: ea_spouse (ea_spouse) wrote,
2004-11-10 00:01:00

ea_spouse
ea_spouse
2004-11-10 00:01:00

EA: The Human Story

My significant other works for Electronic Arts, and I'm what you might call a disgruntled spouse.

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?

===

This article is offered under the Creative Commons deed. Please feel free to redistribute/link.

(no subject)

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,…

a small piece of advice for people involved in class action lawsuit

Anonymous

May 10 2005, 16:45:28 UTC 16 years ago

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Someone said that the loudest of those involved in class action lawsuit will probably recieve some sort of perfid punishment from EA. Well how about this: make shure that no one appear to be the loudest. Try to make everybody say something about EA abuse instead of 1-2 people. You should never tell which one of you is the leader or who started this.
Someone said that your salary in EA is about $50000 a year. Since you work 70 hours per week that means that you are paid about $12 per hour. Did you know that MINIMUM salary in New Zealand is $10 per hour? And minimum means that even ice cream sellers can earn more. And you people are high educated professionals!
And I realy think that you should form union. Someone here is suprised that it is much better to invest in companies like EA than work for them. What did you expected? It is hard to find people willing to invest in your company, but you do not need to even bother finding people to work for you at all becouse many people will crawl trough a sewer to have chance to develop games. If you form an union everyoune will se that you care about yourselves.

Re: a small piece of advice for people involved in class action lawsuit

Anonymous

May 15 2005, 11:56:00 UTC 16 years ago

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a union is no use. you are forgetting that there is a revolving door in the industry. There is no shortage of computer science majors wanting to work for EA.

Re: a small piece of advice for people involved in class action lawsuit

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: a small piece of advice for people involved in class action lawsuit

Anonymous

16 years ago

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EALA changes?

Anonymous

May 13 2005, 04:50:24 UTC 16 years ago

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What happened to the MOH and Rogue Agent EPs after their latest games were poorly received? I read that Skaggs is on leave of absence. The EP for the upcoming MOH console is different, so are they making EP level changes in LA or is that just because the PC and console productions overlapped?

Re: EALA changes?

Anonymous

May 16 2005, 09:00:16 UTC 16 years ago

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everyone is secretly looking for other jobs or starting something on their own....

Re: EALA changes?

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: EALA changes?

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: EALA changes?

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: EALA changes?

Anonymous

16 years ago

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EA

Anonymous

May 13 2005, 06:45:14 UTC 16 years ago

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I always liked ESPN NFL Football games better anyway ;p

EA's "fix" to the class action lawsuit

Anonymous

May 17 2005, 04:14:03 UTC 16 years ago

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Heh. This is good.

Former salaried employees are now being moved to hourly. The new required work week is 45 hours, 5 of which are overtime by law. Cool right? Wrong. Those are 9 hour days. If you take a PTO day, guess what? 9 hours, not 8. PTO hours did not increase. So your 3 weeks of vacation/sick/personal time (15 8 hour days, 120 hours) just became 13 days.

But wait! There's more! Let's go back to the PTO day you want to take... Now you have to put in 9 hours, right? Well 45 - 9 is (big surprise) 36 hours, right? No big deal, right? WRONG. In order to get overtime for those 5 extra hours, you have to work over 40. So the week you take a sick day, you not only loose an extra hour of PTO time, but you loose your overtime for the 5 hours.

Well, no big deal right? WRONG. Your new hourly rate is your salary accounting for 5 hours a week of over time. Take a vacation day, give yourself a pay cut. Take 3 weeks of vacation, loose 5% of your base salary those weeks.

But you know what's worse? You are still expected to give "free" overtime if you go to E3... Oh and your tasks? Still must meet your milestones -- you just have to do it in 45 hours a week now.

What's even worse? EA killed bonuses this year, despite have 3.2 billion cash, no debt, etc. "We didn't make Plan" (But we were still flush enough to buy three companies, a 15 year exclusive NFL contract, and 20% of UBI in the last quarter -- oh, yeah, the same quarter when we "lost" so much money.) Some people got 50% of their target, a lot of people "didn't contribute materially to EA" and got ZERO.

EA's a great company. If you don't think so, bend over, Uncle Larry's coming over. It's the EA Way.

Re: EA's "fix" to the class action lawsuit

Anonymous

May 18 2005, 04:16:40 UTC 16 years ago

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Given this is EA's reality, the incentive to stay is what ...?

Re: EA's "fix" to the class action lawsuit

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: EA's "fix" to the class action lawsuit

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Anonymous

May 17 2005, 20:46:12 UTC 16 years ago

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Hell, I wish I had gotten 50% of target; more like 20% for me. And that's for 1000 hours of overtime in the past year, and the project I worked on sold well above target, but because the company did shitty overall (supposedly), I get shafted. It's good to know that if I work my ass off, I'll be appropriately rewarded...

I'd take 20%

Anonymous

May 18 2005, 09:55:10 UTC 16 years ago

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Hell, I would love to have had 20%. I got 0% with an above target review. Why did I get 0%? I'd love to know... Evidently the work that I was hired to do, and did for the studio over the past year with full approval of my managers was not a material contribution to the studio. Oh, and I was not told any of this -- I had to find out all by myself, just like everyone else who was singled out for a 0 bonus. Ah well. It's the EA Way.

