Mighty Bear 2020 Review: What We Did, What We Need To Do Better, What’s Next
Introduction
Every December we send a letter to our friends and investors reflecting on the previous year and sharing our thoughts and learnings. This year we decided to go a step further and share our thoughts with everyone.
Diversity
Companies sometimes make a big deal of their “diverse” workforce as a way of whitewashing (sometimes literally) a lack of diversity at senior levels by presenting only aggregate (company-wide) data. Our opinion is that if a company’s decision-makers all look the same or come from similar backgrounds, then you have no real “diversity” worth speaking of.
As a company which was founded and built in Singapore, our commitment to diversity includes having Singaporean talent at all levels, as well as ensuring a healthy mix of different types of people across the organisation.
To evaluate our performance on this front, we sorted all full-time staff into three buckets — “Steering”, “Core”, and “Contract” — and took a look at the gender and nationality splits of each group.
The studio is almost at an even 50/50 split between male and female team members. There’s a good level of diversity at senior and junior levels, and both the Steering Group (leadership) and wider teams have a strong Singaporean core. We’re pushing to ensure the Steering Group becomes even more diverse (the gender split needs to improve), as it’s the one group where true diversity will have the widest-reaching impact.
For the sake of transparency we’ve included tables with with the raw data on diversity at Mighty Bear at the bottom of this post.*
*If your employer doesn’t share this data, you should ask. If they’re not tracking it, you should probably look for a new job.
Detailed Diversity Data
Total Studio Diversity
One of our goals for the year ahead is to increase the amount of female representation within our ranks, and double down on our commitment to creating an equitable workplace where everyone has access to the opportunities and support they need to succeed.
Everyone at Mighty Bear is here on merit (we don’t hire people simply to “tip the scales”), we look for people who are best in class and bring a unique perspective — this means having a diverse team.
We also have a duty of care to the local ecosystem and we’re working on bringing through even more local talent (more on this below).
Steering Group
We’re committed to improving the gender ratio at this level. It is skewed by the three company founders all being male, but that means we have to make an additional effort to ensure everyone is getting access to the mentoring, development, and leadership opportunities they deserve.
Our leadership team has a Singaporean core (64%) and a healthy mix of backgrounds, nationalities, and perspectives.
Core Group
Only one person on this list is not in a development role — we don’t pad out the ratio of Singaporeans/PRs to foreigners by hiring lots of admin staff.
This is a gender split we’re comfortable with. It’s likely that it will skew closer to 50/50 in the coming months as we continue hiring and scaling the studio.
There’s a global shortage of gaming talent and to be able to staff the core team with close to 80% local staff would be considered strong even in countries with a more established games industry and larger pool of local talent available.
We have 6 nationalities in total (some staff qualify for more than one passport): Singaporean, Indian, Indonesian, Norwegian, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
Learn more about Mighty Bear Games.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash