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EA Games: The Human Story
An anonymous reader writes "An Electronic Arts employee spouse speaks out against company crunch time practices. From the post: "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?"
If you don't like your husband's job, get him to quit or leave him. Plenty of people would kill for a job with a major game company.
not in bush's America !!
I like watching sports, but I never understood the draw to sports games. Maybe it's just me.
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 a
Instead of working on Duke Nu^H^H^H^H-- Good Ol' George B chimed in the yesterday regarding this article and said "There's a lot of truth in there, especially when talking about large scale, corporate game development, which is most of it these days."
:(
Interesting
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
What is SLEEP? Is that a new programming language? Does anybody have a link where I could look up some SLEEP resources, so I can get ahead of the game?
if they dont start treating the software people better I'm going to intertrobe.
OFFICE SPACE FP!
crap in reallife, crap in a game! back to the computer playing ut2k4 and some random RTS! this is slashdot! nobody plays sport here!
They get to work at a game manufacturer stop complaining!
www.thebestlan.com
Electronic Arts must have many Chinese bosses. They tend to brutalize their workers.
Cause every programmer at one point or another wants to make video games. Don't like your job? Leave... there are 500 people that want to be in your place, anyway!
That's why most of the industry is young. Us 'older people' with families realize that they can't be in the gaming industry. I have a wife, kid, and another kid on the way. I'm not about to sacrifice my family so that I can work on video games. Sure, it was a dream of mine, but that's what the industry is about. Long hours, low pay, no pats on the back. If you don't like it, there is hundreds willing to take your spot.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
This story is truly no different than most things I've witnessed in the game/software industry. Deadlines must be adhered to at any cost. The company will not hire additional workers, so they run their developers and testers ragged, especially toward the end of a project.
This is nothing new, as I'm sure many people here will attest to.
It's great that someone's able to speak out about it... but it won't change anything.
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To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you:
Haha funny. Well, sort of.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Take your time, EA, and make a really good game. The people will buy it if it's quality.
Any /. reader who has worked at a software company knows that these things go on before every major release. I glanced quickly at the article and noticed 8 hour days, 6 day weeks for a while before crunch time. That's 48 hours. How many Slashdotters work at least a 48 hour week EVERY week, with no overtime pay? Raise you hand. See all those hands... it's common. And crunch time? Even non-programmers face periods of time like this. My company is moving right now and we've had to put in long hours for the past month to get everything in order.
It's just an inevitable consequence of working in this industry, and most of us understood that even before going to school for it. Get over it... there's a lot of IT people that would LOVE to work at EA, even with the long hours. Hell, there's many that don't even have a job right now. If your husband doesn't like it, tell him to quit and find a different job. That simple..
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Get another job for gods sake, or get used to their boots on your back, but for the love of god and all things holy, stop your frigging whining!
Being as someone who is currently in the software industry but not in the game industry, I've heard many things about the "crunch time" policies of game makers, especially that of EA. Every time I'm in an interview, the first question I ask is the "crunch time" policy.
At the last interview I did for a game studio (which I, unfortunately, did not get the job for) they asked "Oh so you've heard the EA horror stories, haven't you"...Granted they were a much smaller developer for cell phone games and their crunch time wasn't nearly as long as the whole project, but apparently what EA is doing is more of the norm instead of the exception.
Which sometimes makes me rethink the whole notion I had when I was in elementary school saying "I wanna write video games when I grow up!" I enjoy living, and there's a point where you have to choose either to "live to work" or "work to live" - I prefer the latter.
Livejournal...damnit! If this is on my cluster its going down for awhile...
$> man woman
$> Segmentation fault (core dumped)
ok, so many of you probably dont like EA Sports games, but personally, Im a sports fan/athlete and a computer geek. Odd combo...i know. Anywho, Ive been playing their Madden Football 2k5 for a couple days on franchise mode, and i have to say it IS better than in the past (i remember madden 64, that game was fun too i guess)...but there is something REALLY anoying about it....on every option that is new about the game...it says NEW in a big lettered yellow tag. It almost makes me wanna not play it. One other thing that needs improvement, the anouncing. Its like the John madden anouncing of console football games, oh wait it is :P
I've come to accept perpetual crunch time, unpaid overtime, and no comp days as "industry standard."
I guess that makes me part of the problem. Reading this article woke me up a little... maybe I should be getting those things. I wonder how many programmers are in the situation of having little to no 'crunch time' and paid overtime and comp days? Especially paid overtime -- who gets that? Anyone?
well, first of all, whing on the internet never achieved anything(or all /.ers, myself included would be overacheivers). As I see it, you have 2 solutions: quit or organize
It's not like the CEO is secretly stealing millions in retirement accounts or anything, yes he is making a lot of money, but you knew that before you took the job. You don't like the working conditions there, don't work there. I highly doubt that someone who works at EA games can't get a decent job somewhere else. My bet is that he works there because he loves(or loved) what he was doing. It's not like it's a 19th century coal mine or anything, he won't die at work, so I fail to see how these working conditions are at all opressive.
If he still loves the companyh but doesn't like it's ceo, then he can also organize a strike, let the company know you mean business. Though honestly you are unlikely to invoke much sympathy over a white collar worker's problem at a video game company....
Monstar L
QUIT! See how much you like the unemployment line. How many people here would kill for that job at EA? You make me want to puke.
I know some Slashdotters lean toward socialism, but this post is ridiculous.
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
My husband with a salaried job in the U.S. has to work a long time and it makes me sad. Boo Hoo.
Why not, I don't know, get a new job?
go work somewhere else.
btw, madden football rules. i've bought every year since 1995
A. Incompetant management. No new story here, and we've all suffered under it.
:)
B. Outsource the whiners to a country where, at least if they do whine, no one here will hear them. Also something many of us have lived through.
No, they aren't going to outsource management but thanks for the suggestion. In my experience, that's like throwing gasoline on a fire. You think the bastards in *this* country are greedy incompetants, wait till you see some of the lads and lasses Over There.
Simple solution? Don't do it. At one point in my career I was good enough at fomenting revolts that even the Indian and Russian contractors joined in. The key is to pick the part of the deathmarch where hanging management actually sounds like a reasonable solution. A few weeks of 12-hour days, seven days a week makes any way out welcome.
Rb
Isn't there some sort of government body in the US that regulates stuff like this??
Is this even legal to let people work for 12 hours every day ??
If my company here tried that, they would have a big fat lawsuit slapped on 'm before they could twist their nipples
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Sounds like someone allowed themselves to get trampled with this job. I'm guessing that you wanted to work for a game company so bad that you allowed these guys to walk all over you just so you can keep your job. Do what everyone else does, if you don't feel like you're properly compensated for you job, find a new one.
Do you understand that the world does not revolve around you and your do whatever it takes, ruin as many people's lives, so long as you can make a name for yourself as an softwatory productionist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied along the way, just so long so you can make a name for yourself as an softwatory productionist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied and dying along the way?
...would probably be something like this
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
I for one know that I would be more likely to purchase and play EA sports computer games if they would be updated less frequently - as former fan of the NHL and NFL series, I got tired of minor revisions and facelifts every year that resulted in nearly identical products. Give the software engineers more time so they can make real improvements, and then maybe I'll get back into sports games...
Note that I said help, they aren't guaranteed to solve anything. But the point of models like the CMM are to better manage your projects. If you were up and running at CMM level 2, your senior management would have the visibility into the projects at a high level (via SQA). Of course, this is only if it is done properly, you can certainly fake good behavior just to get some type of CMM level assessment. There is also nothing to prevent said senior management to approve of burning out the employees, but at least then you will know where you stand. But managing your projects and processes effectively is a management decision, and if management enforces those kinds of hours, then you may be out of luck. I would take that kind of job as long as you can, then leave. It doesn't sound like there are any alternatives.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Also, doesn't EA typically give their employees a couple of months off after such an extravaganza?
This person's husband could quite easily get a job writing scripts for Microsoft Excel or something less taxing.
$90+ k / year? And you're bitching? Poor baby. If you don't want the stress, take a part time retail or food service job.
Oh wait, you're making 20 times that much money, and you like it. Live with it.
yet another reason not to get married.
AFAIK you cannot be forced to work overtime. Thus employees could have said no. If there we dismissed then that would be grounds for a law suit. EA may treat their employees poorly but it seems that the employees treat themselves just as poorly. Stand up for yourselves.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
What's that saying?
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Maybe Mr. Moan should seek a job a MSFT. Where deadlines and quality seems non-existent?
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
Thanks to people like this guy we are all expected to grin and bear it when our 40 hour work week turns into 50 or 60 or 70 hours a week. Screw that. I'd rather be dead. I wish these overachievers would grow a pair and tell their employers to go suck eggs.
"Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad... When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm."
I've seen that type of crunch at other businesses. Never a good idea. Funny thing is, it's more expensive to do things this way - you need to constantly be hiring and training - very expensive activities given they have no direct return on investment.
Oh, and paying your accountants enough to get the books cooked in case of an audit ("Yes, sir, we pay each and every one of them at minimum $90k, or they simply don't work overtime.") is probably not cheap, either.
While I appreciate ea_spouse's candor and warning, I have to wonder if s/he (not sure which gender) is taking the next step and talking to California authorities about an audit. Gotta make those accountants work for their money...
Call me lazy but working 80 hours of week while only getting paid for 40 is just stupid exploitation in my book.
Now I live in the EU where it's mostly against the law to make me work more than 40 hours a week without paying me for it. Of course I still work probably 50-60 hour weeks. Atleast it's my choise now and if I want to slow down I can.
--Smutt
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
By Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike
The author obviously wants anonymity, so why the attribution requirement? Just seems strange...
AnimeNEXT anime convention
to form a union. Only the lazy and the stupid need unions, right? I'm sure that the free market will ensure you are treated fairly.
I haven't had this much schadenfreude since hearing about O'Reilly's loofah.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
I totally sympathize, being a developer myself. However, what's sad is that they sit there and take it. Do something. If the working conditions are that awful, and the bosses refuse to change, then LEAVE. You owe it to yourself. Yes, it's a decent paycheck and such, but if you don't think you're being compensated fairly for what you're doing, you owe it to yourself to look someplace else for another job.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
If they can't get American workers to work for 80+ hours a week with no overtime, they sure as Hell can get immigrant workers to do it for half the price either overseas or with the help of 'work' passports.
We should be thankful that they've not chosen to go overseas yet.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
She said that she expected 60 hours a week from all her employees. I expressed some shock, at release time yes, I've even worked more than that. But every week? Yes, she wanted it every week and that "I'd pretty much find that the case at all the 128 companies"
You know, I've been doing this professionally since the very late 70s and I've never found it that way. I'm sure she was able to fill the position with someone, but that someone wasn't me.
Just Say No. (and yes, this can be hard to do, years later when I was dotcom'd and unemployed, saying no would have been pretty damn hard!)
For all we know, the blogger's husband is off boinking his dept's admin until all hours and blaming it on "gee honey, these people are slave drivers". He even comes hhome exhausted.
That said, IMHO, anything over 72 hrs/week is inhuman.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Hell, the rat-brain-in-a-dish on the desk beside me busily playing Flight Simulator, pointed it out.
.. with her. Working 70+ hours a week takes a toll on anyone.
Imagine living at your work place with the same people every day and only leaving to go sleep, this is game testing during crunch time.
BUT I wouldn't trade my job for anything (I work at Activision Value Publishing) even though I have literally lived here the last four months. My work
I am the one hiding to the far left.
I know atleast one profession now, where people don't go home and play video games to relax. It must feel like they were putting overtime :O
If you don't like your job, work somewhere else.
If it really sucks then quit immediately and live off your savings while finding the next thing. You do have savings don't you? No, being able to pawn your big-screen plasma TV doesn't qualify as savings. And the shiny new (expensive) car in the driveway doesn't count as savings either.
Everyone makes their own bed, and at the end of the day must sleep in it. It's not like syberian labor camps here in the USA.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
I want to email it to the execs and managers at EA, they suck. Maybe we should give some one money via paypal so he can put up a big "bill-board" /poster over / near the EA headquaters with saying EA managers are nasty.
PS I always keep my managers home phone numbers and addresses in case they cross my path and squash my toes.
Never ever let anyone ever take your selfworth.
Long live the revolution.
EA programmers should leak out there source code to the OpenSource Community.
what do you say EA....
EAt this bitch..
Working more than 40 hours regularly without overtime is simply unacceptable.
This isn't indentured servitude, he willingly works for this company.
before he left after just 6 months...
EA.... challange Nothing.....
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
I've worked in the software industry in various positions with small companies and large companies, and the people that I've worked with have worked in different places as well. One thing that I consistently hear is that the games industry is particularly tough with long hours, especially large houses like EA.
The games industry seems like the place to be... provided that you are a John Carmack or some other wizkid that gets to run their own company. Otherwise, it is 80+ hour work weeks.
According to forbes, as of March 2004, Probst was making $150k/yr and held $150M in stock.
I was wondering, if EA is engaged in breaking the law, and nobody does anything about it and the government doesn't seem to care, should software engineers unionize?
Think about it, if there are the screen actors unions and contruction worker unions, why can't there be Software Engineer Unions?
Maybe then we can make sure to work 40-hour weeks with extra pay. Maybe then will Project Managers put on themselves realistic expectations, maybe then will CEOs learn that software making is a profession as valuable as business management.
I lived through something like this myself during the first internet boom. I worked over-100-hour weeks every week of the year. I still remember having spent two new year eves working. All I had was two weeks of vacation a year which I had to take in one-week instances, and having provided a two-month advance notice.
I was not paid overtime, weekends, or holidays. I did it because I was young, naive, and trully excited about what I was doing, but when I think back I was definitelly exploited along with my fellow co-workers.
In the end I started my own company and moved to a country with better work practices. Let's only hope that those still toiling for the further advance of computer science get a better deal soon. Uninioze and I'll go back and join you. I know what you're going thru, and I will do all I can to support you.
Form a union! Get all the programmers together and go on strike.
EA is correct when they say their are plenty of people willing to take their job if they can't handle it. This is because many still have the wrong impression about the computer science industry. A lot of people still think it is the booming place of the mid-late 90's when you did your 40-50 hours of work and came home a rich and happy man. Instead of the now when you work 60 hours a week and come home miserable.
I hopped into the CS degree program at my university at the late stages of the bubble. I was 2 years too late and am suffering for it. I was pretty much forced into graduate school because of a bad internship and bad stories from those I know in the field. 60 hour weeks are the norm and overtime is required rather than requested. It is a very psychologically damaging profession and unless someone in the government takes charge (which is quite unlikely with the corp-friendly republicans in charge now) a lot of people will suffer.
Many suggest unions as a solution, but it is almost a no-win situation. If you make it tough for the employers then they will just outsource more and instead of you doing the heavy overtime they'll make some guy in India do it a little more willingly. What is necessary is a widespread teaching by people in the industry of what programming entails and WHY you can't force unreasonable deadlines. Right now those that want the programs have no clue of the effort that goes into it. These are the people that think html is as difficult as programming gets. There is so much more to this, but I'm not in the mood to write an essay so I'll stop now.
I've worked at 3 different game companies, including EA. EA is the absolute worst for crunch time. I, along with most of my team, worked every single day for 4 months straight, 80+ hours a week, and were told by management that we had it easy (other teams had had mandatory Saturdays for a whole year). After crunch time was done, I mentioned my concerns about the overtime to management. This led to my being placed on a probationary "get your act together" period, one step away from being fired. Knowing that life could be so much better, I quit.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
I completely agree with your post. Poor work conditions? Poor Pay? Poor Compensation.
Sounds Familiar
Sig it.
Looks like it's time to start a union :)
...is deception, not the practices per se. OK, crunch time is common--fine. Be upfront about it, and you at least earn some credibility points with your workers. Or, more to the point, don't lie to people.
Look, I do IT project management for a living. I'm given a resource budget, and my job is to put together a reasonable plan based on that budget. So, what resources are EA's plan being based on?
If their planning assumption is 40 hours a week, then they're pretty f$#@ing poor at planning if they have to resort to this every time to make a schedule. If they're putting plans together assuming 48 hours, OK, so that's part of the plan--be upfront about it, and don't call it "emergency unplanned overtime." And if they're planning based on 80 hour weeks, well, OK, then THAT'S the norm, and it should be expected.
Basically, the issue isn't whether it's bad to work overtime. It's telling the workers one level of work is the norm, but assuming a different level of work when you're planning.
...to work for a place like that.
No way. I would have quit after the first month.
Advice: save save save your pennies. There is no value that you can put on a year's salary in the bank (aka a Fuck You fund.)
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It seems the mantra these days is "increase productivity", not "increase jobs". What this really translates into is "increase worker exploitation" because these companies don't want to pay the exorbitant health insurance costs for extra employees. This problem has only gotten worse under Bush, who seems more than willing to bend over backwards for insurance and phamaceutical companies at the expense of Joe Worker. It's not like IT workers are going to strike after all. We seem to have a masochistic love for working 80 hour weeks without overtime. I guess it's better than having your job shipped out to India. Welcome to the new economy!
I might feel some sympathy if we knew the salary info...if this guy is making 45K a year and doing this, he's getting f'ed, but if he's making 95k a year, I'd have a lot less sympathy...
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
As long as they are making huge profits, EA are not going to change their practices unless their employees or the law force them to.
If, as the article says, EA are acting illegally then the author should report them or sue them.
If not, the employees can organize or quit.
Doing nothing is not an option. No company ever changed because someone whined at them.
After reading this i thought the author is very spoiled. Sorry to say. Many countries (including mine) suffer from high unemployment rates. Here's somebody who has a job, with a famous company, and complains about it. Ever thought about the alternative? Being unemployed sucks. I packed shoes for a couple of months, working 11 hours a day for an extremely low paycheck. I knew what the alternative was: no job = no money = no house = no life. Djeez. Grow up. If you don't like your job, for whatever reason, then find another one and quit this one as soon as you get hired for the other.
Oh, and anyone who signs a contract with a very vague statement like this (the working hours) doesn't have a right to complain.
heh I bet the spouse didn't complain about any signing bonus or salary. In fact, I bet this spouse stays at home and doesn't even work. If the did, then the person working at EA could afford to quit and find another job. Instead of wasting time on LJ maybe this "concerned" spouse should get off their ass and find a job.
Ugh. So many thoughts and feelings about this. Part of me sympathizes. I've been there and done that, and it sucks. But at the same time, video games have evolved into this multi billion dollar industry, and corporate interests want a piece of the pie. And there's little that can be done to stop them: big budget advertising, financial strong-arming, existing business partnerships - all tools that can be used to put a stranglehold on the industry. The cold hard truth is that game development is no longer the chic nerd job. It's no longer the job that people want because it's fun. It's become corporate just like everything else.
I work with this guy and crunch time finished three months ago. He just hates spending time with his spouse.
By giving generous donations to the human fund on behalf of your coworkers at christmas
...about being slave-driven in a sweatshop, you'll be eliminated and your job outsourced to an Indian programmer who'll gladly work twice as long hours as you, and for less than a third of your pay.