Who knew I should have been reading web pages all year like my teammates who got full bonuses? Strangely, I thought I was there to make great games and to add novel technologies. I guess ready webpages for 9 hours a day is what I should have done, since my 'peers' who did so all got some bonus, and some of them got 100% of target.

I've learn my lesson though. I've stopped wasting the studio's time and am now working on a whitepaper: ESP Management: How to generate loyalty and trust in your employees by screwing them out of $20,000 and completely isolating them.

Re: I'd take 20%

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: I'd take 20%

Anonymous

16 years ago

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HELP! Job offer from EA

Anonymous

May 19 2005, 06:11:20 UTC 16 years ago

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I recently interviewed at EA and got a job offer with them. I was hoping to get advice so I can make a decision as to whether or not I want to work for them. I was wondering if there have been any changes/improvements to the situation since this article was posted half a year ago? When I spoke to the recruiter, she promised that your husband's situation was an exceptional case of horrible mis-mangement and especially now with the publicity, the company is taking drastic measures to make the working environment a better place. Does anyone know about that working environment now? Has the company taken any real steps to keep from overworking their employees? I'm definitely interested in the job, but not in the conditions that you described here. Any advice out there? Especially from people that currently work at EA? Thanks so much.

Re: HELP! Job offer from EA

Anonymous

May 19 2005, 18:25:28 UTC 16 years ago

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I work there now and I am quitting in a couple of weeks. Everyone who was semi-decent on my team has quit within the past 6 months. Bonuses were very small or non-existant this year. I know in my own team, things have not changed at all since this EA Spouse thing hit the fan -- we're already horribly behind schedule for our project, and crunch will be starting next month, and expected to last for several months. Considering that we didn't get any sort of reward for last year's crunch (i.e. any sort of bonus or stock options) I'm not expecting it to be different this year.

Anyone who has any talent is running from EA -- they're now being forced to hire substandard talent, or those that are desperate, or just out of school. Many of the people on my team right now are not "gamers" and yet here they are making games; there's something wrong with that picture. The days of EA being a "game company" are long gone. They're a corporation now, in it for the stockholders, churning out substandard games based on movie and professional sports licenses. If you want to work at an innovative company with strong talent that recognizes your hard work, I'd look elsewhere.

Re: HELP! Job offer from EA

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: HELP! Job offer from EA

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: HELP! Job offer from EA

thecanadianicon

16 years ago

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Re: HELP! Job offer from EA

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Re: HELP! Job offer from EA

Anonymous

16 years ago

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Did EA 'Challenge Everything" at E3?

Anonymous

May 22 2005, 20:53:38 UTC 16 years ago

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How did EA fare at E3?

Re: Did EA 'Challenge Everything" at E3?

Anonymous

May 26 2005, 01:31:45 UTC 16 years ago

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I think they faired pretty good, based on Spore, Black and Battlefield 2. Madden looked damn good on next gen consoles, but that was expected, Madden is a great game. I didn't hear a damn thing about MOH:European Assault so we'll see how that goes when it hits the market. Batman Returns will be good if the movie is a hit. I like the casting.

2Wire

john_kim_mimi_w

May 26 2005, 18:21:51 UTC 16 years ago

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I use to work at 2wire and it's not any better.
This company promised stocks, going public in 8 months and the whole kit and poodle.

What happened after 1.5...They fired me.
I put in a steady 60 hours a week and a 90 minute commute for 1.5 year and they dropped me like a boat anchor just to cut cost so that the CEO Brian L. Hinman and CFO George W. Laplante could use company credit cards on escort services on erosguide.com and cityvibe.com

How do I know that they see escorts?
Well I placed a spy wear on their pc and I snoop the ip address of their frequent visit sites and those two are constantly disappearing between the office hours of 10am to 2 pm. A perfect time to cheat on your wife because she think they are at lunch or in company meeting.

One time, I saw George walk pass the hall ways and their was a condom stuck on his shoe. I did not want to tell him because i was afraid that he would fire me. Anyhow, they fred me so now I am free to say what I want to say.

Probable EALA Layoffs Tomorrow...

ravidrath

May 31 2005, 19:03:52 UTC 16 years ago

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http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/gossip/ea-to-layoff-employees-leave-cali-update-105191.php

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/business/ea/ea-update-2-nipping-things-in-my-bud-105291.php

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/business/ea/ea-layoff-rumors-part-3-105340.php

It's just rumor, now, but if EA Irvine and the Medal of Honor team are let go tomorrow or in the near future, I suspect the rest is true. It makes sense, and fits their corporate personality. Additionally, EA execs are known to be major Republicans and someone actively contributed to the Bush campaign, so such arrangements with the already business-friendly Governor of Florida are not so far-fetched.

A very nice, Wal-Mart-esque sort of move on their part. Don't like the employees unionizing? Close the store. Don't like the state's labor laws? Move out of the state.

It amuses me how people think EA is safer and more secure than working at a smaller developer, because it's big. Sure, the company may never have to wonder where their next project is coming from, but you will always need to wonder if you will be on it.

-Peter

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EA: The Human Story

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