EA: The Human Story

I'm still young (relatively),
Planned to get into the industry, now gotto think twice,
thanx for the heads up!

the schools don't help. you go in and they tell you there's tons of jobs, but it's not true of all jobs. in vancouver, everyone thought that there were so many animation jobs (probably because of the popularity of mainframe). maybe 5-10 years ago that was true. but now, there aren't that many pure character animation jobs for all the students that the schools are pumping out. games companies rely on mocap, and that isn't really animating. the majority of my class haven't found work. i'm probably the only animator out of my class, a couple others are modellers.

i started in the industry (haha, it's kinda funny saying that) just 2 years ago at the age of 19. i've heard good and bad and i don't understand how companies, large or small, can get away with so much... it's unfortunate that we do let them get away with it.

but if it's truly what you'd like to pursue, give it a shot. you're young, you could always get out while the getting's good!

There is currently a class action lawsuit against EA that has been filed already. It is for wage and hour, its already in the process and the preliminaries have been infront of a judge.

EA even sent an email out to their own employee's. They even gave the names and numbers of the attorneys that are sueing them for people that can sign up for the lawsuit.
here are the numbers to call:

Miranda Kolbe, Esq.
Tel: (415) 788-4220

Thomas V. Urmy
Telephone: (800) 287-8119

Wow!!@# I am definatley calling

a high turnover rate is devastating for an industry like this with a relatively high learning curve. don't expect them to change unless it starts cutting into their pockets because having fewer employees is better for nearly every conceivable reason. I started an internet company during the boom and I can definitely tell you I would rather have one exceptional employee and work them to the bone than 3 normal people that work regular hours. And that's not even taking to account monetary reasons, that's simply from a productivity standpoint.

So... ea_spouse lamented that something I said got compressed into a thread, so I'll repeat it here. But more than that, I'd just like to crunch some basic management choice pro's n' cons.

Managers have a main job, and that's to get the game out the door. They're there to make sure their employees do that. It has become a Dilbert-era joke that they actually impede productivity, but still, it's their ultimate task. They have to manage the time and tasking of their people to get the product done with minimal spent cash.

So secondary to that is the happiness and well being of their employees. The primary reason they're supposed to care about the well being of their employees is because it allegedly keeps them work at top efficiency and keeps them loyal.

So taking all of that in to account, where is the message coming from that screwing people out of their lives and stealing their overtime is going to reach the goals? At what school of business do they teach you that when you start with

X employees
Y budget

and ask you to set a deadline, where do they teach you that you start building a schedule by calculating the employee time pool at 70 hours a week? I mean really, it's either a malicious lack of interest in the attitudes of your employees, or its "I never graduated from business school" rank incompetence. I never went to business school or took classes in finances, so maybe someone has a manager's frat secret answer?

The other aspect to keeping your employees happy is in the reward phase. EA Redwood Shores has the most lavish facilities designed to keep you living on campus as much as possible, but it's of no use if they want your but in your chair 14 hours a day for 6 months straight.

Of course, they could compensate instead with salary or bonuses, but as I said in my earlier post, I've witnessed them not caring about that side SO much that they made two anger inducing announcements back to back earlier this year. The first was

1. telling their staff that bonuses would be reduced because they didn't make financial goals over the past year.

2. A week later was the press release that they had a record quarter and now had $1.2B in the bank.

Now I know that they apparently needed that cash to buy a new front lobby remodel and Criterion, but seriously... if you gave each hard working developer an average of $10,000, and there was 5,000 developers, you'd be out $50 million. That's 1/24th of what's in the bank. If you knew your people were disgruntled, wouldn't you even think about it?

If you actually had to pay the overtime of having someone work a 70 hour work week, and assuming the earlier figure someone posted of and average salary of $60k in Redwood Shores, you'd be talking

30 hours overtime per week. $60k comes out to $1154 / week. Time and a half for those 30 hours is $1298. Assuming 6 months of overtime, which is less than my wife had in the past year, and you're talking $33,750 in lost wages. Per worker. And most people do not just crunch for 6 months a year at EA.

I'm pretty sure they'd rather do the $10k bonus thing than the getting sued for lost wages thing. But I never went to business school.

Yeah they completely lied to me about my bonus. They took 25% away saying the studio isnt doing as planned. But then they reported record earnings shortly after that. They are so full of crap.
They pay their advertising people way more than us who make the games.

I was wondering if EA was offering internships.

Unpaid 6 Month Interships, 18 Hrs a day 7 Days aweek.

Primary Duties include:
Shoveling Dead Employees into the Furnace
Putting Speed in the Coffee Makers
Rechaining people to their desks after they escape

Yeah long hours suck. But take a look at what we're doing. Its not like any other industy. Every other medi industry requires massive amouts of people to produce. Video games require very small amouts in comparrison. So all the weight and pressure goes to theose few. That's a responsibility every developer must understand. I work long hours without weekends too (three guesses which company). There's a good reason why employees put up with it and why the industry doesn't fail, money. I have one of the lowest positions and I make more than any of my friends or family. Its the unspoken reason to this insanity, we're all a bunch of techno whores. To us this sort of thing is easy to do, just requires full devotion and in return we make good money. Stop crying about it, you know why we do it and if it wasn't true there would be no video games.

"we're all a bunch of techno whores"

Yea but even Whores deserve a little respect.

Your choices

1) Form a Union, or join a Union. Large parts of Hollywood crafts are Unionized for the reasons highlighted by EA's ways.

2) Bail from this industry, go into Defense or some other industry, you'd be suprised what a good programmer makes with one of the big gun companies.

3) Suck it up, quit crying. But take a look around, how many 35 year old coders do you see and can you see yourself coding in one of these shops at 40, 45 or 50?

As a member of EAQA I can totally relate to what EA Spouse is talking about. QA is highly underpaid. The amount of hours we work, and the responsibility of the senior tester role, we are defiantly not compensated enough. I have worked 400 hours in one month. 7 days a week 15 hour days. We in QA don't get bonuses. We in QA hardly get any type of benefits. We in QA hardly receive any type of recognition. QA are more dispensible then any software engineer, or artist anyday. Unfortunatley nobody recognizes the amount of talent, heart, and determination that most of QA has. The only problem is, all of the heart and determination gets cut away each time a contract is renewed and we are handed a 25 cent raise. Why do we keep doing this. Hope? That maybe someday someone will recognize us for the job we do? If not for hope then I don't know what.

i have a handful of friends that work in QA, my SO included. i work in dev and the things i hear others in dev say about QA is pretty sad. without QA, the games would not work. it's pretty lame that so few people actually recognize the hard work they put in, not to mention the talent that does exist.

Not to belittle your situation or anything, but... EA is the devil? This is news?

Seriously, though. EA needs to die and take their crappy licenses and mediocre annual rehashes with them. Their practices are not healthy for the industry, both on the employee and market levels.

My personal experience with EA has fallen in line with the original spouse's post. That said, it isn't much different from any other developer I've worked with.

Getting paid by the hour is the only way to fly at EA. It boils down to being respected (more or less) for your abilities, getting paid what you're worth, and not having to put up with the crazy hours unless you choose. If you do choose to do so, you can take it to the bank.

Saw this elsewhere: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ERTS

Looks like Larry's pulling down a cool $1.45 Million right now.