This story can almost be word for word swapped with a story about some guy working in the coal mines about 100 years ago. They were told if you don't like it, get a new job (but first pay us back the money that you owe us).
Consider the difference between this and the Telco and gas industries:
During the winter, there is a MAJOR crunch time for those industries. It's not uncommon for telco employees to work 84 hours a week for a couple months. Why do they do it? One, it's MAJOR bling in a time when it's needed. Two, they know it's going to end. When the weather calms down and warms up, they all take thier vacation time and can relax. The money saved up allows them to do stuff that they missed while getting systems back up or filling tanks.
Would they work under crunch time, all the time? HELL NO. Thier job can't be done on extreme exhaustion. Would they work like that without compensation? Maybe for once in a long time, not for a couple months at a time.
Why do they get compensated so well? Unions and management that understands that running an employee hard for a short period is cheaper than wasting them for 9 other months, but they must be compensated.
They don't like the long hours, but they do welcome it. I consider what most of the software industry does to be on par with factories in third world countries. After all, if a guy making clothes doesn't like working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, he can always get another job. Can't he?
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
No one forces him to work at EA. Wal-mart and McDonald's are always hiring. Unless you're too good to earn $7/hr.
Contrast this with a couple of other games I've bought:
- Quake. Worked in DOS. A free download let it work in Windows. Another free download let it make use of my Voodoo 2. I moved to FreeBSD, and a quick download and compile let me keep on playing. I moved to OS X, another free download later and I was playing the game again.
- Diablo II. Ran in Windows. Moved to the Mac, and the same game disk worked there too. Additionally, they released an installer recently (a couple of years after I bought the game) allowing me to install it in OS X without needing the classic environment. *NIX support would be nice, but I didn't buy it with the expectation of being able to run it anywhere outside Windows, so even Mac support was a nice bonus.
Both Id and Blizzard will have my custom again. In the case of both of them, I have been able to change operating systems and keep playing their games. EA didn't even support my migration to a newer version of Windows, so I have no guarantee that any game I buy from them will be playable in a year or two's time.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well it happens but you can't do it. There is a limit to the number of hours you can work before you have to take forced comp time or the company gets in trouble.
I forget what the hours are.
I've had this happen on a project before, and then they tried to do it on a second project and everyone just dug their heels and said "screw you". They didn't have a choice as EU laws are much more protective of the employee (even if the salary is much lower of a US employee).
This is bullshit.
Have some pride as a human being.
If your job is:
ruining your health.
ruining your family/husband/wife relationship.
taking all your free time away from you.
working you 7 days a week.
Get a different job. Demand better for yourself.
So what if there are 500 people waiting for your job? Let them have it, do something else.
Personally I'd rather be poor and happy then rich and fucked up the ass by a big company.
Why don't they just hire enough people to do the job? Because people are despirate and let themselves get taken advantage of. Show them that their money can't rule your life. Show them that their benifits can't turn you into a slave.
Go be a fucking plumber, they get benifits too. Program because you like it, if you like it. Otherwise fuck those assholes.
Your NOT A WAGE SLAVE.
If you have a family to take care of, I can understand. But what is the family going to do when you die at 45 from a heart attack because your overworked, unhealthy, and stressed out?
This is an anonymous posting to the web. The poster has no credibility or accountability because we don't know, and can't ever know who he or she is. We have no way of checking how true any of these allegations are.
Memo to the poster: Next time, sign your name to it, or try to organize an effort to stop these supposed abuses, if they really exist at all.
For everyone out there who says "tough, deal with it" obviously is one of those people who is being abused by their employer but is too scared to admit it. There are labour laws, guidelines and regulations that make 85 hour-weeks illegal (assuming the annonymous story is true, of course). Most people are too scared to take on their employer becuase their employer is their livelihood, but that does not give an employer the right to treat their employees like crap. Here in Canada, Ontario specifically, you can go file a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, which has offices in almost every major city. If your employer takes action against you for even talking to the Ministry of labour, threatens to take action, or tries to get you to sign a contract that it is forbidden to talk to the Ministry of Labour, not only is it illegal, but it gives both you and the government the right to sue. The Ministry of Labour is even allowed to prosecute and fine employers itself, the judges and courts are theirs, the fines are what they decide are appropriate. I am sure similar laws exist out there in just about every other Country/Province/State, it is just a matter of investigating it yourself and having the courage to talk to them. Sure, you MAY get fired, but your employer WILL get fined by the government, the government then signs off on any wrongful dismissal suit you file, and trust me, they then keep a careful eye on that employer to make sure they NEVER treat future employees like that again.
My little brother has gone through this process twice, all he did was speak out against dangerous and illegal working conditions for summer jobs. Both times he was fired, both times he went to the Ministry of Labour, both time the employer was fine 10k, charged with various labour crimes, and in the end, he received settlements worth more than what he would have made working the whole summer. And guess what, both times, he got ALL his money before the summer was out.
Assert your rights, you'll be surprised just how many you have.
People should unionize. Get something moving. Go on strike or something! Why do people keep up with such crap? Are we all just a bunch of sheep?
It is easy to gather from this story that EA doesn't have much respect for its software engineers. But why? Unfortunately, it's no big surprise that a huge corporation has trouble respecting its workers, but here on /. we'd like to think that software engineers, specifically game programmers are special. I mean really, these people's sweat and creativity has made billions of dollars for EA, so why aren't they treated like kings and queens?
I would speculate that despite all of the success, programmers are still a part of a generally despised class, that of geeks and nerds. Yes some of these people have become famous and made a lot of money, but so have a lot of lawyers and we know how popular that class is! Heck it may well be that the CEOs, Directors, and Managers are the same people who used to beat the nerds up and steal their lunch money in grade school. Why expect them to treat the nerd class any differently now, especially when there are even cheaper nerds overseas who'll take the abuse for a lot less money?
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
A manager won't feel much flack at all if a game has bugs. But they'll cringe at the thought of being sacked if company revenue projections fall because a game isn't released on time or on budget.
Welcome to the real world. It's a bit chilly out there. Wear a coat and pack a lunch.
Cheers,
I worked in the game industry for a year and 1/2. In that time I worked on 3 projects, and was always in cruch. I averaged over 75 hours a week for that year and 1/2 period. Some weeks I spent over 120 hours in the office.
Bad management, unrealistic schedules, artificial deadlines, I've seen it all while deathmarching. And the end product was always rushed out the door before it was ready..... so it was junk. The company killed a lot of previosly sucessful franchises by pushing junk, in order to meet financial obligations. There were controlled by their debt, not by any desire to produce a quality game.
Thankfully the company I worked for is now bankrupt, and hopefully dead.
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Business Know How
Federal law sets a pretty low cap for "exempt" as far as salary goes - $455 per week.
The wiggle room comes into play when you consider what the job descriptions are: is the employee someone who is instrumental in computer programming, or do they merely use the computer to do their jobs better? In other words, an artist may not be exempt, while a programmer who wrote the program the artist uses would be.
I'm sorry to say this. My spouse used to work for Parsons Technology before Bob Parsons sold it and founded Go Daddy. After a year of seven-day-fourteen-hour workweeks, my spouse walked and took a job for a lower wage with more time. After two years at that job and *lots* of study, he got a job that has a 50-55 hour workweek.
You and your spouse have three choices.
1) Stick it out, because you're scared. Nobody loves a job that much after a year of hours like this.
2) Blow the whistle to California Bureau of Labor Standards and the mainstream press. Forget getting a job in the industry again. The life of a whistleblower sucks. You need to be aware of that before you call them on violating the 72 hour workweek cap that California has for even Exempt employees.
3)Get a job in another industry. The problem with whistle-blowing etc., is that your job *can* move overseas, just as a factory job can. Find a job with local stability.
Best wishes.
If Maxis is indicative of the rest of their corporate culture, EA Games is concerned only about getting your money, and do not do any quality assurance and testing... and will only fix the most extreme of bugs. Remember SimCity 3000? It had a bug in it regarding water-deals rendering them useless. Remember SC3K Unlimited? It had the exact same bug. Seen the Sims 2? It has that nasty "jump" bug which keeps your Sims from ever talking to anyone when their memories get full. And then they have the gall on their site to blame it on the user: "you're probably either cheating or have been using the Elixir of Life too much". Yeah, really fine job there. (Apparently they're caving in to fix it because it really is debilitating and they hope to sell a few dozen expansion packs, so...)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
If I could get EA CEO Larry Probst on the phone, there are a few things I would ask him. "What's your salary?"
According to Yahoo Finance it's a paultry $1.45 million. Course, with options he exercised about $23 million.
[Note: To anybody in a corporation, I highly recomend against looking up your CEO's salary. It's one of the most depressing things you could possibly do (my CEO makes in one hour what I make all year).]
This would be good advice for every software company I have worked for. It's almost considered standard to have to put in a few months of 16 hour days to ship a product. When all thats really necessary is to make more realistic schedules. I have seen the strain on the marriages of many friends.
The IT industry is treating its employees like hardware and is totally oblivious to the fact that they might have a life out of the company.
The problem is rather simple, in most companies you have a salesguy/coder ratio of 3 to 1. All these guys are making promises like its going out of style, meaning that even if the ratio was 1 to 1 the coders would still have their hands full.
To top it off, there's a culture within the industry that says that since you love your job, you should be willing to spend 70 hours a week doing it.
I have friends that have had enuf of this and are now working in bakery or grocery stores. They are great coders, the suits pushed them away. The IT suits have no longterm view of things.
"It's great that someone's able to speak out about it... but it won't change anything"
If it keeps one person from walking into the same chopper blade as the author and her husband, it has changed something. For the better.
User Training for Busy Programmers
Now this is depressing. Most of the responses I have seen so far have said: "So what? That's the way it is. Get used to it. If you don't like it, leave." Not only have most people not been bothered they give the impression that this person should stop looking for special treatment and just shut up and be grateful to have a job. No wonder EA can get away with this crap. Do you really have such low expactations? Are you really so pessimistic about our ability to change the practices of big business? If so, then the corporations have won. If everyone is resigned to letting big government and big business do whatever we want, then we might as well give up the hope of being individuals.
just make them fire you. Start working 50 hours weeks. They fire you for only working 10 unpaid overtime hours a week instead of 20 or 30...
And who do you think a jury will rule in favor of?
What cod piece?
I'm surprised the RIAA hasn't somehow tried to get invovled and blame piracy on things like this.
Why wouldn't you just quit? Tell them to flip off?
for those of us sitting behind overly-restrictive corporate firewalls that block livejournal
I've been working on map design for various computer games in my spare time for the last six years or so. I haven't actually released many maps yet, but with my skills in map design and texture art I could almost certainly get a job in the games industry. Several of my friends already have, and are working on games you've almost certainly heard of.
:-)
Except I don't want to work there. From what I've heard, EA isn't alone, with many young, idealistic people working for long hours on lacklustre games because, well, it's what they always wanted to do. If they give up because of lack of pay, or quit because they simply can't continue to work like that, then there's always someone else to hire, someone else who hasn't learned how bad some of the employers can be.
So, I keep modding as a hobby, mapping purely for enjoyment. It's much more fun being able to work on your own projects without some looming deadline, without a boss breathing down your back. The games market is already saturated with clones, sequels and utter trash, and the chances of working on something memorable are pretty slight. Instead of working on Barbie's Fashion Adventure 7, I can build my own Twelve Monkeys-inspired, ultra-dark adventure in Half-Life 2 (one of my upcoming projects!)
However, I'm intrigued by Wideload Games' new approach, contracting in work as and when required with just a core team working on a project full-time. It's not so dissimilar to the work I'm doing at the moment, as a freelance web programmer and designer, and I wonder if it'll catch on. No, I wouldn't be able to make a full-time living from it, but it could make for some interesting side work, assuming anyone would want me...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
As opposed to "designing for whatever the current version of Windows is with total disregard for best current practices."
As in, testing with fast user switching (even if it's just exiting after finding it's running already as another user), testing with Limited User access (XP and 2K!), testing with families in mind whose parents don't want their kids destroying the family computer, testing whatever lame and innefective copy protection schemes to make sure they work with all of the above.
It's the end of 2004, guys! Why does The Sims 2 not work with limited user access? Just because of your ineffective copy protection scheme? You should challenge Safedisc or whoever you use to fix their broken system, to work on XP for limited users.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
I think it's intolerable.
I absolutely sympathize and, for one, will not buy an EA title until I'd
heard of any change; being sure to email them any time I'd be
interested in one of their games saying why they loose a customer.
Also, I suggest the "nothing new" braggarts here around to RTFA entirely.
I'm a sw developer too (albeit in good old Europe) and I for sure never would tolerate
a similar treatment.
The EA 2004 Proxy statement shows that CEO Probst is being paid $672k this year, plus $781k in bonus(es). Must be tough times, having to take a cut from last year when he made a combined $1.8M rather than $1.45M.
If the auther is really interested in trying to get some attention to the matter, they could attempt to contact the board of directors, for all good that would do.
-- PGP keyID: 0x4C95994D
I'm active in the mod community for Neverwinter Nights and achieved some measure of success (modules on gaming magazine CDs, module of the year, etc.). As a result, I had a number of job offers from various gaming companies.
Fortunately I have a very well paying job as a web application developer working for the healthcare industry. It's stable, my customers love me, and I feel like I'm making a real difference in people's lives. So while it was flattering, I turned them all down.
My father once told me that the secret to happiness was either trying to make money from your hobby or work a real job that lets you support your hobby. I've chosen the latter and I have no regrets.
Distribute copies of Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister to all EA execs. It explains why what they are doing is bad for the bottom line.
While not for a game company, I've seen this happen on other projects I'ved worked on. IMHO, it's not worth it.
I am not a spectacular games programmer. Just a lowly java programmer. I've worked for companies that run burnout plans. I've also worked for companies that don't. At least in my field (j2ee app development) what I've seen is that companies are starting to learn the value of keeping their devlopers happy. It keeps them around, and they write better code, and they are more efficient.
I don't think big game companies will ever learn this, and here is why. Their talent is usually young top notch programming talent. These guys are the rock stars of the IT industry. They have the desire, energy, and willingness to put up with this. The execs in game companies know that every young programmers dream is to write successful video games, and so their attitudes towards their developers are very master/slave oriented, because they know they are giving their people their dream shot.
My advice is, if you want a life outside of work, get out of game development, and get into enterprise software development under a company that knows what makes employees do well. The work is not as exciting as games, but life is so much better.
To give an example of what I'm talking about, in 2004, I'm making over 100k. The team rarely works more then 40 hours a week, except for the occasional extra 5 or so hours around release time, or an emergency bug fix and we might be called to VPN from home to fix a critical bug. Other than that, the team has never missed a deadline.
Our development methodology consists of components from both RUP and XP, especially the "sustainable pace" concept from XP. It works.
You don't have to suffer.
If your employment is "at will", they can lay you off at anytime, for no reason. This is certainly true for the companies I've worked for in the last 10 years or so. You can get unemployment benefits, which you wouldn't get if you were fired "for cause", but you're out of work. They don't have to give notice, they can just say "You're out". You can quit at anytime too, so of course you have an implicit choice every time they ask (or tell) you to work overtime. You don't have to be there.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. --Thomas Jefferson
It's like Grapes of Wrath for whiny middle-class white people.
ONLY the Fed Gov is normally allowed to hand out comp time, it must be within 30 days of incurred overtime and it must be at the rate of 1.5 times the incurred time. NO EXCEPTIONS
Just because you are salaried DOES NOT mean you are classified as Exempt under labor laws. To be exempt, you must have decision making authority AND supervisory responsibilities, generally more than 5 people.
Faithfully record your working times, and when things turn shitty, take it to your state Employment Commission. If you're just a grunt coder who codes the features he's told to, and who doesn't supervise anyone, you get overtime.
So that's why EA games are buggy pieces of crap.
This is seriously illegal, right? Are there really that many game programmers and so few jobs that they can keep this going?
Quitting a job because it's overworking you is not that simple. I've been in bad jobs before, and I have quit them to go to better ones, but each time it was a scary step - almost a leap of faith that the new situation would be better than the current one.
What happens if you don't have a new job lined up? I know people that have gone 4+ years in IT without jobs. If you can live in your mom's basement, fine, but if you have a spouse and kids, it's a lot harder. Car payments, Mortgage payments, etc. can wreck your credit rating if you leave too soon, and you can't just say "I quit my job, I can't pay for a while." (Thought - get the spouse on a job as coverage, and have the EA person spend time at home recovering and job hunting, to maintain income in the meantime.)
Quitting a job can have other impacts. When you go to your next interview, "Why did you leave your last job?" "I didn't like the work hours" sounds bad, even if they are inhumane. You are giving the new employer the impression you'll quit if you don't like the conditions.
Loss of Benefits: I don't know about this individual case, but I do know people that can't quit because if they do, they have medical coverage that will evaporate and leave them screwed. Again, if you have a spouse and / or kids, you're not just shooting yourself in the foot, you're unloading the clip in theirs as well.
I wholeheartedly say "If the job sucks, find a new one you like." Note I don't say "Quit." There is a difference. The trick is to find one you can slide into with little disruption; the catch is having the energy to do it while in Crunch Mode. The hardest part of finding a new job is finding the time and energy to do it while surviving the current one, especially if it's as crunchy as EA sounds.
The workers at EA should talk to the people at "Washtech / TechsUnite, and consider organizing themselves into a union.
My advice to the blogger is to either convince her husband to leave, or leave him. For Pete's sake, he's working himself to death, he's not a victim!
The blogger's spouse is choosing to work these insane hours, knowing full well that he won't ever be compensated for them. He took the job without ever bothering to understand the question about long hours. Clearly the work is more important to him than spending time with you.
It's not like it's even difficult for decent developers to find other work. So what if it's not in a field that he loves? Given a choice between you and his job at EA, he chose his job. Sucks to be you. Now get over it.
One of my good friends works for EA. True, they sometimes have to work a lot of long hours to meet production deadlines. But this guy fails to mention all of the perks EA employees get - including complimentary two weeks off, bonuses, killer salaries, and discounts/freebies on EA and their partners' products. Sounds like this guy's attitude prevents him from getting those perks, and therefore is peeved. I'd work my ass off for a high-paying job with lots of benefits, that's for sure!
Libertarian philosophy isn't quite as heartless as you just portrayed it in your comment. If these working conditions were misrepresented or not disclosed when the employee asked during the interview (and it sounds like they were), then most libertarians would agree that the poster has a valid complaint: The employer initiated fraud against the employee. The core of libertarian ethics is that no one has the right to initiate force or fraud, or delegate the initiation of force or fraud, against another human or their property. Sounds to me like the employee was defrauded when he asked about the working conditions.
User Training for Busy Programmers
$90k a year is what they SHOULD be paying if you are not getting overtime pay, NOT what they are currently working.
I make about $22k a year and do the game-industry crunch time, but still wouldn't give up my job for anything.
