EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?
I am retaining some anonymity here because I have no illusions about what the consequences would be for my family if I was explicit. However, I also feel no impetus to shy away from sharing our story, because I know that it is too common to stick out among those of the thousands of engineers, artists, and designers that EA employs.
Our adventures with Electronic Arts began less than a year ago. The small game studio that my partner worked for collapsed as a result of foul play on the part of a big publisher -- another common story. Electronic Arts offered a job, the salary was right and the benefits were good, so my SO took it. I remember that they asked him in one of the interviews: "how do you feel about working long hours?" It's just a part of the game industry -- few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom, so we thought nothing of it. When asked for specifics about what "working long hours" meant, the interviewers coughed and glossed on to the next question; now we know why.
Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad. Months remained until any real crunch would start, and the team was told that this "pre-crunch" was to prevent a big crunch toward the end; at this point any other need for a crunch seemed unlikely, as the project was dead on schedule. I don't know how many of the developers bought EA's explanation for the extended hours; we were new and naive so we did. The producers even set a deadline; they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title's shipping date, so it seemed safe. That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.
Weeks passed. Again the producers had given a termination date on this crunch that again they failed. Throughout this period the project remained on schedule. The long hours started to take its toll on the team; people grew irritable and some started to get ill. People dropped out in droves for a couple of days at a time, but then the team seemed to reach equilibrium again and they plowed ahead. The managers stopped even talking about a day when the hours would go back to normal.
Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. Complaints that these once more extended hours combined with the team's existing fatigue would result in a greater number of mistakes made and an even greater amount of wasted energy were ignored.
The stress is taking its toll. After a certain number of hours spent working the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend -- bad things happen to one's physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing.
And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment EA salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! ('comp' time is the equalization of time off for overtime -- any hours spent during a crunch accrue into days off after the product has shipped); c) no additional sick or vacation leave. The time just goes away. Additionally, EA recently announced that, although in the past they have offered essentially a type of comp time in the form of a few weeks off at the end of a project, they no longer wish to do this, and employees shouldn't expect it. Further, since the production of various games is scattered, there was a concern on the part of the employees that developers would leave one crunch only to join another. EA's response was that they would attempt to minimize this, but would make no guarantees. This is unthinkable; they are pushing the team to individual physical health limits, and literally giving them nothing for it. Comp time is a staple in this industry, but EA as a corporation wishes to "minimize" this reprieve. One would think that the proper way to minimize comp time is to avoid crunch, but this brutal crunch has been on for months, and nary a whisper about any compensation leave, nor indeed of any end of this treatment.
This crunch also differs from crunch time in a smaller studio in that it was not an emergency effort to save a project from failure. Every step of the way, the project remained on schedule. Crunching neither accelerated this nor slowed it down; its effect on the actual product was not measurable. The extended hours were deliberate and planned; the management knew what they were doing as they did it. The love of my life comes home late at night complaining of a headache that will not go away and a chronically upset stomach, and my happy supportive smile is running out.
No one works in the game industry unless they love what they do. No one on that team is interested in producing an inferior product. My heart bleeds for this team precisely BECAUSE they are brilliant, talented individuals out to create something great. They are and were more than willing to work hard for the success of the title. But that good will has only been met with abuse. Amazingly, Electronic Arts was listed #91 on Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2003.
EA's attitude toward this -- which is actually a part of company policy, it now appears -- has been (in an anonymous quotation that I've heard repeated by multiple managers), "If they don't like it, they can work someplace else." Put up or shut up and leave: this is the core of EA's Human Resources policy. The concept of ethics or compassion or even intelligence with regard to getting the most out of one's workforce never enters the equation: if they don't want to sacrifice their lives and their health and their talent so that a multibillion dollar corporation can continue its Godzilla-stomp through the game industry, they can work someplace else.
But can they?
The EA Mambo, paired with other giants such as Vivendi, Sony, and Microsoft, is rapidly either crushing or absorbing the vast majority of the business in game development. A few standalone studios that made their fortunes in previous eras -- Blizzard, Bioware, and Id come to mind -- manage to still survive, but 2004 saw the collapse of dozens of small game studios, no longer able to acquire contracts in the face of rapid and massive consolidation of game publishing companies. This is an epidemic hardly unfamiliar to anyone working in the industry. Though, of course, it is always the option of talent to go outside the industry, perhaps venturing into the booming commercial software development arena. (Read my tired attempt at sarcasm.)
