An Ape’s First Week

My first week as a UI / UX Designer at Space Ape has just come to an end, and I can say with certainty that this is an awesome place, full of awesome people doing awesome things, and I’m very glad to be a part of this team. For my first blog post, I decided to share my experience of being a newcomer at Space Ape, and how I’m feeling after this first week.

A warm welcome

My first day at Space Ape started with 100 people looking at me while I shared an embarrassing story from my past. It’s just an ice-breaker, and sets up the mood of fun, self deprecating humour and general camaraderie that is so telling of the culture here. Having the best people around you is very inspiring, especially when they are joking around. It took me minutes to feel like I was at home. Which is the perfect hook for my next point…

Cliche? Yes. Accurate? Absolutely.

I’ve heard from many people during my interview process that Space Ape is like a big family. Some even felt embarrassed to use this aged cliche to describe their experience, but even after just one week, I can say this is absolutely correct, no shame in it. The sense of familiarity is everywhere, from the warm welcome to the inside jokes you don’t quite get yet (and the memes… The memes!) Because everyone is very close and friendly, it’s super easy to seek help when needed, which leads me to…

Growing, Learning, Sharing

Art blog, UI/UX blog, Tech blog. These are examples of how, as a company, Space Ape values contribution. There’s simply too much talent here to contain, so everyone shares! It’s not all about blogs, though, don’t be fooled. Here in the UI/UX team, we have a guild that highlights the most interesting things we learned during the week. We also analyse other games from a design point of view and help each other out when needed. But that’s not just us! All the teams have their own version of it.

The perks!

So, OK, we have great people doing great things and teaching others to be even greater. But we also have scooters to scoot around the office, a full kitchen, stocked with snacks and beverages (even hipster coffee), boardgames over lunch, and a super geeky wi-fi enabled foosball table.

I can safely say I’ll be very happy here.