Really. I'm a veteran of the coding wars, and yes, death marches are nothing new. The tactic of the perennially slipping deadline ("whoops, heh heh, crunch mode just got extended 2 weeks, sorry") is the telltale sign of incompetent software management. (My SO had a similar experience in the telecomm industry before the big crash.) A German shepherd could figure out what's happening to this organization.
The team involved has to revolt unanimously -- somewhere a manager needs to get seriously bitch-slapped with some slippage. I'm not talking about sabotage, mind you; let's stay professional, even though noone will ever die as a result of EA's bugs. But what about having an entire department or two calling in sick on the exact same day?
It's the crudest form of organized labor, but it works. Just like the "blue flu" that hits US cities when the policemen's union protests conditions. And the larger and more critical the department involved, the better.
Yes, there is the risk of an en masse firing. On the other hand, if this article is true, what is there for the engineers to lose? Paychecks are nice, but health and sanity are rather nifty too.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Fuck That Place.
Seriously, it's a carrer choice.
I liked working as a field tech. Got to drive around, working on different people's problems. I loved helping people and getting to feel like a hero. I did not like the pay, or the, "Stay on site until it's done, but be here at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow" attitude. I quit after 1 year.
I liked working as a hosting admin. I dug servers, and working with the OS to do the developers bidding. I did NOT like getting paged constantly with servers issues that were beyond my control due to the crappy product. I quit after 2 years.
Now I am a programmer, and I currently like where I am. The whole time I have had a family to support, but I know if I am not happy at work, nobody is going to be happy at home. I bet the guy shoveling shit at the horsetrack doesn't like his job either, he should quit too. That's the great thing about America, you can just go get a new job. Sure you may have to give things up, but a job is all about choice.
You have to decide what is important to you. You will never be rich as a teacher, but be a teacher if it's what you love. You will never (I guess from this article) be rich as a game programmer, or have a life outside of work, but you get to do what you love. I play a lot of poker, and toyed with the idea of going pro, but after a very short try (kept my job, just played at the pro level for a few weeks), I really did not want to play poker.. at all! It became a job.. a job I wanted to quit.
So, pick a job you like. Some people LIKE having a job that is their life, some people like having a hobby that turns into a job. The whole of the job is equal to the sum of all it's parts.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
I think this is probably every where in the software industry, as far as i see it as long as you get taken care well, then it should be ok, i can say this because i am single, and i dont know if i ever could even do a decent date if i work like this, but i like what you said "live to work" or "work to live" honestly i dont know what i am doing right now,
http://iesucks.org
EA WANTS YOU (or your spouse) TO QUIT!!! They want to ship all of your jobs somewhere else where people don't expect two-day weekends! You can bitch all you want, but nothing will get done until all of EA's work is done somewhere else.
You (or your spouse) have a choice: Keep doing what you're doing or face the inevitable and quit.
I'm not saying what EA is doing is right; I'm just stating a fact.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
When I interviewed with EA on a position for Software Engineer on Madden, I saw this first-hand. The people in my interview looked ghastly tired, and after the email tests, phone interviews, programming tests, etc, I was seeing the light, this is a sweat shop. About halfway through my interview-lunch, I realized that this isn't the place for me. I half-assed my way through the programming test, knowing I didn't want to work here. Above all, the HR people were unprofessional and borderline-rude. The first question I was asked in the interview..do you mind working weekends? long hours?.."oh by the way, we even bring in food for you when you stay late!". What an incentive...work 90hrs, they provide $5 pizza. Woohoo.
P.S. - I subscribe to LJ because they continue to innovate. I don't subscribe to /. because it continues to stagnate. CACHE THE FUCKING ARTICLES ALREADY!!!
I have played computer games since I was 5 years old. I had an Atari 2600, 5200, inellivision, appleII, nintendo... etc. etc.
My dream was always to work in the game industry. So I got a BS and an MS in computer Science with an emphasis in 3D rendering techniques. It was my dream and my passion.
After working the industry, I don't think I would go back. Long hours are the norm not the exception. Every shop I know will deatmarch at some point. Some are worse than others. They beat the enthusiasm right out of me. Now I hardly play any games.
In the industry there used to be a reason for crunch. In the old days you received royalties from sale one of the product. I worked with several old timers who had made quite a bit of money back in the 80s and 90s from royalties. The ends justified the work. Now all the companies do a return on investment bonus. Ie you only get extra money if the games sells through enough units to exceed a certain profit margin and then you may see some bonus. Of course clever accounting will always show a loss on development.... I talked to lots of veterans of the industry who had worked for various studis. None had ever seen an extra dime on a ROI based bonus system. One even caught the president of the copmpany in a lie on the numbers of units sold. He was stating one figure to employees on why they had not seen a bonus and another figure to the game mags boasting of the title popularity.
I now work cyber security. Nice 40 hour work weeks, and a bigger pay check. My benefits are nt quite as good but the time with my family more than makes up for that.
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The last game I bought from EA was BF1942:road to rome. That is a good game. I wonder if it has been produced on a "time crunch". I heard BF:Vietnam was buggy slow etc.. Maybe there's a direct relation between the fact that it is flawed and the fact that there probably has been "time crunch" during it's development.
After having read this story, I really will avoid buying EA games. As a developer, I know that when I work more than 4 hours in a day, I stop being creative/productive. I usually do "light stuff" in the afternoon (testcases are good things to do in the afternoon...), because I know that if I go into the big stuff, I will probably produce bugs that will need to be fixed tomorrow morning.
From what I read in TFA, EA PHBs know nothing about software engineering. That's why PHB in a software company should have been coder first instead of coming straight from MBA. Hopefully, EA's going straight to hell with this corporate behavior.
perception is reality
I am a game programmer. And this story does not really tell me anything new about EA. The larger game developers really are little more then human meat factories as far as labour practices go.
From my standpoint, EA represents all that is bad about the game industry. They stamp out sequels with no originality. If EA puts out something new, its because they bought the company that made it. And they offer the worst possible hours. They probably pay very well, but your pretty much working 2 full time jobs for that cash.
However, pretty much every game developer I have met, except the rankest newbies to the industry, are fully aware of how EA operates. And EA is hardly the only offender. I have some co-workers who worked for Acclaim, and the same kind of hours were expected.
Death march hours suck. Employers who schedule a project expecting every one to work death march hours are retarded. I personally would never take a job from EA, or any company I view as a human meat factory, unless the alternative was unemployment.
But EA and the rest are the status quo in the game industry. For all the companys faults, EA does know how to be profitiable. Small game studios will not be able to thrive until they can get their game to market without the help of one of the big publishers. That wont happen until services like valves 'Steam' are viable.
Happily though, my job kicks ass. I probably could make more money at EA, but at my job, I dont have to work a Death march schedule. I suspect my company will do quite well for its self in the long run for it.
END COMMUNICATION
Sounds to me like the software industry is ripe for it's own version of Sinclair's The Jungle. More and more, the software industry seems to be turning into a modern day version of the turn of the century meat-packing industry.
I work in a country where 5 weeks of paid vacation is mandatory. I work at most 37 hours a week and anything above that is added to my vacation time.
I don't want to sound harsh or anything but socialism is sometimes not a bad idea. We have plenty of unions keeping people happy. Seems like we're already where you guys are trying to get.
What they need is a union so they can demand better working condition.. And that would prevent EA from firing everyong (except if they move to china or india)..
Dude - hate to spoil it here for you people. But some people (such as myself) work well more than 100 hours a week, sometimes 36 hours at a stretch straigh, with no break, and people's lives in our hands. And I make about 39 grand a year before taxes.
I know the hours suck and you get worn out. But you've got to pull back the covers and try and live with it. Or around it, or what not. Make the game, try and enjoy it. And know that no one's going to die if you screw up something.
Madden is fucking sweet. My roommate and I play all the time, and I play online.
If it takes 85 hour weeks to make this, fine. Fuck it, I want to ability to pitch the ball back at any time, after the cath, run, etc. Crank it up, fuckers!!! 90 hours a week!!!
I guess they aren't doing eXtreme Programming. I've worked overtime and most of the time the only "bonus" was more crappy code. A rested mind can produce A LOT more then a caffeine drawn one.
Any time you pirate a game, you are making life that much harder for the programmers who work on it. These people have difficult jobs, work long hours, and they don't do it so you can just download it from Usenet.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Yesterday, I started noticing a price drop on the EA Sports games on all platforms, including PC. I assume this has to do with the ESPN/Sega NBA/NFL/NHL 2K5 games all at $19.99 and selling well.
They've dropped their prices at the EA website for $29.99 in an attempt to sell more units. I also imagine the NHL lockout is affecting their sales as well.
I wonder if the lower prices/quality alternatives from ESPN and SEGA impacted EA's labor practices for this year's games?
you don't have a job, and there's 2 possible reasons. a) if this guy worked 40 hours, there'd be 40 more left for someone else. b) you're a troll and noone will hire you. you pick.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
MS Rep:"Not only does our software have 'special features', if you decide to purchase a different OS, we'll break your legs."
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
I think these guys should really demand some kind of profit sharing or a percentage of each game's revenues. Of course this probably won't work for the average code-monkey, but at least the lead engineers and game designers should have enough sway to be able to get it. The big game companies are making millions off of their backs so they should at least get some of it.
I imagine that behemoths like EA wouldn't give their workers this, but some of the senior developers should demand it. I've always been impressed with the OmniGroup's policy: (though they're not a game company)
Bonuses: We pay bonuses when our revenues and profitability allow it. Some years, it's a lot of money, and when we have an unprofitable year, it's not.
They seem to be a company that recognizes that their developers are important.
--
Sounds like a scam, but it works.
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infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
" Wish I had mod points, you'd get them. Libertarians should go to their Utopia, a place without governmental interference and where the free market rules: sub-saharan Africa or mob-controlled Russia!"
Must... feed... trolls... !
Right because we've all seen how well the alternative works out.
On a local scale, the company is providing a product (ie: a job) and the workers are the consumers of that product. If they don't like the way that the company is treating them, they can either refuse the product (ie: quit) or take other actions to attempt to rectify their problems with the company (ie: form a union).
No governmental interference involved. Principles intact. So what were you talking about again?
Time to change this, again. See "Fierce Creatures": "Mr. McCain insists on a 20 percent return from all Octopus enterprises." "Why 20 percent?" "Because he does."
From the article: "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."
i nfo/FromPersonIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedPerson Id=216632
That's easy, $672,759 (salary)+ $781,000 (in bonuses) for the fiscal year (FY) ending in March 2004.
That's not includeing the $149.7 million in stock options.
Lawrence F Probst, III has been listed in Forbes' America's Most Powerful People.
http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/person
I used to work for a bank during the years before Y2K and I can identify with this person.
If your working routine is affecting your health, talk to your boss and try to get a compromise.
The company will go on fine if you get ill, but nobody will compensate for the damage that you're suffering.
I think many companies are taking advantage of the current economic environment to abuse their employees. Hours are getting longer, benefits are shrinking and we're against the wall given the current technology job market. Add that to the need to provide to a family and this is a recipe for disaster.
I wish the best for them.
I worked for a game developer (Kesmai) that was bought by EA in early 2000 (the buy was announced in late 1999).
A couple of links from around then will tell the tale:
EA From the Inside I/II (LtM - I is a couple of entries below II. Sadly the links to the actual scanned memo are no longer extant, it was a stunner.)
EA harassment lawsuit (Fatbabies)
EA has been about maximizing profit and minimizing expenses first, and customer satisfaction second, and the health and well-being of its employees almost dead last, for a long time now.
-- Old Man Kensey
I blame problems like this on an authority structure driven by Marketing and Sales instead of Operations. EA (and almost all large-scale gaming companies, from what I've heard) allow their Sales/Marketing staff to run roughshod over production and scheduling, basically tossing out tried-and-true practices and standards for software development.
Granted, they're trying to capitalize on trends and want to rush to market quickly, but just because you *can* easily replace the husks of programmers with fresh faces doesn't mean you *should*. As others have pointed out, EA and their contemporaries are making their overhead balloon obscenely by having the turnover rate so high.
- Jack
then, when someone gets burned good enough, they can start a class action lawsuit and sue for time and a half. Chances are, however, these are exempt employees and it's not illegal, it's just stupid.
I like to see that this is getting more attention. They don't know what they're doing or what makes a good game... time.
This practice has killed many great developers. I mourn most of all for the loss of Richard Garriot's Origin. Now it's just a sham shell for bad add on updates for Ultima Online. These practices had him and his team leave and killed the dream of UO2.
I'm not too educated on what happened to Westwood, but I believe this was the problem as well.
Without time, games comming out are just a complete plug-in story template based on older games with something a little "new" added each time.. Yes, EA owns Square Enix.
-Krazor(lithiumATcoreinfernoDOTNET)
the only difference is, there's no CEO who may look like sipping all the profit. in academia, it's institution/research group's reputation and funding on the line and most of the work are done in the name of advancing the research and understanding. if i may say so, i think those are a lot more "worthy" goals than making video games.
As Karl very astutely pointed out "capitalism leads to the exploitation of the worker."
I am not a communist, nor do I think communism is a good system, for this simple reason: people are lazy.
However, in the case of capitalism, laziness is defeated by greed. That makes it work a million times better than communism in the short run.
But every single business owner (or board of directors) is under perpetual pressure to decrease costs while increasing sales. This pressure never, ever abates. Eventually, little-by-little, policies involving longer hours and lower wages are the result.
This is just the natural evolutionary cycle of a capitalist economy, for better or for worse.
While it is kind of them to do so (i've had a number of managers do that), really why does that make any sense for them to sit and twiddle thumbs while you work on something? Furthermore sometimes they can just be in the way, or micromanaging - and nothing is more annoying that someone constantly checking over your shoulder in a crunch at 2am.
Instead, I like to have a decent policy in place between my manager and myself of what happens to make up for you being there so late. One thing I like is 1:1 time off for every hour after fifty or so (and the general freedom to choose hours as you wish).
In short, instead of a manager who can "feel my pain" I prefer one that can alleviate my own.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I suspect few of EA employees really *have* to work there. What they need to do is say "I don't have to put up with this shit", stand up, and leave.
I hate to pull a quote from a TV personality that is "Dr. Phil" -- though maybe he learned this one from someone else -- but I read that he said, "people treat us the way we teach them."
And don't get me started about paying for the house; they don't have to do that either. If they can't find a job that lets them own a house, they should sell it and go back to renting. Health and sanity are more important than luxury and status.
Instead of working on Duke Nu^H^H^H^H-- Good Ol' George B chimed in the yesterday regarding this article
At least George understands that life is not just to sit infront of the screen coding, coding, coding without noticing what happens around the world.
Life wasn't meant to be spent in a cubicle.
This is just simple modern sociology that goes back to high school. It's the jocks intimidating the nerds all over again and the nerds never win.(well except in that movie where they get revenge, but we all know that would never happen.) The leader in Jock games is making a horde of Nerds work like slaves to churn out the cutting edge in Jock games and the Nerds are too afraid to quit or stand up for themselves as always. At Christmas a million Nerds who are jock-wannabees will buy these games and the circle of life will continue....
Get all your co-workers together and join a union, scehdule collective bargaining and make some realistic demands.
Making pleas on a personal level will get you no-bloody-where. (most) Companies and CEOs only understand force, and as a union you guys will have rights that you dont have as individual employees. Dont let these bastards get away with screwing you to line their pockets.
I'm in the EU. Most of this tale would be so blatantly illegal over here that an industrial tribunal would last all of about 3 minutes.
Wait. Wrong century. We've been here before, and we'll be here again. When worker supply outstrips demand, bad things happen. Once the husband and his compatriots rise up against EA, their jobs will simply be shipped off to somewhere cheap.
I have to admit video games are a great hook for the industry. The vast majority of good programmers I've known over the years were into gaming, and many got into the computer industry with dreams of writing games themselves.
One thing about learning to code those old systems is that you ran right on the metal with assembler or even machine code in some cases. Languages like C or C++ were just another way of expressing the same constructs a bit faster, allowing the experienced "metal coder" to turn out applications and tools that ran far better and faster than most people think reasonable.
With the never-ending crunch to support more users and data on shrinking hardware budgets, the hardcore techie still has work while the average programmer may take a couple years to find another job.
Of course the hardcore techie starts out being tough to manage, because what they really want to do often has little do do with the work that's actually to be done. But if you find a manager who can appease the hardcore techie while getting them to do the real work, you can end up with an extremely productive and cost-effective team -- especially if your "techies" have a knack for applying solutions from other problem spaces to the issues at hand.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Having recently left a major game developer (not EA), I can tell you that the same practice exists at other game companies. When I left and interviewed for a new job, I would always ask about crunch time. The answer at game companies was universal, every single one said that they had crunch and that it was unavoidable. I also noticed that the amount of crunch time (admitted by interviewers) was inversely proportional to the quality of the games of the studio and the talent of the people. My sample size was about 10 - 20 studios and yes, this is obviously a very subjective opinion of my interview process. I was lucky enough to interview with a studio that I would consider to be one of the two most influential in the industry today (not Id :-). Their crunch time was the only one that I felt was reasonable. Its employees were the brightest I have ever seen at a game studio. Go figure!
I don't believe the game industry managers understand how much talent they are loosing out on and how inefficiently they are running their studios by their current practices. In my opinion, the game industry needs more visionary and mature leaders.
The job I accepted was not in the game industry. I now work half the hours, get twice the pay, and still really love what I do. Maybe I got lucky.
He's cheating on you.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
The reason there is no union yet is because software people still make OK money (when they can find a job) and they are too smart to form an organization devoted to making management want to ship the job overseas where the restrictions on labour would be the same (or better and cheaper).
Another reason is that right now it would be all too easy to replace entire IT shops with a large number of people still out of work. The only power a union holds really is one of strking, but when you can get contractors at the drop of a hat to make up slack, you can get new workers just as easily, and furthermore the company has little reason to be loyal to IT employees since it so rarely deliveres what it says it will when they say they will (the fault of the business of course, but still). Compound that with most IT workers spending right at the edge of what they make (and thus with no ability to sustain a strike beyond two weeks) and you really have no room for a union.
Seems pretty bleak, why am I still in IT? Because generally I enjoy the work and have been able to manage my own carreer so as generally not to be in those kind of hellish deathmarches we all know and dislike. When you see a parade coming down the road, it's time to get on to the sidewalk!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So if I tell you when I hire you that you'll work 8 hours days 5 days a week for 60k a year.
Then turn around once you have been working for a month and make you work longer hours without pay that is ok? There is nothing wrong with that?
The problem isn't so much that people are working 90-hours a week so much as it is they are LIED to when they are first employed and from the sounds of it continued to be lied to through out their employment.
They are also breaking the law by not paying overtime, or giving comp time. They are laws put in place for a reason, and you can't just break them and say if you don't like it don't work here.
