I'm an engineering manager at Riot who has an intern working on my team. (I'm cheating, but I really like answering these questions).
What software development methodologies does Riot adhere to (Agile, waterfall, etc)? Were you working on a team or were you largely quarantined from this process?
Individual teams get to choose their own process; however, most teams follow some sort of Agile approach such as Scrum or Kanban. Interns work directly on a team as a core contributor. Generally, teams at Riot are cross-functional and fairly independent (i.e.- they should have all the resources needed to independently be successful).
Did any of your code get pushed to a live environment or were your projects handled separately from the main source code? Either way, would you care to elaborate on any of them?
The intern on our team has worked on live systems. Most development at Riot should be continuously integrated on the main branch, using other branches only when necessary. All code should go through a code review process too. Internship work would be no different.
Could you walk me through a typical work day for you?
This will vary a lot depending on team and office location. For most LAX engineers, the answer looks like this:
Flexible hours, but please be in the office between 10-5. Some try to beat the traffic and get in super early, most others try to wait it out and stay later. Teams sit together in an open office environment. You'll get in, get a snack and get started. Lots of us wear headphones. You'll have a 15-20 minute daily standup meeting. Hopefully no other meetings during the day, but for some folks, you'll have several more. I personally really try to keep meetings off my team's calendar. Every other week, you'll spend a few hours in a sprint retro and planning session. You may also attend "community of practice" meetings for continuous learning. You'll hopefully have time for a game of LoL each day with your team.
There's an older answer from one of our St. Louis engineers here.
What is the office environment like, such as dress code, attitude towards time off, and respect of work-life balance?
Casual dress code. For interns, limited PTO but for full-time employees you have "unlimited" PTO. Mostly that means use as much as you need. As a manager, I'm typically on the look out to find those who have not taken time off and encouraging them to take a one or two week vacation. Work life balance is possible, but, it's your responsibility. Riot gives employees a large amount of freedom but with that comes personal responsibility. You have to learn how to say "no" to commitments and as a manager, I expect to hear "no" from my team members from time to time.
What were you being paid...
Check out glassdoor for some sense of salaries. I can assure you these are not completely accurate, but that's the best info you can get.
How much of an influence do corporate decisions have at the office scale
I'm not quite sure what this means. As far as decision making goes: Riot is not like Valve in which anyone can work on anything. We have leadership in place to determine priorities. However, individual teams have a lot of autonomy in deciding how they'll accomplish a mission.
How is the gender ratio at your location specifically?
I'm on a team of 6 of which one is a woman. Honestly, the tech industry as a whole needs to do better in this regard and we actively discuss this issue within Riot.
Could you realistically go up to your boss (or your boss’s boss’s boss!) to have any concerns addressed, or is there a hierarchy of communication flow?
I feel I can reasonably go to my boss to have concerns addressed. If I felt I couldn't, there are methods for me to communicate up the "chain" to to speak, though we'd want to debug why there are issues with me and my mentor. I would hope that any of my team members could come to me at any time.
For more info, check out my other advice on becoming a programmer.
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