To put some of this in perspective, I myself consider some figures. If EA truly believes that it needs to push its employees this hard -- I actually believe that they don't, and that it is a skewed operations perspective alone that results in the severity of their crunching, coupled with a certain expected amount of the inefficiency involved in running an enterprise as large as theirs -- the solution therefore should be to hire more engineers, or artists, or designers, as the case may be. Never should it be an option to punish one's workforce with ninety hour weeks; in any other industry the company in question would find itself sued out of business so fast its stock wouldn't even have time to tank. In its first weekend, Madden 2005 grossed $65 million. EA's annual revenue is approximately $2.5 billion. This company is not strapped for cash; their labor practices are inexcusable.
The interesting thing about this is an assumption that most of the employees seem to be operating under. Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal.
I look at our situation and I ask 'us': why do you stay? And the answer is that in all likelihood we won't; and in all likelihood if we had known that this would be the result of working for EA, we would have stayed far away in the first place. But all along the way there were deceptions, there were promises, there were assurances -- there was a big fancy office building with an expensive fish tank -- all of which in the end look like an elaborate scheme to keep a crop of employees on the project just long enough to get it shipped. And then if they need to, they hire in a new batch, fresh and ready to hear more promises that will not be kept; EA's turnover rate in engineering is approximately 50%. This is how EA works. So now we know, now we can move on, right? That seems to be what happens to everyone else. But it's not enough. Because in the end, regardless of what happens with our particular situation, this kind of "business" isn't right, and people need to know about it, which is why I write this today.
If I could get EA CEO Larry Probst on the phone, there are a few things I would ask him. "What's your salary?" would be merely a point of curiosity. The main thing I want to know is, Larry: you do realize what you're doing to your people, right? And you do realize that they ARE people, with physical limits, emotional lives, and families, right? Voices and talents and senses of humor and all that? That when you keep our husbands and wives and children in the office for ninety hours a week, sending them home exhausted and numb and frustrated with their lives, it's not just them you're hurting, but everyone around them, everyone who loves them? When you make your profit calculations and your cost analyses, you know that a great measure of that cost is being paid in raw human dignity, right?
Right?
===
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How to deal with these conditions
Anonymous
December 8 2004, 22:46:55 UTC 16 years ago
question
Anonymous
December 8 2004, 23:17:02 UTC 16 years ago
Re: question
December 9 2004, 20:30:23 UTC 16 years ago
1) None of these extra hours are really documented, specifically to make this more difficult.
2) If this were a cut-and-dry legal situation, it would've already been resolved - Game developers fall into a legal gray area - software engineers don't get much in the way of protections, but entertainment people do. Our contention is that our jobs are virtually identical to some protected entertainment positions, but these don't apply because the end-result of our efforts is software.
3) People are scared. It sounds lame, but there is a lot of fear of losing one's job, and many companies cultivate this fear to keep people in line.
Re: question
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: question
16 years ago
Court date
Anonymous
December 9 2004, 00:39:30 UTC 16 years ago
Re: Court date
Anonymous
December 9 2004, 02:17:00 UTC 16 years ago
http://www.internetcigarettes.com
Anonymous
December 9 2004, 15:05:08 UTC 16 years ago
Re: http://www.internetcigarettes.com
Anonymous
December 9 2004, 16:41:04 UTC 16 years ago
A gamers tears...
December 9 2004, 17:10:05 UTC 16 years ago
Shame on EA. Running these men and women ragged. I like my video games, but not at the cost of someone going home to a cooked dinner, and loving family. No man, no matter what work he does should ever have to tell his wife, he can't come home tonight, theres just too much work to do. I have honestly, never been a supporter of big game firms, simply becasue of the sweatshop like environment there programmers have to live with. I tip my hat and heart to all those men and women toiling in front of a computer for my video game wonderment, thank you, for you folks have given me some great times. Shame on EA.
T-Shirt
Anonymous
December 9 2004, 18:33:28 UTC 16 years ago
http://www.cafepress.com/eaemployee
:)
Re: T-Shirt
Anonymous
December 13 2004, 05:53:26 UTC 16 years ago
For my 90 hour weeks at EA, I get a decent-to-excellent annual bonus, comp time, and reasonably valuable stock options as well.
You don't have to call him.
December 9 2004, 20:26:05 UTC 16 years ago
Not a leg to stand on
Anonymous
December 9 2004, 22:03:03 UTC 16 years ago
This article was so full of ill-informed, naive, melodrama that I'm honestly shocked it has gotten as much press as it has. You can't swing a stick without whacking 3 or 4 rhetorical fallacies in every paragraph.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, ea_spouse, but this is how the free enterprise system works. Corporations exist to make money. Their sole mission in life is to maximize shareholder wealth. Your comment about EA being a "money farm" made me just scratch my head. Of course EA is a money farm. All companies are. Is this news to you?