It is almost the company equivalent of a cult. Suck you in, take your money, house and possessions, and then when you realise that a fool you have been you are fucked because you can't leave or you'll be homeless, jobless, possessionless & broke. This isn't as bad ofcourse, but it uses the same tactic. In an increasingly hard industry they are taking advantage of people's fears that they won't be able to find another job. It doesn't sound too good if you tell your new employer you left your last job because they wanted you to work too much.
Organizing sounds like the right thing to do, but unfortunately game designers are one of those fantasy jobs where naive people will always join without realising what they are getting themselves into, and will gladly cross the 'pick lines'. Something needs to be done about these practices, and unfortunately lawsuits seem to be the only real option in this situation.
the shithead CEO of EA contributed to the crypto-fascist PrezBush.
http://www.hrpost.com/lib/quicklaw.php?provision=o p
I can't believe this kind of thing still goes on in a country like the US!
Not to discredit the entire article on one little thing...
But she says that programmers aren't exempt until they make $90k a year. That is a lie.
department of labor says it's $455 a week... he makes more than that I'm sure. Perhaps it's only wishful thinking.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
This company wasn't EA but EA is the biggest stockholder and what she describes was the same at that company.
I might have been able to deal with the crunch mode for 2 months had it not been for the fact that the REASON for crunch mode was that the code base on this product was so crappy. The price of permanent crunch mode is that your developers have no time to learn anything new. These guys were stuck in 1980's coding philosphies and making a single change to the code would result in massive side effects. If they lost any critical programmers who had been there for a long time the product would be effectively dead.I might be ok working crunch mode on code that I'd written, but certainly not trying to fix someone else's pile of junk that should have been aborted at birth.
The management also treated the people abusively (yelling at them, calling their work useless, etc) . It's a ripe place for petty tyrants to get jobs in management. Dinner was provided when staying late which is nice but really just an "everyone wins" deal. Management keeps you there and you get a nice meal.
But maybe this is just a symptom of game programming. Games go out of style rapidly. There isn't any motivation to create a flexible, reuseable code base or team because of the rapidly changing styles in games.A lot of the guys I was working with were very good debuggers but very limited in other ways. They were trapped working for this company because their skill sets were very old and they seemed to have no motivation to learn new things. DirectX was like the last new thing they learned and that's it.
I personally don't have extra motivation to work on games. I thought it would be an interesting industry to try. My experience is vast and flexible. As it turned out, I was way overqualified because they don't want skill, they want mostly effort, mostly. Actually, the one skill you should be very good at is using a debugger because that's what you'll be doing most of the time with the archaic practices that run rampant.
I'd say if you are young (19-25) and don't have a life, working games might be the thing for you.The salary was way up there 90k+ so its worth it if you are willing to sacrifice in other areas.
The funniest thing about the "Challenge Everything" logo in games is that you can't skip it.
Oh EA logo, why don't you let me challenge you?
Your employer simply has to make opting out of the European Working Time Directive a part of the conditions of employment. Mine has, it's quite common practice.
there is already a lawsuit going on about wage and hour.
I work for EA on one of the above mentioned "yearly sports games". From what I can tell in this story, it's likely this particular employee was NOT working on one of these (or if he was, it wasn't at my studio).
At my studio, there's an assumed crunch time during Alpha for bugfixing, but certainly nothing lasting for months on end. Part of this is because of the yearly cycle -- everyone is very aware of the tight schedule.
Despite this, scheduling is an eternal conflict between the producers, who are constantly shoving more features into the schedule, and the developers, who are trying to convince the powers that be that we need more time to get it right.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that on my team at least, crunch (when it happens) is not a cold, heartless, knowing abuse of the developers but rather a demonstration of incompetent planning on the part of the producers.
It's a little offtopic, but worth saying that the programmers working at EA aren't fundamentally different from programmers working at any other non-megapublisher studio. We're professionals, trying to get as much new stuff squeezed into a game in 7 months or so of coding as we possibly can. And we genuinely want to make a quality product, obviously. Just a little kneejerk to the inevitable comments implying we're a bunch of talentless yahoos.
Not so much that only the lazy and stupid need unions - that's just insulting. Instead try to realize that unions just don't fit in with what software people do and the market they are doing it in. Also software people have a lot more freedom of choice in jobs than typical factory workers.
If you're all so fired up about unions, try to start one - I dare you. See what kind of purchase you get. Or are you just spouting off how great unions are without doing a damn thing to improve conditions for even yourself?
Some people seem to think that unions are a magic bullet which solve all worker ills. But really for software people the only people that can help are themselves. Gee, I guess that does sound Libertarian after all - but then most ideas based on common sense seem to end up coming off that way.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
nt
Doing too many hours continually is well-known to be counterproductive. And like the Dinosaur in Dilbert, more often than not, if you wait a bit, things change outside your control, and all that hard work was wasted.
In my bright and early days in the industry, when I'd set up a company with my brother and we had a deadline to meet for a demo, we had a serious crunch approaching the demo date. We worked approaching 60 hours in three days until all seemed to be working well. We went home, changed into suits and ties, went back into the office only to be told the demo had been cancelled and could we re-schedule for two weeks later?
Another time, another crunch, finding and fixing all bugs until we were happy. Of course, an unforeseen bug occurred during the demo anyway... We were too tired to have thought of dumb users doing things the 'wrong way'.
Lately, I've insisted my team works only a maximum of 50 hours in a week. If they have to come in at weekends, they get comp time, no exceptions. I want bright, interested and fast developers, not jaded, hacked-off, error prone slow coaches.
In any case, I'm thinking of moving into another industry altogether. The politics, back-stabbing (aided and abeted by a lot of front-stabbing nowadays), the tension as deadlines loom, prima donnas, ignorant, slave-driving board members etc.etc.etc. have finally beaten me. Besides, I find I can earn just as much elsewhere, mainly working from home in an area which has virtually nothing to do with software. I get to lead a life at last...
Did he inhale?
If the executives and in-Human Resources require these working hours, then they should have the same work schedule as the programmers! And no bonuses!
Just want to be in position for the job opening rush.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Anyone who has worked, is working, or will be working in the corporate world needs to understand the "pathological pursuit of power" these mindless entities possess. One and only one thing matters: money.
I encourage anyone and everyone to read "The Corporation" by Balkan, and "Fast Food Nation" by Schlosser. Two excellent books which details why corporations exist and how practically nothing matters to them except making more money.
The way they think is around the impact of release dates on quarterly profits. Forecasts were made according to the upcoming release dates. If they don't meet those dates, Wall street will perceive the management as weak. I wouldn't want to be at any working EA studio come close to Thanksgiving.
Considering the huge line of people looking for jobs at EA last SIGGRAPH, I don't see a problem. They are one of the most well-known brands in game development.
Slapping overtime regulations on them is just going to increase their cost of business, meaning they'd have to lay people off, outsource, or close down.
Of course, prospective employees should be informed about what they are getting into. But no complaining after - every fan knows that game development is not a 9-to-5 job.
Some organized action by EA employees might be helpful - just the threat of unionization might be enough to win some concessions from management.
Let me see if I understand this right. This anonymous woman is complaining that her husband is "working late at the office" too much?
I mean, just becasue she believes him doesn't mean we have to.
no sympathy for this loser.
By staying in such shit conditions he's just sending the message to EA that its OK for big companies to treat employees this way.
That encouragement only makes it worse for the rest of us.
IMNSHO, the bunch of mugs who are willing to regularly work 80+ hour weeks for no overtime deserve everything they get. Others can only abuse you as much as you let them. If you are going to let them, then STFU.
From your article, last paragraph:
For the past forty years there has been a steady decline in both union membership and influence. There are several reasons for such a decline....Other employers put workers on the management team by appointing them to the board of directors or establishing profit-sharing plans to reward employees...Because more and more women and teenagers are working and their incomes tend to be a family's second income, they have a proclivity towards accepting lower wages, thus defeating the purpose of organized labor. The third and possibly the most important reason for the decline in unions is that they are victims of their own success. Unions raised their wages substantially above the wages paid to nonunion workers. Therefore, many union-made products have become so expensive that sales were lost to less expensive foreign competitors and nonunion producers. This resulted in companies having to cut back on production, which caused some workers to lose their jobs, and hence, unions some of their members....
Employees (like MS employees) have options. That's one thing. Then you have people, as they say, willing to work for less which is what is effectivley happening when you work longer hours for the same pay (for which generally I might point out you are still being paid a lot compared to many industries).
Lastly about products costing more so work was lost to oversea competition - sound familiar? Consider IT as a cost source and a "competitor" offshoring or outsourcing. Already jobs are being lost to these forces, why prod companies with something like a union which takes away the ONLY advantage in-house IT workers have, that of flexibility.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I work out in the entertainment industry and I just wanted to throw my two cents about unions here that might make everyone understand why unions are not common in the modern entertainment today in regards to video games and visual effects.
Way back in the golden era of animation there were no unions. The artists, while not being paid a lot, were still making good money. The whole idea of starting a union came abouts and they hopped on the union boats. The Unions demanded more money for the artists. So, what happened? All of the studios sent their work overseas for the first time and most of it remains there as the majority of traditional animation is still done overseas for tv/film/etc.
The unions are pretty much directly blamed for all of those lost jobs because of their 'greediness'. So today, though traditional animation has unfortunately disappeared mostly, unions are still not a happily accepted thing. For example, Sony's visual effects divison, Imageworks, just turned down joining a union by a whopping 98% just a few months ago. The common viewpoint and fear is that more jobs will be sent overseas again, specifically today where countries like India are getting a lot of technology work already.
EA employees have the right to be fearful of a union for this reason. In the Video Game / Visual Effects area, which are very closely tied together, only two companies that I know of have unions: Disney (back from the old days) and Dreamworks. Even Dreamworks Interactive, which is now Electronic Arts Los Angeles, doesn't have a union.
No one enters Visual Effects or Video Games to make tons of money, those guys and gals do it because they love it and really deserve a lot more credit, at least enough for you to sit and watch the credits roll by on the big screen or monitor (my pet peeve). Hopefully this livejournal article will inform a lot more people of what these artists (which include pipeline/software/etc) have to go through.
Well, first off, much as this is a deeply moving story, you have to remember it's a single as yet uncorroborated story. It doesn't feel like it, but it's still possible the entire story is fabricated; and it is sadly true that it is easier to discern a falsehood than to discern a truth.
Assuming the story is true, then the working conditions are such that the job, in effect, pays far less than it should; clearly a strong incentive to find an alternative job. After all, if I worked as a professional programmer for say half the going rate, I'd be looking for another job.
What's more, given the huge wage reduction EA are in effect imposing by demanding such long hours, almost any job in the industry is likely to be a better deal; less money in absolute terms, but a much better overall package.
I presume, although it's not stated anywhere in the story, that the EA programmer in question *has* been looking for alternative work?
To end on a political-economic note, this story is a good example of one of the reasons State involvement in industry is wrong; when the State is involved in an industry, all private businesses are ruined [1], which leaves a single employer in that industry. If that employer, the State, is awful to work for, who else can you turn to for a better job?
We all feel for this guy, working for an appalling employer - but we also know, at the same time, he can find work elsewhere. How much worse would we feel if we in fact knew that he was stuck with this job, since he could *not* find work elsewhere?
--
Toby
[1] State services are normally provided free at the point of use. Private business can in no way exist in the presence of such a pricing model.
ea_spouse explicitly refers to a CALIFORNIA law, not a Federal law.
You live in America, under a system of multiple governments. There is not one place to go to in order to assertain all applicable laws, you have to check multiple authorities and jurisdictions. If you are old enough to type on the computer, you should have figured this out by now.
A few replies have said that hundreds of people would kill to work at EA... so instead of working their workers into the ground why don't EA hire some of them. It's not they haven't got the money.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
This is horrible, well back to Simcity 4. Oh wait...
Libby Zion had a problem with a resident who "got to pull back the covers and try and live with it. Or around it, or what not."
Projects ALWAYS have a Crunch time PM's never understand programmers. Programmers have to accomodate schedules, which doesn't always mean (never?) that code will be accomodating. Programmers get to work long hours with little or no reward.
Yet everyone wants my job.
Guaranteed that if I were to walk out today, I would be replaced by cheaper , less experience (but ENERGETIC) workers. And then how would I pay for my T1? My new MB? My 1GB Memory?
I am happy to have a good job, one that I like. Yes, I have worked 60+ hrs (and its Thursday Morning here) this week so far, but guess what? I am glad I am not having to work at Best Buy as a "Rent a Geek" nor some other inconsistent and underpaid job.
You don't like the hours, the slave driven mentality, the stress? Go FIND SOMETHING YOU LOVE TO DO Then and quit bitching about having to work too hard. Cause guess what? There are people IN LINE for the job you hate.
First Door on the left......One Cross Each.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
background: i'm a hardware geek. i've worked for four companies in seven years in the valley. they all have had unspoken policies (that are always at least slightly mentioned during the interview process) regarding the fact that you'd better be OK with working arbitrarily long hours.
nvidia was the worst offender by far. total sweatshop. our VP (not our manager, mind you) would sometimes sit over your shoulder and TELL YOU WHAT TO TYPE. he even singled out a few pets in the group whom he would really make life difficult for. one guy had the VP show up at his apartment door on a sunday night, asking him "cmon, let's go over to the office and fix these problems". he then sat with him and directed him and watched him as he worked into the wee hours. he even cancelled my cube move on the day of the move without telling me or my manager, just so (apparently) he could keep an eye on me. i was moving cubes to get away from the jerk! so much for that plan.
a constant litany of messages both verbal and via email would rain down, using language like "you are letting down your team by not being here when they are" and "so-and-so person didn't get so-and-so task done on schedule. you MUST make up. this is unacceptable". this sort of beratement would take place on the project-wide email alias. wow is that good for morale.
the VP also made my group come to work on the day of the company christmas party. the rest of the company was given the day off (it was a weekday). he sequestered us in a conference room all day to discuss the project "big picture". he even wanted us to skip lunch and work straight through, until my boss convinced him that gee, it might be a good idea to take us all out for lunch... the natives were getting very restless.
that may seem like a very minor story in hindsight to people that weren't there, but man i can tell you that the venom seething in my coworkers that day was palpable.
then there was the boss at sgi who was convinced that our multiple-year-long asic project was 3 months from tapeout. after believing in this delusion and driving us all at redline for 18 months, she was finally replaced by a software manager who worked on the driver for said asic, who got things done in a very straightforward, no-nonsense, and highly effective manner. and she didn't even know (hardly) anything about asic development! just goes to show you how a good manager really can be effective AND multi-/cross-disciplinary.
every startup that i've been at has had the engineers working late into the night, later than management, and later than most execs (except for some founders are truly dedicated to the cause, and work longer hours than anyone). plus, said management doesn't see the work that goes on from home via broadband when your seat at work gets cold. that doesn't help.
bonuses are gone in this industry. options are almost completely worthless, save for the lucky few. comp time is nonexistent. you are simply expected to give up your life for The Cause. and then the same company espouses family values via their HR departments and very infrequent out-of-office activities. i'd gladly give up the crappy christmas party and i'd pay more for health insurance in exchange for a few less whipmarks on my back and a few less nights laying awake in bed, unable to fall asleep at 1am after getting home directly from work and being unable to get the waveforms out of my head.
and i can definitely attest to the toll that working 7 days a week takes on you. you get sick. and then the boss still wants you in the office. that drives me crazy too- let's get everyone sick! that will be productive.
williteverend@sunnyvale
I do not know how this is going in quebec because we have strong laws that enforce employees health and paid hours. One of my high school friend is working there right now and he says that you must work alot because EA is expecting alot out of the young talents here in montreal, When they came in they actually riped off UbiSoft of all their talent (Splinter cell and Raymans developpers), and they paid them one year full salary staying at home, until their contract with ubisoft was run out. I hope for them the deal was good because from what i have heard EA pays a lot but UbiSoft had great ambiance to work for.
This problem isn't unique to EA, the entire industry is strugglig with it. Companies who treat their employees as expandable cannon fodder will start limping in the future. Their senior and talented employees are burnt out and retiring at 30 - 35!
The International Game Developer's Association has released a Quality of Life white paper that presents results of industry wide surveys and interviews.
http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php
I'm sorry, but if you have to have "crunch time" in a project, then it hasn't been planned properly. Having a "pre-crunch" also indicates it isn't planned properly.
A well planned project with sensible deliverables and timescales may have the odd long hour stint but not enough to have it called by a specific name.
This just translates to poor planning and project management coupled with poor decision making at the top.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
unions are a terrible solution to labor problems. I've worked with unions for years, and they rarely have achieved their goals, despite solidarity and good organization. Corruption is not the problem, corporate structure is. Employees should always be given a say in the direction of their business, and if you work at a company, it is your business. Although it sounds slow and excessively be bureaucratic, when employees control their own futures they work a LOT harder.
I've never seen the ideal, in which employees elect the ceo and management, and maintain full control, so I cannot comment on its success. But in my experience, people want to work hard at their jobs, and giving them more control makes them work harder, not less. Slave-driving just breeds corruption, error, and shoddy products.
Philosophical Debate:
What is a human life worth?
Some say it's priceless while others clearly demonstrate that it's worthless. This can be seen in all walks of life, culture, society, the world around. One man's trash is another's treasure can be applied to this dilema. The end result will always be the same. Until it affects you personally it's probably not an issue.
Consider the parents who drink and occasionally drive after holiday parties, this is even seen in movies. But when their child dies either because of drinking or driving or someone else's drinking and driving they become immediate christian's in pursuit of the nearest MADD chapter to place that child on a poster and parade it around as the next reason not to drink and drive.
I'm a firm believer is NO drinking and driving. No matter how little or how much. I vote for laws that increase these penalties and restrict the ability of people from doing so. I care about this BEFORE it hits near home.
I do care about it because I care about life. Yes, I'm generally against abortion. I have three children of my own. However, I also see the merits that keeping aboriton legeal presents.
While I prescribe certain ethical and moral boundaries to myself I do not feel that I can assert those same values on others unlike Emmanuel Kant who said "if you cannot universally agree that others should do as you did then it shouldn't be done", and his golden rule "do NOT to to others that which you do NOT want done to you."
The reality of the human life debate is literally within the mind of the person who is taught that human life is precious or a waste. I hear people often claim assraunces on both sides of the debate. They "flip-flop" on the idea. On the one hand "Abortion is horrible murder and should be stopped", and on the other "Send our children off to war to maybe die because that mad man needs to be stopped!"
Frivilous law suits are another one. The moment that you cap the awards limits is the moment the corporations win. They have tried like hell to get the average person to believe that some old lady burned herself with coffee and it's some how not their fault. The truth is that the coffee was a few degrees below BOILING. It caused third degree burns to her genitals. Her medial bills far exceed her ability to pay them. They had to perform skin grafts to her inner thighs. At first all she wanted was for them to pay the bill. I agree that she should NOT have used her lap as a "hot beverage securing device", but get real. This lady is scarred by hot liquid. Imagine if that was your child having to grow up with these scarrs. Unable to feel orgasm because the flesh was removed. Price tag that.
