea how they're even in business with the way that they treat their testers. Fact of the matter is, as a tester, no matter how valuable you actually are, they won't see your worth. You're an expendable number in their system who is only useful to them when they're lacking people for a project and they need you on it.

The 0 hour contract is a pretty bad, albeit unfortunately understandable practice, the worst part about it isn't the 0 hour contract itself, but the fact that no matter what, you will not be paid nearly enough to make up for the stress that you have to put up with. 

The pace of the work you have to do can range from working at a snail's pace with nothing to really do to being given mind breaking impossible to meet deadlines. It all depends on the client behind the project you land on, and when it gets bad, it becomes so awful and mentally draining, you'll be a barely functional husk fot the rest of the day. I've honestly lost count of the times I've nearly completely shut down during my stay here.

Unless you really can't help it, then avoid PTW. Go find someplace that actually values not only your QA skills, but also you as a human being. Although such places are few and far between, the industry is starting to take some necessary steps in insuring that its QA staff are cared for and given the resources they need to grow. Meanwhile at PTW, you will learn absolutely nothing. At the current rate, this company will remain stagnant, and its clients move forward beyond the need of their services, and their own employees will keep leaving. 

So if you still go work there in hopes of growing, then be warned: you will learn absolutely nothing of value.

When I started working here I was told it would be easy to progress in the company and was assured that, despite the 0 hour contract, the company was busy and growing and I would get regular shifts. The truth is progressing is not worth it, as it will involve regular overtime and countless responsibilities for about a 5% raise (and the initial salary is minimum wage) with very little (if any) training.

When lockdown started, a lot of us were left at home with no salary for months with no support and without knowing if we would ever be offered shifts again. Communication has always been dreadful, which makes people feel alienated and confused, which was especially during lockdown. 

Whoever can claim Universal Credit in the company has done so because of how unreliable the job can be. It's also difficult to balance other freelance jobs as there's always a chance you might be called at the last minute to cover for someone, and it's unclear how much turning these down or putting yourself down as unavailable affects your chances of getting shifts in the future.

Typical day at work:

You receive a phone call around 9am cause someone called sick and they need a replacement, you had other plans for that day but you need to accept the shift cause you haven't been working in the last 3 weeks. It's time to finally turn on that bulky hardware they sent you over to work from home (it was getting dusty). You spend 10-15 minutes trying to understand what project you are supposed to join, until a coordinator contacts you asking why you didn't start to work yet. Then it's time to wait 1-2 hours for some IT guy to fix all your technical issues (inevitable). When you can finally join the intranet chat you feel completely lost, as the company takes for granted that the 2 day training taught you everything you need to be able to work (it did not). You try to ask for help in chat but, especially in big projects, no one really replies as everyone is on a really tight schedule. You spend the rest of the day trying to figure out stuff on your own hoping to not mess up anything. The day ends, you did not get any new skill and you got a minimum wage salary. And this was a lucky day, cause you actually worked!

I started working here two months ago and have worked on three projects so far obtaining full time hours each week.  After training your placed into a project with different people from around the word and the tasks are interesting. 
Everyone is very outgoing, friendly and you work closely together ensuring the linguistic content of a game is accurate and you are mainly solely responsible for testing, identifying, recording and suggesting fixes to potential bugs in the computer game relating to language, implementation, user interface and compliance. 
There is a lot to learn with daily challenges and issues to solve where everyone works as a team to negate simple and complex language problems. 
It’s a productive and professional working environment with the office being very relaxed and comfortable. I enjoy working here because the atmosphere is enjoyable and extremely satisfying. Even although it’s a zero hour contract I’ve not had any instances where I’ve not had work and the outlook for continued work is positive. You finish at 5pm and never work weekends.

A lot of wonderful people to work with, but the company itself doesn't match that. 

The wages are too low, and the rate increases received when you take on further work (senior, project coordination, project management) do not scale to accurately reflect the amount of stress and overtime required at all.

They lie in job listing and interviews, usually through convincing the applicant that "yeah, sure, there will be enough work for you with your zero hour contract to sustain you". Certain languages get more shifts than others, and the only way you can really get more shifts, is by knowing other languages (including English).

The management is non-existent, there is no transparency, the way client comms are done is stifling, and there is little to no training for anything. There is usually 1 or 2 days of training for new starts, and for anything after that you have to give an arm or a leg to get any training. They're not too interested in training people for anything because time is money, and that money doesn't come out of their pocket... 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Working in the industry is interesting 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The low pay and the lackluster training

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Chilled out most of the time, the banter can be great if you're with a good team

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Try to log in, systemic issues up until about lunch time, you're only covering for a short amount of time usually so you're behind and unfamiliar with the project. Questions are often ignored or deferred to documents which are difficult to navigate. You try to connect to a console but IT has to get back to you after you submit your ticket. Its 3pm and you finally get into the game. Then you realise that the test plan has inaccurate information and vague steps and you're left unsure how to proceed. The day ends and that's your shift for the week. You then get radio silence for 3 months before you're asked to come in again and repeat the whole process once more.

Hardest part of the job is the timetibles 12hrs shift and overtimes, work place culture there is non they your boss and that’s that’s do not tell them anything about your life they will use it against you, what I learned is to never to trust anyone, management are only called when they to scared in the office to talk to you there self or they just want to sack u  nothing enjoyable what so ever, being in this job made me nuts and angry. People are divided by nationality, is not a Multi Culture job, but just french people speak betwenn them, German the same, Italian, etc. So you would speak just with your nationality's people and they will not help you if you need, but if they could, they will get you fired. Impossible to speak with management or HR, nobody is interested to work seriously in there and if you try, you will get fired, do not try to be a good worker, but just to be a good friend of some important agent, in this way, no one will touch you.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Translator 1 salary reported	£27,318 per year
Game tester 12 salaries reported	£25,118 per year
Customer service representative 5 salaries reported	£20,100 per year
Production manager 2 salaries reported	£37,500 per year
Human resources advisor 2 salaries reported	£27,000 per year

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