It may hurt your feelings to know this, but EA doesn't give a toss about your husband's physical health or his relationship with you. They care about getting a game out on time and making as much money as they possibly can from said product. If your husband is able to contribute to that effort and bring value to the project he is working on while working 80 hours a week, guess what? He's going to work 80 hours a week. If his working 80 hours a week was a problem and his productivity dropped to an unacceptable level, he would be fired. I feel like I'm lecturing a schoolchild, but I honestly don't think you understand this stuff.
If it helps you to visualize, think of your husband as a widget. To EA, your widget-husband has one input and one output. The input is his hours worked and the output is his creative contribution to the project. If they don't get the proper ratio of hours to performance, he will be replaced. And guess what? EA knows the exact expense of finding, hiring and training a new widget to replace him. They would just as soon have the next widget in the box as your husband. He is merely a means to and end, and that end is maximizing shareholder wealth.
My point is this: If EA can work your husband for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for months on end, one of two things is true.
1. The opportunity cost of replacing him is very low. Which means either a) his skill set is widely available or b) people really want to work for EA and are willing to endure whatever abuse they are burdened with.
2. Perhaps the experience of working for EA is worth so much at subsequent jobs that the 80 hour weeks are worth it.
In any event, no one is holding a gun to his head and forcing him to work there. That's the beauty of a free market economy. When the benefits of working for EA are outweighed by the long hours, people will leave on their own. The fact that EA is able to treat people like this means the market supports their actions. Evidently the employees are getting some sort of benefit from EA, otherwise they wouldn't continue to be employees, would they?
--Christopher
admin: lurid.org
Re: Not a leg to stand on
Anonymous
December 9 2004, 23:00:37 UTC 16 years ago
A free market economy is an idealized form of market economy in which buyers and sellers only carry out transactions to which they mutually agree without interventionism in the form of taxes, subsidies, regulation, or government provision of goods or services beyond simply the protection of property rights and enforcement of contracts..
Due to regulations for healthy working conditions, monopolies, emissions, etc. we do not live in a free market economy. Companies are required by law to pay taxes and ensure the health of their employees, as well as pay overtime to employees that work over 40 hours a week. Nor is "to make as much money as possible" the sole reason for EA (or any corporation) to exist; its an important part, but you would be hard pressed to find a mission statement that says "we want to make as much money as possible for our shareholders", EA's included.
Lets see.. make as much money as possible.. Work our employees 24 hours a day would make as much money as possible. Screw copyright law; lets steal and start selling our competitor's products. Heck, while we're at it, lets screw our customers too, by raising the price and selling them empty boxes!! You know, we're losing money by paying our suppliers; thats money that would go into our pocket..
We do not live in a "free market" economy. That is what makes this whole story atrocious. Just because the market supports their actions does not justify the actions themselves, nor absolve the market of wrong..
Re: Not a leg to stand on
16 years ago
remind me never to work for you
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: remind me never to work for you
16 years ago
Re: remind me never to work for you
Anonymous
16 years ago
December 10 2004, 07:21:35 UTC 16 years ago
If you wanna goof off all day, go work for working designs. All they do is play pinball all day and release less than 2 games a year sometimes.
December 10 2004, 07:28:27 UTC 16 years ago
I think if anyone is disrespecting employees, its you for saying the said football games are just "re-hashes".
bwahahaahahaha
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: bwahahaahahaha
16 years ago
Anonymous
16 years ago
16 years ago
Why not leave EA if you hate it?
Anonymous
December 10 2004, 07:32:25 UTC 16 years ago
I was upset on politics of my own country, I came to US, spent several years in a minimal-wage job and attend night-schools.
Then I found a better job, then better job until I met a hairy manager. I quit, find another job with a paycut, but I'm happier.
I never complain, I just vote with my feet! You can choose your life, at least in this country.
Re: Why not leave EA if you hate it?
Anonymous
December 10 2004, 13:55:09 UTC 16 years ago
You said "You can choose your life". Did you understand what you meant, or was it just some happy horseshit you've learned to mimic? You're watching people "choose their life" right in front of you.
Re: Why not leave EA if you hate it?
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: Why not leave EA if you hate it?
Anonymous
16 years ago
Leaving isn't that simple
Anonymous
16 years ago
I left the games industry
Anonymous
December 10 2004, 14:46:27 UTC 16 years ago
Anonymous
December 10 2004, 17:26:27 UTC 16 years ago
And i wish you good luck...
How are you threatened?
Anonymous
December 10 2004, 17:55:25 UTC 16 years ago
Perhaps you could tells us just how your "lifestyle" is threatened by ea_spouses actions? Or is working 90 hours a week an integral part of this lifestyle?
ea_spouse, ignore all these ignorant haters.
Anonymous
December 10 2004, 17:34:26 UTC 16 years ago
Keep up the good fight.
It is one well worth fighting.
Re: ea_spouse, ignore all these ignorant haters.
December 10 2004, 18:34:35 UTC 16 years ago
A big problem.
Anonymous
December 10 2004, 17:59:49 UTC 16 years ago
I was at a coffee shop with my friend. While there, I overheard the conversation from a wide-eyed gal who was so excited to get on board with Blizzard (The word Blizzard cought my attention). She might be college (early 20's) who was so eager to work there because according to her words "hard work pays off." I didn't say much, but it made me think that part of the problem at ITt places is all the exploitation of fresh meat that comes in. And the worst part is that those people believe that the work they put in, will be acknowledge and recognize likewise. Unfortunatly it is not the truth.
Thing is that you husband and other talented workers is not as big pool, as unlimited college drones/wide-eyed kids. And like most of big industry in the past that got away with THE SAME ATTITUDE "Dont like it quit, there are 100 more people waiting at the door."EA seems to be taking the same route. For all the evil(corruption, extortion, mob, money grabbing whores) unions have, they created a great shift in improving the working conditions for most workers USA. Yes mediocrity sets it, but people who are talented and strive DO get rewarded and go further within a union. What is happening now in IT industry is what was going on in lesser degree in manufacturing in 20-30's. I hope major lawsuit will kick all those companies in the teeth.
Ohh and I stopped buying EA's game after buying one incomplete game after another after another, and get their lousy "new features" as patches when in reality the games were in their beta stages pushed to the public. And new features were nothing more then fixes for buggy games that should have never come out in the form it did. EA if you are reading this, most of the people in the gaming community knows your practices and shy away from the games you make. Your games have no soul in them.
Good luck EA-Spouse!
Re: A big problem.
December 10 2004, 18:36:22 UTC 16 years ago
Re: A big problem.
16 years ago
Re: A big problem.
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: A big problem.
16 years ago
Re: A big problem.
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: A big problem.
Anonymous
16 years ago
I am a Union worker.
Anonymous
December 10 2004, 18:27:50 UTC 16 years ago
I work in a union. I started as apprentice, and was paid 24 dollars an hour. Have full benefits. Few years later, I took a test and I became a journeyman. I am more experienced, and I was getting paid more about 27. Five years later, I get paid 32 dollars and hour. Guess what I have to work overtime, and I get it 1.5x and on Sunday at 2x's. Swing/and night shift have bonuses. Also when we work over-time our boss has to be with us as well. The company I work for - STILL MAKES A GOOD PROFIT! (and I get dollar for dollar matching up to 3k on my 401k!) And even though we have inter-union infighting, and we still bitch and moan the work gets done, and most of us are fat, and have big butt cracks, the work gets done well, we offer people advencments and paying for their continual education. I am hitting 86~88k for this year. Unions are bad? Sure they are,but are they worse then h1B situation and all the outsourcing that is going on? And dont believe the load of crap people tell you unions kill companies. Yes, some companies will go down, yes unions USED to strong arm people, and contribute to the party I dont give a shit about, but it really does take care of the people! And because they do, bosses do get paid 100-200k of dollars a month. Why? Because unlike CEO of computer companies, they bring bacon on our table, and take care of our needs. And also because people afraid of being unionized (rightly or wrongly) they create conditions that would match those of union. So HOW IS THAT BAD? Maybe if you are a company and instead of 100 million you will make 50 million. Booo hOoo..
One thing, union is only good for big company...not small, I realize that.
Now ask yourself the same question. Does your company take care of you?
Take Care.
Re: I am a Union worker.
December 10 2004, 20:55:37 UTC 16 years ago
Actully, Unions only further the inflation of the American dollar bill in this country, which makes living conditions more expensive, raises the national debt, etc. etc. Its a domino effect.
They dont kill companies; they kill the worth of the American dollar.
Re: I am a Union worker.
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: I am a Union worker.
16 years ago
Re: I am a Union worker.
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: I am a Union worker.
16 years ago
Re: I am a Union worker.
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: I am a Union worker.
16 years ago
Re: I am a Union worker.
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: I am a Union worker.
Anonymous
16 years ago
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