So, now we get to my point. A single person with no life can easily accomplish similar demands to EA's work policies. However, a person who even tries to have a life needs to reconsider.
A corporations pays you to do a job. On the flip side you lose that time forever. Never to be returned. Sure the kids are at school 6 to 8 hours a day. But you have to factor drive time, no paid lunch, frustration of working long hard hours regardless of the industry or job. I drive one and a half hours one way to my job. I love my job. I get paid well according to my standards, which are very low. However, they do not pay me nearly enough. I miss a LOT of my children's time. I'm on the road early, spend 9 hours at work and get home late. While I'm not working all that time I am gone all that time. Some of it willingly some of it because I don't have a choice. I can't get a job like this closer to home andI can't afford to move. I'm stuck.
Therefore, for 8 paid hours a day I get just over 50K a year. Tack on the drive time and that's 11 hours. Tack on an unpaid lunch and that's 12 hours. Tack on any overtime and I'm screwed. I recently pulled a 15 hour day to finalize a project. I didn't mind. It does not happen often.
But the bottom line is what's a human life worth? 5
... there is nothing that has not already been thought
You forget that we live in a capitalistic society and most American's bow down before the all mighty dollar. The coder's have a choice of where they work and where they don't. In today's IT environment I am sure there are 5 people waiting for the job of the guy that didn't like the way EA was treating him.
Least we not we forget the slogan on all American money: "IN GOD WE TRUST"
-- "Life's not fair, but the root password helps."
What's really sad is that Electronic Arts' original premise was that they were going to make game programmers like rock stars. They plastered the faces and names of their programmers on their products, trotted them out at conferences, etc. (Does anyone remember EA's original launch poster, with their cluster of 'star' programmers arranged like a rock group?) And EA paid them lots of money (royalties) just like a film star. They even looked to their programmers for creative direction.
Of course, that didn't last once they realized they could treat their programmers like dirt, stick them in cubes, make them anonymous, and pocket the money themselves.
I agree it's nice to have a leader that's part of a team, but really - what does a manager have to do at 2am? Usually very little. If they do then that's fine, but I've seen managers hang around who were doing mostly nothing. Come to think of it, doesn't it make you even madder to see someone just standing around chatting when you are working hard very late?
In the end I greatly prefer some means of being given back something for working extra hard, over any amount of buddyism.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is actually entirely consistent with what I've heard from EA employees. Seems like the managers need to get the stick out their asses and realize that saying, "there are a dozen people who'd like your job" is no excuse for driving people to their death...
I was there for an interview recently, and refused the job because the manager who interviewed me was a completely socially incompetent animal. Now I know I've made the right decision.
I didn't know EA acted as such poor managers. I remember when Electronic Arts was a small company struggling with their first games. I have a picture of the company from the back of one of their first games. It's like 5-8 people, women and men, who look happy at a job well done. In fact, that game was fun, sort of a new take on chess and a shoot'em up thing. Though I am surprised by EA, I can't say I'm surprised this is happening. With the torture-supporting Shrub administration's policies towards big business and against workers and the common man AND, in fact, with the horrible growth in anti-union sentiment from Nixon on, this sort of thing is more and more common. This is exactly why everyone needs strong unions. Yes, anything that gets strong and stays that way for too long without regulation becomes corrupt - and this is what happened to many labor unions - this is what has happened to large companies. In fact, large companies become corrupt with little regulatory oversight. Because their moral is only one: make money. Real moral get over-run if you only follow the make money moral. You need a strong union to balance a large corporation. They prevent each other from becoming too powerful in the absence of the other. Yin and Yang. So, if you husband wants out of this he must get together with his friends and foment rebellion. I suggest he doe this in secret lest he get fired. If he's already in one, it isn't working so he needs to start another. He needs to get up on his work bench and like Sally Fields in the movies, figuratively hold up a sign saying... UNION UNION UNION UNION!!!
a lot of game companies schedule the production cycle with crunch time built in. They plan on exploiting the coders. They know how week the job market is currently. It is an easy way to lower production costs. Buying dinner for a team of 40 every night is a lot cheaper than paying them for 6 extra hour of time per day.
Where I worked we were told that the over time hours were "mandatory". It did not matter if you were on track with your personal chunk of coding. You were to be in the office during the mandatory hours. As you can imagine morale was pretty poor.
After they closed down a lot of my co-workers went to EA, a few went to Lucas, and a couple to another studio of the same company. The guys at Lucas have been laid off, as have the guys who went to the other studio (as the co. went bankrupt).
But you want to hear horror stories.... just talk to an ex Saffire employee about how the company (Saffire) wanted them to all work without pay. There are still several hundreds of thousands of $$$$ of back pay from that fiasco that will never be paid.
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I'm in a situation similar - over the years I could have made more going elsewhere, but I like the situation because I feel I'm fairly compensated (in time) for extra time spent - so I stay. Sometimes I work long hours, but not all the time and I get some time off for the extra time I do spend.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I had a similar experience with Sony Latin America. I loved the people there, but the way of doing business was just ridiculous (not much different from ea_spouse's annectode.) My only suggestion for her (assuming is a 'she') is to ask her spouse to leave. I mean, he wouldn't have taken the job had he known it would be like this (in her own words). He, just like me or many others, would have stayed out unemployed for as long as possible while avoiding such crappy jobs. He got into it by a conbination of his own naiveness and EA's deceipt. He is going to get sick and his marriage is going to suffer. No job is worth risking that!!!! On a more personal note, after Sony (and other weird experiences I've had), I've come to the conclusion that I will never work as a perm ever (God willing and if I have my way.) Per-hour contractor gigs only baby. Every hour, every second I work is counted in my by-weekly paycheck. F*ck anything else. I've work too hard in school and in life to get the skills I have to throw away my work hours for free. I really hope this person and her spouse get out of that crap. No one deserves to work like that. After all, there is something called 'The Emancipation Proclamation', right? :)
In a industry that is in the tens of billions of dollars per year, to not have the prime production people have a union representation is extremely unusual. Coal miners, no, but look at the entertainment industry. Lots of associations, unions, and other barganing groups. And the software industry is 10 hollywoods.
They have divided and conquered for years. You started off as princes, but as your numbers swelled, the knowledge moved into the public domain, and your skills became easier to replace, you are now just common skilled peons. You grew fat during the bubble, and now when the profits aren't there, they are squeezing you.
Either get together to fight back or just suck it up and get out as soon as you can. These guys are just gonna keep squeezing the lift out of you.
Make your own game, or be apart of a mod team. Learn the SDK of Half-Life 2 or UT2K4. Even mapping can get you a full-time job. Once you have proven you can produce quality work you chances at getting a game job go up exponentially. IMHO, the Half-Life 2 SDK will be the best chance you have. With time, you can make nearly any kind of game you want, not just an FPS, but an RTS, RPG, Side-scroller, Flying game, or even a MMORPG.
You obviously haven't lived in Canada, or specifically - in British Columbia. Every f*cking thing is unionized here (except maybe for brilliant EA developers, which incidently also reside here), unions can bend government sideways here and still get away with it.
What does it give me as a citizen ? Freaking bus drivers that earn like mid-level Engineers, but with 4 weeks of vacation; cleaning stuff in hospitals that can only dusts things, but refuses to clean the spit, because it's "bio-hazardous material"; ridiculously overpaid doctors that few months after agreeing to n-year pay freeze decided that they still wanted a piece of federal funding targeted at supporting health care system (thank god this didn't go through), etc, etc
Unions will never fly in software development, because they only work when every member is averagely-skilled replaceable worker. In CompSci every decent developer constantly grows professionally and things like being not allowed to work on certain project because older comrades are lined up - this won't work in software industry.
I suppose this is the point at which everyone at EA writes back saying that no one works those hours and she's out of her mind, and she discovers that her husband's actually been having an affair. .
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
uh how?
If the job can be done better/cheaper somewhere else, it will go.
If you try to legislate away economics, you will end up with bigger problems.
This isn't just a problem at EA. Practices like this are pretty much standard in architectural practice. Add to that lower salaries, and you have to wonder why people do this stuff (I'm an architect). Artistic and creative pursuits require extremely high degrees of competency, training, and inate (and rare) talent. That our society compensates creative professionals so poorly IS criminal. Taking advantage of people's passion for what they do is extremely unethical, and this is exactly what happens to the majority of creative professionals. We endure it because we love what we do. But really, we also deserve to be compensated, just like everyone else, for the work we do.
I'm not saying that any monkey with enough money to buy a suit can get a business degree, but I'm certainly willing to suggest it.
If I were in this situation, in addition to saving money and planning to leave and collecting the good co-workers contact info so I could siphon them off too once I was gone, I'd think about another long shot, pie-in-the-sky strategy.
If you can show that the terms of your employment were not met, if you were employed illegally, or if you were not paid, you may be able to claim copyright of the code. Certainly you can challenge EA's claim to the longer copyright period as a work-for-hire, but that hardly matters. What you want to do is simply start copying and selling a game you worked on, and assert you can do it legally because you own it.
Needless to say these fuckers will come after you with everything they can. They will go after criminal charges. The strategy would be to accept a steep buyout from them in exchange for dropping it. It may make sense to move to another country before beginning your sales.
You have to keep in mind that the money is actually only one goal; if you end up with nothing but not in jail, you still count it as a partial success, because this kind of threat will do a lot to make EA at least follow the letter of the law.
I had no idea they made those poor workers spend 18 hours a day in the game mines.
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
I worked for a Games company for a couple of years, over ten years ago and I can tell you nothing has changed.
The company had no ability to create and manage realistic deadlines. It was expected teams worked all hours to meet these (often impossible) deadlines - in fact it was seen as 'the price to pay for being in a cool industry'. The company was incredibly secretive about its finances, pay scales and future plans to the point where everyone worked in a little bubble of uncertainty. Geek male competitiveness meant that the in-fighting and politics were extreme, and the social skills of many 'senior' staff were questionable. I could write a book about those two years - horror comedy.
I got out and have since discovered that it is possible to manage teams of mixed disciplines, it is possible to create deadlines that allow normal working hours and the sky does not fall down if everyone knows the financial state of the company, or the pay scales. Many people I worked with thought that the 'business industry' was dull and that alone kept them working on games. Since I left I've worked with cutting edge technologies, weird and wonderful research projects and software that is used worldwide and earned a very healthy wage in the process.
The games industry has grown from backroom coding and despite it's obsession with Hollywood has never developed the maturity that should make large projects a joy. The little details like fun toys in the office and kudos from working on a well known title don't hide the fact that the work is uncertain, management often poor and the process depends on extreme talent rather than any real understanding of development.
It's probably not unrelated that a large number of games developers join the industry for their first job and therefore don't know any better.
why haven't these a-holes just packed up & moved to India? They could cut salaries by 85%, eliminate bennies altogether and still work 'em to the bone.
Or... is there some reason the workers at EA haven't unionized? It's still legal in the US.
We need global unions. We need to make sure that those Indian, Chinese, Eastern European, and African programmers are paid exactly the same as US programmers with the same quailty of benefits.
It really won't work with tech unions though. There are not enough unionized tech people. It could work in other industries though.
If the employer does in fact break the law with his/her/its employment policies, all it takes is one person to pick up the phone and lodge a complaint with the states employment comission, and also with the federal employment comission. They will audit the employers records as far back as 20 years, levy fines, and order them to play all those employees what they should have gotten in the first place. All anonymously.
If they break the law, break them.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The idea here is that sometimes, the company needs a person to go the extra mile in order to close some work out. The problem is, lots of engineers and developers are really cranky when it comes to this.
"Why should I go the extra mile for you when you cut into my paid benefits and won't give us free soda and coffee?"
So what companies do is offer a threshold system. Like at my company, if I work over 45 hours a week, I get an "adjusted" hourly rate (I'm salaried, but you can calculate it roughly compared to what they expect) for every hour past that, up to a maximum of 10 hours.
Honestly, unless I felt my entire project was threatened (and it has been, before) I wouldn't work overtime (and I have before). There is no reason for me to do it.
Even big companies are now realizing that "crunch" hours on engineer and speciality employees can actally do more harm than good. Some companies even remember that employee turnover is not a "good" thing.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
I'm pretty sure this is a relatively free country. If your husband doesn't like it, then he's free to go find another job. If YOU don't like it, then you're free to divorce him. So quit crying to the tabloids and do something about it.
Berto
Jimmy, the boys say you been playing a video game not made by 100% certified Union Labor. Say it ain't so....
Do not play poker with djhertz.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Come on, _LONG_ work weeks for low pay has been common for YEARS! I had those kind of hours when I worked for a McD's franchise. I only managed to escape THAT job after getting debt free so I _COULD_ afford to change jobs. I've endured the same kinds of hours for months at a time at my current job too.
There are law firms in California who handle such cases. Kingsley and Kingsley is one. A class action lawsuit by an employee who recently quit might be safest.
Yes, it's them. The hallowed ones. The ones who actually like to be at work 24/7. They are the problems. They set the bar. They are socially inept to the point they feel more comfortable at work then not at work. They are mentally bent in thinking that they are justifiying there worth by being at work all the time. Just like crappy managers - they are at work all the time. It's all they have. Their talents aren't that great but they are willing to give up their lives. Mangement calls them 'solid'. I call them dumbfucks.
I worked for an ESPN/Sega sub-subcontractor for all of 5 weeks before they canned me. The job interview took 4 weeks.
I was tasked to work on performance issues, since that's what I've mostly worked on in my career. But they didn't seem to realize that that involves reading tons and tons of their crappy legacy code, figuring out why it's slow, then changing large parts of their crappy legacy code in a way that doesn't break the spaghetti. That couldn't be done by their current crop of programmers, otherwise they wouldn't have needed me. (The reviews I saw for one of the games I worked on complained of frame drops, so I know they never solved the problem.) That sort of heavy spaghetti-reading/modifying can't be done 60 hours a week; I need actual rest in order to hold that many details in my head.
Within 5 weeks, I had their project almost running within the limits of the framerate, except for portions of the AI subsystem, and the programmer in charge of that assured me he'd take care of it. So I basically did what they wanted, with no support, no documentation, no source-code comments, no commit e-mails, and no rest. But I still got fired for complaining how exhausted I was.
Stupidly, I thought if I went to the president of the company and told him my plight, especially in light of having met my goal so quickly and proven my value, that he and I could work out some solution that made both of us happy. I even bounced the idea off someone that had worked for the company since the beginning, and had worked with that president before for like 9 years. Instead, the first thing out of the president's mouth was "Well, then, it may be time to end this relationship." I was fired the next day.
I've been unemployed ever since. It's been about a year and a half.
I can only hope and pray that Atlas will shrug soon. Please come for me, John Galt, I'm ready to go!
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
They passed a provincial law few years back that equates the full-time holders of stock options to the owners of the company (or something along these line, IANAL). It also applies to those participating in 'employee shares purchasing' programs and alike.
Translated to plain English it means - NO OVERTIME PAY for the majority of high-tech people. That's BC, Canada.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Your SO has a coveted job. EA is tkaing over the gaming industry because it is pushing developers harder than they would push themselves. EA knows better than you, how to get good-enough quality code out quickly. Its their job. If you disagree, open up your own development shop and manadate 9-5 hours. Unionization is probably the fastest way for your job to go to India/China. Professionals do not unionize. If you consider your job anything other than a clock-punching money tree, you should consider what you are saying to your employer by attempting to unionize. The equilibrium point is when there are not enough good developers willing to work incredible hours for a game. Then either the pay will rise (see investment banking) or the lifestyle will get better (see academia). If you don't constantly consider the option of leaving your employer, you are not availing yourself of your most powerful tool: quiting.
The problem right now is that it is too easy to replace you. There are a dozen people waiting at the door to work those 12 hour days to merit EA or any software company to back off from the. They can easily find someone else to do the work if you don't want to. There is a glut of coders in the US right now and we can't afford to push our agenda at all because of that. It's an employer's market right now and they are having a field day with it. My employer isn't making me work long hours, but they did cut my salary by 30% and took away my health benefits on top of that. There again, I can easily be replaced by someone who needs a paycheck to begin with. I could complain and get mad, but then I would be unemployed and probably not employable in the field because of my actions.
I worked at EA corporate headquarters/studio for four years, though it felt like ten. EA is a dilbertian corporate hell. There was such an entrenched culture of lying, blame and spin that it was really difficult to get people to trust enough to work together effectively as a team. At one point they spent about a million dollars for an outside consultancy to come in and tell the upper management that they were too hard on people. Well Duh. Then for about a year the upper management rhetoric was "EA will be the number 1 people company". Rhetoric changed but nothing else. Pretty much every studio they buy up they have destroyed by imposing the "EA" way. Just a bunch of greedy Republican fucktards, welcome to 21st century America folks!
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Accenture gives paid overtime.
This sort of behaviour on the part of employers is exactly what kick-started the unionization movement in the US back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
So, in the hellish world of IT... Where are the diseases like black lung and mercury poisoning? Where are the mine fires and collapsed tunnels? Where are the unguarded machines that can maim or kill? Where are the 120F - or 20F - working environments?
I believe you are being a bit melodramatic when you say current employers' behavior is exactly what prompted unionization. Your job is not life-threatening - get over it. I am anti-union but still have a fair sense of history and perspective.
Re: melodramatic - yeah, I know: pot/kettle.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Poster mentioned elsewhere that when his studio was closed, some folks moved to another company studio, which suggests to me this is a former victim from Acclaim's Salt Lake City studio (closed 2002?).
On a brighter note, those from Acclaim Austin are finally being allow back into the office this week to reclaim their personal items. No sign of the final paychecks, though, that's up to the courts now.
I've worked in the Video Games industry for just under 20 years (first game published in 1985). The last company I worked for expected 50-60 hour work weeks -- several people were fired from there for not working the mandatory extra 10-20 hours a week as "slackers". They scheduled me on one project where I had to convert 400,000 lines of assembler in 4 months. That's about 3,000 lines of code a day, converted and debugged. I managed to do it by working 100 hour weeks with 16-20 hour days for four months. My health was so bad at the end of the project I nearly had a liver failure from an infection that a healthy immune system would have easily fought off.
The company I currently work at had us working nights and weekends to finish projects and during crunch (the last project had an 8 month crunch!) many team members were working around 70-80 hours a week. Unfortunately, successes under crunches like these tell upper management that it's a good thing to work employees under heavy hours and a high workload situations.
Due to lobbied labor laws that prevent salaried software engineers from receiving overtime pay, the industry has taken this as a "pay a set fee, work'em as hard as you can" attitude. If they double the hours worked, they halve their perceived cost per man hour.
Not surprisingly, burn out rate and job-hopping are really high in the games industry. Too bad it's pretty much the same at nearly all video game companies that I know. Mandatory nights and weekends leave little personal time for any software developers -- especially commuters or employees with families.
Oh well, at least the team I'm on has a big enough title that when the royalties come in, we'll make a decent wage per hour, but if you're on a smaller title or working without royalties, you might make less per hour than a Walmart manager if you go into video games programming.
This is par for the course, my friend. You are a slave--nothing more, nothing less. To be employed in the United States is to be enslaved.
Yes I remeber back when I worked at Westwood Studios as EA was about to drop the hammer. I remeber one of our verry last "company meetings" the big message was "8 hour work days." I at least seemed quite puzzled about that since well the games that wern't coming out of Irvine needed it, but I knew fully well it was because people were flat out getting burned out. I watched good person after good person that had been with the company for a long time just quit (these were the people that made the games what they were not codemonkies without a clue that got overworked). EA wanted the good people to stay so that once EA disolved Westwood they could ship them out to the other studios around the US. It was nice to see the managers pull the overtime with the teams though too. However...I will never work for EA ever again even though I never experienced those massively long days (different area that was immune to overtime to say the least). The company just flat out sucks. However EA has Westwood 2.0 to deal with now called Petroglyph Games. Suposidly whatever they got going on EA was intrested in quite a long time ago. Ammuseing the location of where Petroglyph is located ;)
With a company the size of EA, you can be the managers are not getting treated any better than the workers. I'm sure they are pressured into working this type of crunch time as well.
Seriously. If EA has violated a contract then take them to court, else what you're putting up with is what you agreed to.
Note that EA doesn't have trouble finding programmers willing to do this. Yeah, it's tough. Perhaps not a good choice for someone with a family, but it's not EA's responsibility to be a good company for the "family man". Their responsibility is to make money or go belly-up. The owners of the company who rake in the big bucks likely took huge risks at the outset and are reaping the benefits of them. Without taking such risks into account, you can't compare a hired, salaried employee to a higher-up. CEO's are often hired after the fact (though not always), and are in enough demand to warrant such a salary. It's important to the company to attract talent, and it's pretty clear that management talent is expensive.
Bottom line is that you dont have to take on a high-stress job if you don't want to. There are plenty of jobs that you can live moderately comfortably on that are not ridiculous out there. No you won't make as much as an EA programmer, but you won't have trouble eating.
The entire tone of the article presumes one entitlement after the other. Bottom line is that the CEO of EA has no obligation to his employees beyond the contract they'ce agreed to. Since there is no mention of a contract in this appeal, I'll assume that it's simply someone whining about them/their spouse's decisions.
...is that EA's titles are almost exactly the same from year to year. NHL 97, 98, 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004. NBA 97, 98, 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004. NFL. Some baseball game. X-Box versions of all those. Perhaps some RPG/FPS which differs from a previous one only in storyline. Sure, they add some extra moves or a few new graphic effects because hardware changes. Big deal. If they followed semi-decent design practices, they should literally be able to create the new version of each game in a couple of months, not an entire year of crunch time. The people that should really be doing work are the playtesters, the marketing people, the gameplay designers, and perhaps the artists, not the programmers. That's the entire point of software development - if you've done something once, you don't do it again.
Quite a few posters have been commenting that these labour practices violate US laws. Most of EA's workforce is in Canada (in fact, I'm just across the street from their head office right now), so they're likely here in Vancouver. I have friends who have worked there, and I can vouch for the authenticity of this story.
How it is legal to do this, I have absolutely no idea. Even in a non-litigious society like Canada, it seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
My suggestion: unionize. This may seem really out of place for professional programmers and engineers, but consider this. My father works as a financial reports reviewer for the SEC and his job is unionized. Before they had the union, people in his position were abused. Now, they have a great atmosphere, good pay, and wonderful hours. I know, it is weird, but isn't the point of a union to prevent abuses like the ones written about here?
SIGFAULT
I have a friend who works for EA here in Vancouver. He was in "crunch mode" for about two weeks, then they hit alpha, and he went back to his regular schedule.
This is in Canada, tho, and there are specific rules for high-tech industry and it does not exclude overtime.
In EA UK the "producers" were all too busy covering their incompetent arses to do any bloody work and so they ended up making all our lives miserable. From what I hear nothing's changed much.
What the fuck do political philosophies have to do with this article? Am I just missing the point of your comment entirely?
Lawrence F. Probst III
Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer
Year Salary Bonus
2004 $672,759 $781,000
2003 $696,535 $1,100,000
2002 $611,023 $985,000
Find the rest, including salaries of other executives, HERE. Also note, this in no way covers *ALL* the compensation...just reported salaries.
Very few managers I've worked with actually code much. And frankly that is often for the better.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Simple as that. There are other places to work/other professions to enjoy. Complaining about it accomplishes nothing. It's all about maximizing profit. You (or you SO) works their asses off for nothing other than a boot when they don't like it while the upper management (whom i'm sure don't share the same hours or work days) profits. All of you that work there are too stupid to see that and enjoy being worked to death. While yer at it, I need a pyramid to be built.
Yes, sounds like they need a friendly visit from the National Labor Relations Board and the Teamsters. He he :) ASPEP is a Union in existence that represents scientists and engineers. I would most likely want a stronger Union then them though in this situation. Good luck! It is about time that the engineers and scientists spoke up in this country. They seem to be falling into a Blue Collar workforce catagory these days. I think that hard earned engineering degree is worth a whole lot more than that. Hey if Truck drivers could do it, why not you guys? Good Luck!
Over a hundred sentences and not a single one that is capitalized! MY GOD, I believe that puts every other /. post before you in its place. In fact I think that's a new /. world record!
Game dev isn't the only place where such sweatshop software work exists. ILM, Sony ImageWorks, WETA Digital... all the big names 3d effects firms have a sort of "constant crunchmode," where artists and programmers are expected to almost live in their spritely colored cubicles to get those renders done on time. As a director of the effects for Ep. 2 said, "A lot of these guys are used to working hard for a week and taking it easy after. It's not like that ILM; they have to keep working, always pushing themselves and never stopping." (paraphrased, see the effects documentary of the Ep. 2 DVD for the original)
As expected, turnover rates (especially at ILM) are high, with the veterans usually heading off to smaller firms, only to be replaced quickly with artists who are still "green." But while the cinema effects factory-firms usually produce excellent work, the stressful lifestyle takes its toll on employees' personal lives and health. All to satisfy our thirst for cinema flash...
Note: To anybody in a corporation, I highly recomend against looking up your CEO's salary. It's one of the most depressing things you could possibly do (my CEO makes in one hour what I make all year).
You can always start your own corporation, make yourself CEO, and get rich!
...it's all true.
I worked at EA Pacific (now part of EA LA) for 1.5 years as a lead programmer on Command & Conquer: Generals.
Those were, by far, the worst years of my professional life, and seriously damaged my mental health -- no joke. A year and a half later, I am still bitter.
EA expects outrageous working hours, on the order of 80-100 hour weeks, for months on end. If you desire to have absolutely, positively, no life whatsoever outside of work, and are willing to completely sacrifice your mental and physical health to be able to write games -- then by all means, go for it. (This is only partly a facetious comment, as I know people who are willing to make that sacrifice.)
Let's add to that the complete moral bankruptcy of the production staff. I was recruited there by a former friend (emphasis on former) to help revive the C&C franchise.... former versions had been fun, tongue-in-cheek wargames, but outrageous in many ways and clearly divorced from reality. The new version kind of stumbled around for a while... until shortly after Sept 11 2001, when suddenly the game shifted to be all about middle-eastern terrorism. The game was later promoted with the tagline, "Leaders in the modern world need to have a command of words... words like "Scud Missile", "Carpet Bombing", etc." (I asked m management who hired the sociopaths for our ad campaign, but somehow they didn't listen to me.) Oh, and then there was the mission in the game where your objective was to play the terrorist side, and use their anthrax-spewing tanks to kill 200 civilians (!). (This mission had to be cut at the last minute after the European offices rejected it as being certain to get a "Mature" rating. Yes, I had tried pointing out the... unsavory... nature of the mission months earlier.)
As soon as the product shipped, I quit, as did most of the development team. (That is, the ones who weren't fired for refusing to work 80-hour weeks, or for insisting on taking Christmas off. No, I am not making this up.) In hindsight, I should have quit much earlier; I only stayed on because I wanted my name in the credits, in case I wanted to work on other games in the future (thinking it would be good on my resume). The joke is on me, as there's really no way I ever want to work in that industy again.
While I was there, Fortune magazine listed EA as one of their top companies to work for. This was a particularly bad joke to everyone in our office, except that it wasn't very funny. When the CEO of EA sent an email to everyone in the company stating how proud he was of this, I forwarded it to my wife, who responded directly to him, stating that he should be ashamed, as she had hardly seen me for months, and the working conditions were abysmal. He (or more likely, one of his minions) responded that "sacrifices were necessary" to make great games. Sheez.
Shortly after I left EA, I happened to meet someone who has just started at EA-Maxis. I tried to diplomatically warn him that things could get unpleasant, but he reassured me that he knew what he was doing. One year later, he contacted me asking if my current employer was looking for help, as he had to quit -- similar conditions had destroyed his life (and cost him a girlfriend, as well).
Take this for what you will, but I cannot emphasize strongly enough: EA is, perhaps, an acceptable place for crazed workaholics in upper management... but for any other position in the company, no, no, no, no no.....
http://secunia.com/advisories/13144/
Slashdot is holding back on this because they don't want to kill the Firefox buzz after the 1.0 release.
I regularly work 10-12 hour days. I make it a point of being in the office for a few hours every weekend. I am a professional, and in order to maintain professional standards, I must dedicate a large part of my life to working.
On the other hand, I don't work in a restrictive corporate environment. I get an annual bonus. No one tells me to be here from x a.m. until y p.m. I can take a 2 hour lunch on occasion. If I need to leave early, I can and do. If I need time off, I don't need to get approval, I just need to give ample notice. These are the unwritten percs of being a professional.
While I don't feel much sympathy for the amount of hours these people work (or for the stress it causes them and their families--everyone is in the same boat on this score), I do think they are being treated little better than mules. Even though these EA programmers might not be entitled to comp time, if comp time is the customary reward in the industry for dedicated work for long hours to meet project deadlines, then EA is screwing these people. If I didn't get a bonus, or the kind of freedom I've described (which is customary for employees with my experience in my industry), I'd feel ill-used and under-appreciated. And I'd probably find someplace that would treat me better. Sounds like that avenue might not be open to these programmers, though.
The tech industry has been taking a major beating over the last few years. In all respects, it appears to be coming back slowly.
When back in full swing; what do you think will happen to every IT worker in America?
Pre-interview questions:
1) What is your salary range?
Your kidding, right?
2) Stock options?
Your kidding right?
3) Company car?
No car, what is wrong with you people?
What comes around goes around.
My advice: if you don't agree with EA practices, dont buy any of their products. Hit them where it hurts, and if they lay people off, you're doing those workers a favor anyhow.
That's practical advise, in a sense, because if their "brand" turns sour (like Gator), then EA shareholders are in trouble.
The impracticallity is that most of the market are too young to care or be informed about labour practices.
If EA is really breaking the law, then a lawyer should approach any EA employees for the purporses of a class action suit. That would get their attention, and maybe there'd be some real change.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
A troll who doesn't even read the articles he links? What a surprise! That vulnerability is for older versions of Firefox... the article you linked even states, "Solution: Update to version 1.0."
different industry I guess. Yeah, I get occassional bugs, but ussually only in huge title (ex. Star Ocean). I can't remember ever seeing a bug in a game for my GBA or for any of my major playstation games. Ape Escape, Tekkan, SFA3, Various Square Games, heck even Valkyrie Profile was stable as a rock. I wonder if console programmers have to put up with this junk...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Speaking as a resident, I can tell you that "cutting down" on the hours is now an *80* hour work-week. And that's considered an improvement. And, when you're on some rotations, like in the ICU, you regularly come up against or go over that limit. Older docs tell us how "good" we have it, and how "soft" the regulations are now. Whatever.
Oddly enough, the Emergency Department is one of the easiest places to work. Why? Shifts are scheduled -- when time's up, time's up. When you work on the wards, however, you can easily be dealing with something for HOURS past your supposed "sign-out" time if you have a complicated patient (or more than one).
This is what tons and tons of Ultima Online players (especially former players) say. Go on any UO-related forums and look for the complaints about the game... for instance not long ago they made it so you can no longer skip the intro logo movies of the EA logo with the stupid kid saying "challenge everything", and the Origin logo (umm why the hell are they showing me the intro logo animation of a company that doesn't even exist anymore?)....
... Then you'd receive the game code for the gift item in your email, eventually, when they sent the codes out.
.php?Cat=&Board=uouhall&Number=5237256&page=4&view =collapsed&sb=5&o=&vc=1&what2=postlistdev&selv=&vw hich=
Like, hey assholes, I already bought your game. You don't need to tell me every fucking time I open it who made the game. I already know. Your logo is all over the package, and the game, and the installer, and the manuals, and the website...
Also their in-game support is absolutely useless, and the tech support guys give you the complete "runaround" every time. *No matter what*, I've always gotten a canned, copy&paste response, or at least the same basic phrases over and over. "Game masters can not return lost items, please refer to [whatever Help URL] for more information." Hey, I didn't ask to get my item back, I'm just saying my stuff keeps disappearing, so fix the bug, retard. Address the fucking problems and maybe you won't have people quitting on a daily basis.
Instead they just spend all their time making new retarded addons for the game, which are 100% money grabs. No one gives a shit about your "Samurai Empire", what we really want is for BUGS TO BE FIXED. How many nifty little places there are is irrelevant. The UO world is already HUGE. People are perfectly happy with the existing one.
But I guess fixing bugs just doesn't get them enough immediate profit. In the long run they'd get far more users because the game would always work properly, and friends of players would be a little more impressed. I guess the EA fools are just too short-sighted to realize this...
Oh, and now they just started this "Return to UO for free" thing for people who have closed accounts (as in, stopped playing indefinitely). http://www.uo.com/return.html
Obviously a huge money grab, since they want the old players to come back and start playing again.
Anyway I'm ditching my account once the current paid-for period runs out. I'm sick of the way EA just screws around and only cares about their profits. I guess driving anything other than a late-model Jaguar or BMW is out of the question for their corporate exec's.
One of the biggest recent controversies that pissed off a huge huge number of UO players: EA offered a 7th Anniversary gift item (very valuable in game) because it was the 7th year anniversary of UO's existence. The 6 years before these items have been given in-game for free, automatically. The item would just be there in your inventory when you logged in. This time they conveniently decided you had to click a box in your player settings that says "It is OK for EA and its worldwide affiliates to contact me about EA products, news and events, special offers, and other information."
Forum thread where this was announced: http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/showthreaded
Needless to say many many people were pissed off. It was simply a way for EA to advertise to you even more, and it was very immoral because they were basically bribing users. In fact, that's exactly what it was. If you want the item, you have to receive their spam. There was NO REASON they couldn't just give the item to you in-game as they have f
It has been twice this week people have been doing stories that look like my own life.
-Ever got your vacantion cancelled by the boss on 15 minutes notice and reassigned arbitrarily to a date you didn't choose?
-Been blamed for being late when you come it at 5 AM, after leaving the company at 1AM to sleep & eat the same day? (Not continually, but... weekly!)
-Had the boss assign you to his private house moving or music studio, on overtime paid by the company who is nearly bankrupt?
-Had the boss claim he didn't understand a thing you're saying, only to have him understand when another employee repeats word for word what you said (with voice imitation to boot so employees laugh at the boss)?
-Have your obvious physical limits ignored (i.e. if you're in a wheelchair they want you to take the stairs)?
-Had to prepare a rigged demo for tomorrow - in a language you don't understand - of a product that does not exist and was just invented for a nice-sounding promise by the boss 5 minute ago?
-Had to work 72 hours in a row, because no one else in the company knows networking thanks to the boss' aversion to extreme programming or any meaningful know-how share in a very large software company?
-Had to get pirated software as part of your continued employment?
-Had to destroy your year-long record overtime, so your boss can claim there wasn't any?
-Had your name erased from your code like everybody else (making maintenance or error origin finding impossible), because the boss wants all code to seemingly come from him so the coming bankruptcy doesn't cost him the code?
-Have been paid late half the year, and corrently 6 months late on receiving paychecks?
Geez. I think I could get myself a slashdot story. I think half the networking administrators could!!!
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
This is (albeit dated) from the head of Cerner, a software company which makes hospital software.
m =FN&actio n=m&board=4686968&tid=cern&sid=4686968&mid=142 26
.....
Link:
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.m
-----Original Message-----
From: Patterson,Neal
To: DL_ALL_MANAGERS;
Subject: MANAGEMENT DIRECTIVE: Week #10_01: Fix it or changes will be made
Importance: High
To the KC_based managers:
I have gone over the top. I have been making this point for over one year.
We are getting less than 40 hours of work from a large number of our KC-based EMPLOYEES.
The parking lot is sparsely used at 8AM; likewise at 5PM. As managers -- you either do
not know what your EMPLOYEES are doing; or YOU do not CARE. You have created
expectations on the work effort which allowed this to happen inside Cerner, creating a
very unhealthy environment. In either case, you have a problem and you will fix it or
I will replace you.
NEVER in my career have I allowed a team which worked for me to think they had a 40 hour
job. I have allowed YOU to create a culture which is permitting this. NO LONGER.
At the end of next week, I am plan to implement the following:
1. Closing of Associate Center to EMPLOYEES from 7:30AM to 6:30PM.
2. Implementing a hiring freeze for all KC based positions. It will require Cabinet
approval to hire someone into a KC based team. I chair our Cabinet.
3. Implementing a time clock system, requiring EMPLOYEES to 'punch in' and 'punch out'
to work. Any unapproved absences will be charged to the EMPLOYEES vacation.
4. We passed a Stock Purchase Program, allowing for the EMPLOYEE to purchase Cerner
stock at a 15% discount, at Friday's BOD meeting. Hell will freeze over before this
CEO implements ANOTHER EMPLOYEE benefit in this Culture.
5. Implement a 5% reduction of staff in KC.
6. I am tabling the promotions until I am convinced that the ones being promoted are
the solution, not the problem. If you are the problem, pack you bags.
I think this parental type action SUCKS. However, what you are doing, as managers,
with this company makes me SICK. It makes sick to have to write this directive.
I know I am painting with a broad brush and the majority of the KC based associates are
hard working, committed to Cerner success and committed to transforming health care. I
know the parking lot is not a great measurement for 'effort'. I know that 'results' is
what counts, not 'effort'. But I am through with the debate.
We have a big vision. It will require a big effort. Too many in KC are not making the
effort.
I want to hear from you. If you think I am wrong with any of this, please state your
case. If you have some ideas on how to fix this problem, let me hear those. I am very
curious how you think we got here. If you know team members who are the problem, let me
know. Please include (copy) Kynda in all of your replies.
I STRONGLY suggest that you call some 7AM, 6PM and Saturday AM team meetings with the
EMPLOYEES who work directly for you. Discuss this serious issue with your team. I
suggest that you call your first meeting -- tonight. Something is going to change.
I am giving you two weeks to fix this. My measurement will be the parking lot: it
should be substantially full at 7:30 AM and 6:30 PM. The pizza man should show up at
7:30 PM to feed the starving teams working late. The lot should be half full on
Saturday mornings. We have a lot of work to do. If you do not have enough to keep your
teams busy, let me know immediately.
Folks this is a management problem, not an EMPLOYEE problem. Congratulations, you are
management. You have the responsibility for our EMPLOYEES. I will hold you
accountable. You have allowed this to get to this state. You have two weeks. Tick,
tock.
Neal
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Cerner Corporation www.cerner.com
2800 Rockcreek Parkway; Kansas City, Missouri 64117
It's not about putting one person in charge of everybody else's life, but about making sure that the STATE (run, of course, by persons) takes care of those aspects of community organization usually left behind by self-improvement-seeking individuals. E.g. health care, education, human rights watch.
I don't have a sig.
Having a PhD doesn't mean having a job, let alone a well-paying reasonable-workload job.
As a result of many influences (increase in technology being a major player, as well as monopolistic market control) our economy simply doesn't have the same level of demand for intelligence that it used to. Don't get me wrong, the demand is there, its just that a very small number of intelligent people are now able to address the needs of the entire market.
This trend will only continue. Human labor, and human intelligence, will continue to be displaced by machine labor and artificial intelligence. Sure, you need humans to build and maintain machines. However, there is an overall net loss of need for human contribution (otherwise the shift would not be economically viable).
So the PhD holder is quickly becoming obsolete.
I can't promise to hire all of the overworked masses, but if you're a great C++ programmer with OpenGL experience give us a shout. We create real time interactive 3D with our product and we're hiring. Come help us build state of the art training systems with no 80 hour weeks.
Something is seriously wrong here.
I am not meaning to cast aspersions on people who play these games, but I have to ask if the total manhours with the associated damaged health etc. is an appropriate price to pay for a product that will a) sell some number of copies and will then become unavailable except for the used market b) will only run on a device that will itself no longer be sold in stores c) serves no real purpose other than consumers' temporary entertainment. Do the same number of people work as hard for as long to produce a movie? To write the software that can automatically land an Airbus in a rainstorm? To develop a chemo drug that's the first to target a particular kind of cancer?
How badly do we want these games, and at how low a price?
EA: Challenge Everything...except our market share.
Everytime I load Burnout 3, I say this.
And now I know why.
Having worked in the games industry for 6 years, I see a bigger issue being presented. Yes, some people read the EA Spouse open letter as a series of complaints, but having been in the industry myself, she is totally valid and 100% correct.
The attrocity of the situation is not that people have to work hard, but that the companies make no regrets and little compensation for scheduling them to work ridiculously long hours.
During my time at LucasArts, it was painfully obvious that the company created schedules that were totally impossible and would require the employees to work more than a reasonable work week.
On top of that, little, if any, comp time was ever provided, and the tools we worked with were so painfully antiquated that even upgrading them to current technologies would have brought the work week into more reasonable lengths.
The real issue is that LucasArts and EA are not the only ones who treat their employees and perma-temps this way. And it is downright disgraceful, evil, and illegal.
Saying that people should simply quit and go elsewhere is not dealing the problem of employee abuses.
Myself, I left LEC and have built my own business, but the past 4 years of that have been extremely difficult, given the economic situation.
Jory
This may seem simple but organized labor would stop this problem, Auto workers used to be overworked until UAW. If a whole development team organized in the middle of a project they would have the company by the balls and could get compensation for the hours or a less taxing work schedule. There is no way a company could afford to rehire a whole team in the middle of development.
Lighten up, please.
This is the norm in game development. I doubt any developer out there even blinks an eye at this article, with the exception of George Broussard (at least it puts to rest why Duke is taking so long).
Seriously, I have always worked these hours in the game industry, and every person at every company I know, both independent and publisher owned, work them as well. There is nothing "eye opening" about this article. It's the way it is if you are a game developer. And yeah, all our spouses feel that way, but it's not like you can quit and go elsewhere unless you are willing to change the field you work in.
If it was any other job description you might think the husband was cheeting on the wife and the long hours were a lie, but obviously he's not president of the United States so we can trust him.
The best thing to do for programmers is just not work the required hours and let them get rid of you if they like it. A lot of programmers get in this mode where they think they're on a ship at sea or they can't stand the ego bruising associated with a death march. The fact is you don't have to obey crazy hours if you don't want to and a termination is a small material consequence compared to losing your standard of living or suffering brain damage.
The single solitary justification for crazy hours is maybe if you're trying for a management job somewhere else. Long hours in high risk startups are a requirement for anyone looking for eventual management jobs. Unless you consider EA a high risk startup you're probably wasting your time.
It always amuses me when a corporation becomes outrageously successful, and suddenly little insignificant members of the peanut gallery feel like they have to chide in with their two cents and drum up trivial or in some cases nonexistent issues like this. First off, EA GAMES has made alot more than just football games. Anyone heard of a little game called Need For Speed Underground?? Nevermind the fact that the game looks incredible, and that the map details are amazing...consider how easily this game could have failed to meet the expectations of the group it is targeting...guys who know about cars. Instead, it was a huge hit, and they are about to release their sequel next week which is expected to be even more amazing.
And regarding treating their employees fairly, I don't see the guy down the street from me who owns the Porsche 911 twin turbo with the EA GAMES EMPLOYEE sticker on it complaining too much...
http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/041111/nf200411113418_d b016_1.html
int27h
Well the question becomes how do we create a union without moving the companies? Well what about removing the economic incentives for the companies to move overseas.
If a country subsidises an industry then when that thing is imported to another country there are tarriffs placed on that product to even ujp the playing field.
Now -here is the crucial link: by allowing lax labour laws the governments of third world countries are subsidising the companies by removing the cost of providing benefits for their employees.
Next we need to determine what an employee morally deserves to earn and what is mandated by law. So, for example, lets say an employee has the right to get paid overtime for over 50 hours/week, make a living wage, have 2 weeks paid vacation, get basic health benefits, and work in decent working conditions (air conditioning/heating to healthy working temperatures).
Take this list of requirements and see how much it would cost to implement in offshore-country X. Now all that cost is being saved by the company by the country allowing them to exploit the workers: a subsidy!
Now, whenever the ABC company tries to sell a product in this country the government slaps a "offshore worker exploitation surcharge" raked in by the government and it can go to help workers displaced by offshoring and for the costs of peace-keeping in these often third-world countries.
Now, since the cost of the product is going to be roughly the same as if the company gave those benefits they might as well give employees this benefits. This improves working conditions for foreign works while raising their cost with theircounterparts. Now, workers can compete on a fairer playing field and we still get economic progress (ie. improved effeciency, innovation, etc.)based on the traditional laws of economics!
We must be prepared to pay more for our goods, but we must except this as we are no longer living in opulence off the backs of the poor.
If we can get most of the industrialised nations on board (USA, Canada, and the EU) then companies will be forced to give in to improving their workers conditions since the market is way too large to ignore.
I'll be really interested in hearing feedback about this idea. It all hinges on the concept of treating exploitation is a subsidy.This would seem to work for the whole sweatshop scenario and allow countriesd to increase worker benefits without suffering from less generous countries.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Democracy and socialism/communism are not opposites any more than "round" and "purple" are opposites.
One describes a form of government and the other describes an economic system.
The fact that this is marked "insightful" just shows you how few people think in this world of ours.
Disclaimer: I worked at EA for a few years as a programmer on sports titles. It was extremely consuming work.
I wonder if the claims of "abuse" aren't more than simply "expectations not met". The former is serious problem, and there may be laws or employment contracts to help you. The latter simply means you're working at the wrong job for you.
I see more than a few suggestions here to "just unionize" and I strongly disagree. We're talking about professionals. People who, by definition, are well educated, literate, capable of understanding and negotiating on their own. Engineers have their own professional society as support, as do many other professions. Programmers can join professional organizations such as IEEE or EFF for resources they may find helpful. Professional organizations are a far cry from unions, and thankfully, they don't generally promote union-style blocking of communication and empathy between management and workers.
Also, please consider that as more unionized programming shops and union-only projects are created in your country, more and more programming opportunities will be lost to nations where programmers are content to negotiate their own terms and work without unionized representation.
For me, personally, EA Sports was a really really exhausting place to work. The demands were very very high. The hours were all-consuming. No personal life during finalling. The salary was okay. I loved it for years and then moved on before burnout arrived. If you don't want that life, seek work elsewhere because I assure you that what you consider abusive, hundreds or thousands of other people consider a dream job. Nobody is being whipped, starved, or prevented from quitting. They're just working really really damn hard.
What I would do, if I were working there, would be to start a union. Either they fire me for it, and I get to collect unemployment and file a lawsuit against them, or I get a union going and make management deal with the consequences of their actions.
IT workers have been getting fucked over for quite awhile. Sooner or later, being bright and educated individuals, they will realize that they don't have to put up with abusive practices such as these.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I know it would be hard for the employee(s) going on unemployment, but sometimes you need to fight for what is right.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The first step is for EA employees to sign representation cards. Those cards indicate an interest in being represented by TAG in collective bargaining.
When about half of the EA employees have signed rep cards, the company is required to hold a secret ballot election in which the everyone votes. If the majority vote yes, the company is required to bargain with the union.
There's a reason the most stable and successful studios in feature and TV animation have almost all been union. When we have our rights respected, we're more creative and productive. Unfortunately, company executives usually don't respect us unless they're forced to.
Call Steve Hulett at (818) 766-7151. He's the Guild's business agent, and he can meet with you, get you rep cards, and answer your questions. We've already gotten a smattering of rep cards from EA, but the problem is that most people in the games industry don't know about the Guild, and don't know what their rights are, so they stay silent.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I worked for about a decade in the game industry...and about seven years of it was in crunch mode. I'm mostly out now, just doing freelance work here and there...I think the final straw was crunching for a year on Tribes 2 and then getting pink-slipped with the rest of the design team two days after shipping. And when I calculated my salary on an hourly basis, the guy down the street manning the Slurpee machine was making more than I was. Yeah, it sure is fun working on video games. Why do game companies treat their employees like chattel? It's like the punch line to the joke, "Why do dogs lick their balls?" Because they can. True story: an artist I used to work with complained to Dynamix's art director about the conditions, and his response was "You don't like it, tough. I can go over to UO, kick a tree and ten artists will fall out." I've got enough horror stories to fill a book...maybe someday I'll write it. I try to tell the younger set that they don't want to get into games, but they have to learn for themselves. I keep wondering why the game workers of the world don't unionize. Other entertainment sectors have unions--actors, writers, etc. Why not game workers? It would go a long way towards eliminating the slave labor practices of the industry. But that's just a bitter ex-game developer talking.
I'm a game programmer for hire, contracting for companies on a per project basis. I notice that I get much better treatment by my clients than my clients employees do. Whenever there is mention of crunchtime, the money people STRESS project management that they should not have me work more than what we agreed on in the contract, at least not without talking to them about it.. If a game company wants me to work more, they'll have to pay me more. Offcourse, you're the first one out the door when there isn't enough work, but at least in the US it seems (I'm dutch, contracting from home for us companies) that employees don't have that good protection from getting fired anyway... I realize its not for everyone, but I strongly recommend working as a contractor, if it fits in your current lifestyle.. (insecurity in income, but when you got it, you got a lot, lots of crunchtime, lots of freetime in between).
Company I worked for had so much crunch time and changes in projects that when the main project had finished a lot of the staff ended up moving to EA canada (from the uk) because they were much better managed and had more sensible approach to crunch time. I gave up and went bank to investment banking :)
Not everyone has, or even wants an XBox or Playstation. EA is the only option for a lot of games when it comes to PC gaming.
I'm not sure if it's contractual agreements or what, but until some of the other 'competitive' companies provide alternatives to EA on the PC, their monopoly will continue to feed their beast.
I, for one, miss Sierra's sports line (Front Page Sports and the NASCAR series in particular)!
One parallel I see to the videogame industry is the entertainment industry (meaning film and television). Workers get abused because there are 1000 people in line waiting to take existing jobs, so if you have a job you accept abuse. The difference is that there are strong unions protecting actors and behind the scenes workers. Videogame companies are not yet under that pressure of collective bargaining.
Take note, the days are numbered about when videogame company employees will get their due. EA is a California company. California has two things that are constant: a lot of lawyers and strong labor laws. An employee at EA who clearly documents all of this bogus stuff, gets an attorney to take it on contingency, and then obtains class action status for all EA employees is going to make Mr. Probst's $22 million in stock options look like pittance.
Think that is ridiculous? Ask Microsoft about their attempts to screw over "contractors" in the 80s and 90s. You can label someone whatever you want, but there are definitions for words and there are only so many changes you can make before people stop accepting those changes. In Microsoft's case, they lost their battle to call someone a contractor when the person was treated like an employee. Those people won their stock options.
Me? My wine glass is empty so I need to go now...but you've got to be impressed that a drunk person worked "pittance" into their slashdot post.
2. Slack off. Playing most of the time instead of working may get you fired eventually, but if you don't need the job you gain a measure of revenge while lowering your stress level and still getting paid.
3. Write major institutional stockholders informing them of employee abuse and the potential for lawsuits.
If you do 2 or 3, be sure to CYA.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Being a former EA programmer, I tried to discuss forming a union multiple times with various co-worker friends. However, the most common response I received was "what? are you a commie!? Unions are for commie losers!" After a while I gave up and quit.
Try coming to China sometime before spouting off with bullshit like this. Do you think there is some sort of goverment squad that goes around executing bosses of companies that have nothing to do with the goverment anyways? Get real.
only instead of getting paid 60k a year, we pay 40k a year
Heh heh. Illiterate, ignorant, and CEO. If this really was from him (hard to believe someone could be so short-sighted and in charge of so many people), I pity the people who have to sit in meetings with him and listen to this kind of rant.
I imagine most of the people who are 'part of the problem' (ie have an iota of intelligence) have left by now. Someone should send him an email and let him know he's infamous on Slashdot : )
I have to say this story had me wondering what the heck this person was talking about. All I can say is that while I was with them I worked with a team under an incredible team leader, and the moral (despite working `out of house` at the developer)was incredibly high for the full length of the project.
Yes the hours are difficult - at points the team leader worked over 100 hours a week - but honestly how can this NOT be expected by anyone who goes into the job with open eyes? You know right from the start that these kinds of hours are coming later in the project, and we found the company *incredibly* supportive towards us lowly QA-ers.
These are multi-million dollar/pound (and in our case BILLION) deadlines. IDK about anyone else, but we were very well paid for our work. That's a huge amount of money for ANY business, but EA does value its people if they work for the best.
There's this common myth about EA being this evil sequel factory that this story feeds into. The various departments work INCREDIBLY hard to deliver the best game they can under those constraints. Minor bugs are often knocked aside due to the necessity of meeting those deadlines, as are ones with low repeatability or that would affect too much of the codebase. They are a business after all, and even they can't put up with millions lost over trivial matters.
stop being so indignant. if EA employees are so unhappy, they can work somehwere else. why should i care? i am aware that some jobs are harder than others, and some suck. how about some stories about cool gadgets or somethin.
Perhaps inspired by ea_spouse Joe Straitiff weaves a personal story of what happened around him and his project prior to his dismissal. If this stuff doesnt make you cringe I dont know what will. And trust me folks, I work for EA, stuff like this does happen.
What's a sig? Pete Brubaker
This has been well verified, with the CEO actually saying that this was a "joke".. Shame no one told anyone else it was a joke.
a sp
yes, and Mr. Patterson is still the CEO..
http://www.cerner.com/aboutcerner/default.
Game developer: "My fingers hurt! They're bleeding!"
Game consumer: "WORK HARDER!!!"
Big companies have been eating little companies for as long as I can remember. The game industry is no different. Developers need additional resources to market and distribute their games, as well as cover their production expenses. It makes sense to ally or merge with larger companies with more resources.
Look at the movie industry. Tons of independent films are made every year by small companies. There is a market for these movies because the big studios are too conservative to satisfy everyone. I think the games industry uses the same model.
It is not just the gaming industry, but any production oreinted industry. As a project manager I live this daily. It comes with the job. get over it.
Jim
"Life is art...Paint your destiny"
...why MOST of EA games have been SUCKING ASS lately (and this is not a snap at the game developers).
:-)
come on - a new NFL game every year? Another installation of Medal of Honor?.. (fun, but getting old) Another Sims? god, what stupid shit is this? At what point do these games transition from a sequel to a rehash?
I've not seen a single game come out of EA recently that really caught my attention.
You can only feed off a fan-base for so long before you have to come up with something ORIGINAL.
I think we've had plenty of WWII shooters, boring-ass life simulators and faux RPG's.
What puzzles me even more is that people are still buying this crap.
so...... EA's treatment of their employees might be their undoing in the end, since creativity and clear thinking is proportional to the employees' social life
same, of course, goes for Eidos, Epic and such. What we need, is a Lara Croft Does Dallas and UT-2010 with guns so fucking big they cover the entire screen.
--- sig moved for great justice.
This is the truth about capitalism. If employees are willing to work under such coniditions... then so be it. Until they either unionize or the practice falls under public eyes.... nothing will be changed.
It's for those reasons, that I have NEVER bought an EA game, and shall never buy one, and cannot fathom supporting a company that treats it's people like that. I supported an Indian Casino in Southern California much like EA.. not far from them either. I ended up in the hospital with so many different stress related illnesses. Not to mention getting attacked by an insane coworker that resulted in a permanent limp. Worker's comp?? Nope.. Legal Action... Nope. Nothing I can do. EA is much the same way... they are the big cheeses, and any attempts to sue, form union, whatever, they will do whatever they can to thwart. Bless this person and their speaking out... BOYCOTT ELECTRONIC ARTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
I just sent mail to some major publications with the two web links. I'd like to encourage others to do so as well...
phong.
That is the gayest little corporate blurb I have ever heard. I have to delete that little androgynous whisper every time I reinstall our patch BF1942. Why do they think that is the least bit cool. It pisses me off! Why do I want a 5 year old eunich to whisper in my ear "Challenge Everything" every time I fire up a tank combat game? I avoid EA games just because of that, but I avoid any product that pisses me off in an advertisement.
Get a new slogan EA, and fire the guy that came up with this crap we currently are starting to see on TV. Jesus, get a life.
I will concede that the hours that your friend works are not unreasonable. I will also admit to having no first hand experience with respect to EA's working conditions.
But the game industry is a small one as far as reputations go. And nothing in that EA spouse's blog entry was particularly shocking or at all to me. EA has that kind of reputation among my peers. I will presume there is a reason for it.
That said, while EA has the worst rep, those practicies are much standard for labour practices within my industry. All of the larger 'meat shops' have that repuation to one degree or another.
END COMMUNICATION
Are they as brutal as EA?
It's unfortunate that the author, and her husband, seem to think they are trapped in this situation.
There are at least 3 options:
1. Just quit. Get some sleep and find a different job. If you desperately need money, get a stop-gap job while you look for the next one. Even delivering pizzas on double-shifts would be less stressful than the current situation and would probably cover your rent for a month or two.
2. Organize. Whether it's by starting a union, or just getting 10-20 buddies to agree to start clocking in at 8am and clocking out at 5pm, you have power in numbers. Say you need rest an recreation so that your brain will function properly. Stick to your guns. If they threaten to fire you, say you wouldn't feel right not giving them good work, and you can't do good work if you're exhausted. If they fire you, big deal -- go to step one, but you get to file for unemployment!
3. Spin off a new business. Find a few buddies there, you all quit and start a new business. Set your own hours. Write a new game. Advertise it on Slashdot as the game written by EA refugees and you'll sell some just based on solidarity.
This guy got into the games industry because it's fun to write games. But it's not fun now. When it gets to the point you're not having fun, not in any aspect of your life, because you're at work all day every day, LEAVE. Your mental health is more important than the hot-shit programmer paycheck.
Cara Hart chart@eNOSPAMfurn.com Systems Administrator eFurn.com, LLC. and ARITEK Systems, Inc.
From the article: Amazingly, Electronic Arts was listed #91 on Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2003.
It seems that Microsoft was near the top of that list.... kind of makes me wonder. I've heard that Microsoft is a good place to work but now I wonder if all the perks come with a trade off (other then the obligatory selling your soul to the devil).
Qxe4
First of all these hours are insane, voluntary or not. This practice ensures the end product is going to be utter crap, that everyone will leave if they can and that precious experience will go down the drain, ensuring that future products will be crap too. Now EA is also getting bad press.
This is terrible management practice.
Second of all I'm a bit sad of the "stop whingeing" reactions and general lack of empathy in this forum. There are reasons why there are labor laws and why they should be applied. In this instance EA is exposing itself to consumer backlash and possible lawsuits, hardly something smart. This reeks of 19th century mining company practices.
People shouldn't be forced to work long hours for extended periods of time, period. Some people might choose to do it if they are able and have the motivation in return for appreciable benefits, but to *force* people to work in this fashion for nothing invites very real negative effects such as poor health, divorces, possible violence, accidents in and out of the office, etc, all of which have costs for the entire society associated with them.
We know corporations have no morals and don't care about the above. This is precisely why labor laws exist and must be enforced.
...that's a disease.
A player from my old MMOG guild actually got a job as a dev for that same game... and proceeded to drop off the face of the earth.
He showed up just long enough to post this gem on the guild boards (in reply to a thread about a game bug)...
"I'm coding the UI, jackass.
I don't really need to understand the exact details of what the live team has been doing lately with gameplay balance in order to work on that.
I played the goddamn game for 4 years and ruined a pretty damn good relationship because of it. Then I got a job at [MMOG Company] and worked 100 hours a week for a YEAR. I slept at the office 4 or 5 nights a week. For the year and a half after that, I only worked 70 or 80 hours a week. I carpalled out my wrists and now I can't play PC games anymore.
I'm sorry that I'm not dedicated enough to [MMOG Company]'s products for you."
Sounds like a real pleasure cruise...
It's no wonder that the relationship between MMOG customers and devs is so toxic.
At least when you buy a copy of GTA:San Andreas or Madden 2005... you don't have to worry about some burnt out, mindfucked basketcase acting as your "Dungeonmaster."
why not hire a day-shift and a night-shift? Cut everyone's salaries and hours in half. Granted they'd lose a little money fronting computers, workspace, and benefits for all of the new employees. But when people are well rested and relaxed they work much more efficiently. The other problems arise in the transistion of code from one person to the next. But if two programmers are assigned to work with each other and their shifts overlap by 4 hours and they are assigned the same task, it wouldn't be that crazy.
I'm a lead programmer in a european independent games studio (about 100 employees), and while I'm very familiar with the extreme overwork stories, especially from the other side of the pond, my own experience is rather different. I have two children (aged 6 an 9) who I care for on an equal basis with my wife. We both have 36 hour contracts (each having an afternoon for the children).
Though in practice I work closer to 45-50 hours a week, I rarely spend more than the 36 hours at the office, the rest is done in the evenings at home. We shipped two games this year, both on schedule. The game I worked on even met every single milestone the publisher set, and has turned out to be a fair commercial succes. During the peak "crunch" time, I worked late (11pm) one day a week, all other days I would work 10am-6pm, plus a couple of hours in the evening when the kids were in bed. I also came in on about 5 saturdays, but that was it. Even this amount of very mild crunch time (by industry standards) put quite a bit of strain on my family life and mental well-being, but nothing that couldn't be fixed (meeting al our milestones also meant we were getting all of our milestone bonusses, which helped).
Things went a bit less smoothly on the other game, but even there the real crunch (working most saturdays and some sundays) was limited to the last 4 month of development. In my opinion, most of the difference can be attributed to better planning and management on the game I worked on. In my opinion, most of that overtime could still have been avoided, and was mainly caused by lack of focus and lack of experience of the team leads. We have since recognised this, and with improved planning and more people actually taking them seriously, I'm pretty confident we will be able to conclude our next projects with minimal crunch time.
Most importantly, none of this overwork was actually enforced by management. The _second_ anybody mentions mandatory saturdays, I'm back to a more cosy, if somewhat more boring, job in telecoms. And I'm not the only one; it would simply be inconceivable for management to request 80 hour weeks for any extended period of time. Now, this is still the games industry (I did take a pay cut when I got this job), and it still is very intense (I've had to put basically all my hobbies on hold for the past few years), but sofar I'm very happy with it. This goes for most of the people I work with, all of them love their work, and are more than willing to put in a bit of overwork to make the product better; just as long as the motivation and drive remains a positive one.
And finally, I am convinced that this really works; it simply doesn't make sense for a programmer to work more than 50 hours a week. Beyond that, his (yes, we hardly have any girls working in production) productivity just doesn't increase anymore. It comes down to a choice between two models:
1 - The simple one: make an unrealistic schedule (or none at all) and force/yell/scare everybody to work incredible hours for the duration of the project to try to meet the deadline, with little attention being paid to morale or sensible "proffesional" practices.
2 - The harder one: have competent management in place that takes scheduling seriously, pays lots of attention to the supporting professional aspects of software development (we have never thrown away our code-base at the end of a project, and although we aren't anywhere near what I would call "professional" software development, from what I've seen at other games companies we are still pretty far ahead), and try to use the inherent enthousiasm of the employees to maximum effect without wearing them down.
In pure economic terms, the two approaches might well work out the same, and if that's the case, I can see why a company as big as EA goes for the first approach, as it certainly is easier and more risk free, as long as you can keep your employees under enough pressure. But that doesn't mean it always has to be this way. It is still possible to have a pretty decent job i
We should write letters to EA threatening to boycott unless they change their labor practices.
Mathematics is not a crime.
Maybe we need to go back to the old days and look for a union label on the products that we buy. This seems to be the age of Wal-Mart, where a low price trumps any concerns about ethics and morality.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
what a whiny bitch! I hope her husband's job is offshored. then she'll never complain about 80 hr weeks. This is a free country...you and your SO don't like the company and the job, quit dumbass but I don't give two shits how bad big bad EA is. I hope he didn't screw up any code in my Madden this year.
and tell me if you're worried about the Government's proposed unfair dismissal laws?
For the rest of you, our esteemed PM wants to make sure that companies like EA continue to enjoy their favourite employment practices. He's selling it like it's a burden on small businesses, but big business wants mandatory overtime, so who's kidding who? Oh well, you're all getting outsourced anyway, who cares.
Alternately, if the developers had an investment in the company (the kind that iD coders have), you'd see a very different attitude to employees in this industry.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
"the solution therefore should be to hire more engineers, or artists, or designers, as the case may be."
Sounds like the SO should read these two titles.
And EA's right - put up or quit. That's everyone's magnificent right - quit. Can't quit? Why? Mortgage payment to much? Car payments that are astronomical? Well then suck it up and live within your means.
Now, if this situation is the norm at EA, then EA is foolish anyway, you really think they gained every extra hour of production out of the workers that they put in? I'm guessing they got 20% extra if you tallyed it all up. That's 8 extra hours a week, and that's probably a normal work week for most of us.
Sorry SO, I feel your pain and I've been on my share of death marches (12 hours shifs, 7 days a week for months) and not even for something as cool as a game, but some BS business software, but the reality is you and your SO have a choice.
Whenever I was the (fool?) one who decided to work my ass off for the company, compensation never offered, I felt very proud to have given my all. For those who emotionally whipped their employees, I took the next boat out. There was always a job offer with more pay waiting, until the dot bomb crushed game careers in its wake. Instead of swimming against the current with the rest of the salmon, I smelled the waters. The game industry is teetering over its own success. Too much emphasis on big budgets. Too much emphasis on retail and seasons. Too little emphasis on expanding the type of games produced. EA is swimming faster and faster to keep in place. Obviously, the employees are suffering because of it.
Board games are going through a renaissance. The market for internet, downloadable games is growing faster than the PC retail market. The console market is starting a new cycle with more expensive hardware sold at a greater loss with software expected to make up the difference. Mobile oriented games are gearing up to blow everything else away (in numbers of sales only). The great thing about mobile and downloadable games is, these games are profitable ONLY with small budgets. That means, the independent scene is a fabulous place to be looking for work right now! Small companies are exploding across high-tech nations to build tiny, fun games. Oh, there's still crunch time, but on a game that has a $10,000 budget, and three months of one engineer working, crunches are short and exciting! Just don't expect, ever, to get rich.
This is where I ended up, building my own titles. I still work on games, and I am very thankful that I still love it.
http://snarkyspot.blogspot.com/2004/11/ea-spouse-s peaks-out-against-game.html
At last count, there were over 770 comments on the EA Spouse post on LiveJournal. The full letter was posted recently about the pending lawsuit:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/274.htm l?thread=197138#t197138
I have known Trip Hawkings. Trip Hawkings is my friend. Larry Probst, you are no Trip Hawkings.
WAY back when (22 years ago) I worked for a mid sized electronics company that was playing overtime games with their electronics techs (same kind of games that are being played by EA). Well, I was with the company, oh, 6 months or so, when all the techs were called into the office. In the office was someone from the state labor relations board. It seems a couple of months BEFORE I started, someone had dropped a dime on the company to the state labor board. They didn't just fix the problem with that guys pay, but they went back something like 5 YEARS, and fixed EVERYONES pay, plus a penalty. They explained in the meeting what our rights were, gave us a phone number to call if there were any more problems, and watched our CEO had every one of us a check for what we were due
I'd say EA is skating on VERY thin ice - particularly with the clear $42/hr law in CA. If you get it to the right folks - they could end up owing all their developers back pay, with interest, and a penalty
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Um... no. That statement implies that people know what they are getting into and get into it willingly. Somehow I doubt if the interviewees are told, "by the way you'll be working 80 hour weeks a month in and won't be allowed to use your vacation time."
That's why these stories are important, and shit like Forbes rating EA a great place to work is so damaging. People need to know how bad it is for most people in the industry.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
are the reason most software sucks. Proud ot that?
Tech Public Policy stuff
By now, we've all read that cathartic LiveJournal entry (or the reposting here on slashdot) by an angry EA widow who has had her husband, her family life, and her own career co-opted by the hellish product development environment that has become the norm at Electronic Arts. Most of us in the business know, right down deep in our ulcers and migraines, exactly what she's talking about. Too many of us have been caught in "normal" development cycles that require overtime as a matter of course; and have been at the mercy of abusive managers who ratcheted us up to several months of 13-hour-a-day/7-day work weeks. Perversely, these managers always claim that this is what's required to make the schedule - and (the mendacity of this part is always breathtaking) to prevent our work hours from expanding even more in the future.
i ves/2004/11/11/643#more-643
These stories are nothing new to me. I spent my 20s living them - and my 30s figuring out how to avoid ever doing that again.
Let me begin by establishing my bona fides. I've been building software for more than 20 years. Fifteen of those years were in the games business; half of those years were spent at EA's Bay Area offices as an external developer and an employee. I've held just about every technical position from tool programmer to director of engineering. As a programmer I've worked by myself and on teams of almost a hundred engineers. As a manager at a Fortune 100 company (Adobe) and elsewhere, I ran teams of up to 25 people, working on up to five projects at once. I've managed multi-million dollar art-intensive games, single developers, and core technology teams responsible to as many as eight clients (all with different requirements and all on different shipping schedules). Over the course of my career, I've been "in charge" (i.e. the senior engineering or project manager) on more than a half-dozen published titles, and held up the technical direction or project management end on over two dozen more.
In all that time, for all those titles, no project I was in charge of has ever missed its ship date or overshot its budget.
Yet I absolutely refuse to work the kind of death march hours ea_spouse describes. And I have never, ever asked or allowed my employees to do so.
Her story - and others that have been shared in the industry-wide conversation that her post provoked - make it clear that EA's management believes, as a matter of institutional principle, that only way to make money at games software is to create tight schedules, and the only way to make a tight schedule is to work your employees harder.
Decades of software engineering research and best practices - and my own experience - prove conclusively that this belief is complete bullshit.
Read the rest at: http://enginesofmischief.com/blogs/ramblings/arch
While it's nothing new to you (someone in the industry), it is news for potential EA employees or anyone thinking of entering the games industry.
Having finished my comp. sci. degree, I'm doing web/flash programming right now (and quite enjoy it). I had often thought about getting into gaming, but after reading ea_spouse's comments and everyone else's, there's no way I'm exploring that avenue.
The anecdotal posts may not help those who have heard it before, but it's a great help to those who are considering entering the field.
This EA story sickens me, but sure doesn't surprise me. Since I've always worked on the hardware and support side of the PC industry (not software development), I haven't been pushed quite as hard as the coders out there who are always supposed to "make the impossible happen, and do it yesterday!". Nonetheless, I experienced my share of this in corporate I.T. - and I did my best not to accept it, except on the occasions where I could see I had to "give in" or else surely lose my job. In the end, I did lose my job with one of these places - but looking back, it was for the best.
The fact is, one of management's primary roles SHOULD be figuring out how to best utilize their workers within a 40 hour work-week timeframe. Instead, many seem to think it's about manipulating the employees any way possible to achieve specific goals/milestones.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find that I can get an awful lot accomplished around my own house if I actually get 8 hour blocks of time each day I can allocate to doing the tasks. And that's taking into consideration the fact that I'm working on these projects/tasks/chores single-handedly, with limited tools and resources at my disposal! If a business with anywhere from dozens to thousands of employees can't get their projects done with each of the people working 8 hour days, 5 days a week - they're NOT MANAGING THEIR RESOURCES PROPERLY!
All I can say is
"Fuck that"
Walk away from that job, 90 hour weeks? No fucking way.
If there was compensation, then maybe you could consider it. Maybe buy that house you always wanted.
Soooo anyone else sending spam hate mail to EA for being a bunch of slave driving mofos? :)
With all the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into making a great (or half decent) game. You have to think about all the practices that is currently going on that one day a group of people will put their heads together and come up with a solution to this. They will have their day....
--- hows it taste mother f$#@er!!!
I think the big question is, how can we get small game studios back?
Start by supporting the ones out there. My own game company is a small, independent company that runs the game Meridian 59; we're entirely self-funded in order to maintain creative freedom. But, with limit funds comes limited ability to make a game "pretty" enough and to get really effective advertising.
Don't take my word for it, look at how people react. I recently submitted a story to Slashdot talking about the new M59 free trial server we're offering. Out of the 30 comments, about a quarter of them are people complaining about ugly graphics or how the story is just an ad for my game. Yes, another quarter of the comments are me trying to clarify and defend some points. But, this is how people react to a game with less-than-modern graphics trying to get a bit of marketing on a site that talks about games!
Until people take a different attitude, things won't change. Until people are willing to put up with graphics that are a little behind the curve, we're going to see EA make even more profits and pump out even more derivative (yet highly profitable) yet pretty games. Until people realize that an indie developer posting a story on Slashdot is about as sophisticated as our marketing budget allows us to be, you're going to continue to see large ad campaigns from large companies continue to get mindshare and the little studios are going to continue to be ignored and go out of business.
There's also issues of distribution; no store is going to carry my game because I'm "too small" and I can't afford the bribes, er, I mean, "Market Development Funds" that the stores require. There's a lot of reasons why independents aren't all that easy to find, but we are here if you choose to look a bit.
I've been harping on this issue a long time. Professional independent game developers like me are out here, but we keep getting ignored in favor of the larger games with flashier graphics and slicker advertising. All we have to offer fun with occasional innovation, but you can't take a screenshot of that, unfortunately.
Have fun,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
When I first worked as a software developer in the mid 90s people worked 9-5 and never on the weekends. They might pull a week end for a big project but that was once every 6 months or so. The veteran developers ( 10+ years of experience ) especially never worked on the weekends.
The internet bubble happened. My stock options were worth nearly a million dollars. I felt obligated to work long hours and go on a perma crunch mentality.
Well, the companies still think we are in internet bubble days. There is no reason to work those long hours. You want me to work like that again then you give me a million in stock options. I would say this mode of operation ultimately ends up being destructive for management and employees.
"You lack discipline!"
It's obvious your SO is cheating on you and using long hours as an excuse!
Bail the fuck out. It'll take a couple years for the cycle to catch up with EA, but when one fucking game bombs right after another because they're hiring Indians and Mexicans (who CAN code but have no idea of the culture's dynamics), it'll catch them right in the shitbox. And there will be MBA's out on their asses, a huge glut of burger flippers forced to sell their cars and houses and compete in "Survivor Series: Too many MBA's, Not Enough Availble Positions".
While all the out of work programmers went back to school and got engineering degrees and are developing bio-tech using distributive computing clusters.
Just start killing MBA's and let Allah sort it all out. We could have this country back into shape within a decade.
This sort of crap and abuse is precisely why labor laws and unions were created (and necessary) in the first place. We need to have MORE unions. Without the collective clout of a big union to back you up as a drone worker, you are nothing but a crap commodity to be abused and tossed away when you collapse. UNIONIZE and simply refuse to work these sorts of hours for prolonged periods of time and NOT without some form of fair compensation.
We are seeing the bad old days of the 19th and early 20th centuries coming back with this crap.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I will never buy one of their titles. You have my support!
Given US Law or how I perceive it, and the written contract you have, the hours below which you get compensation should be mandatorily written in shouldn't they?
Im sure that if all overworked personel would just do a "strike", you'd get management's agreement quickly and your 40 hours too!
They can't sue everyone!
If they do, they will loose because of public exposure to their practices, they will loose in court thanks to overwelming "shindler" list of overworked and abused workers, they will look like slave owners, they will be stripped of all their capital because of the human rights lawsuits, they will be linched in the market because they can't seem to make a deadline - if you "the company" that makes the product all strike! "The Revolution will be Televised" Gill Scott Heron. It's your turn to hang them by the balls! Now, that's a game!
We also get decent holidays (30 days a year isn't unknown - plus public holidays, of course... :-)
And both the economy and the employees survive. It can be done!
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
Nurses, at least in California, are hourly workers and most hospitals these days frown on even back-to-back 12 hour shifts for fear of litigation.
The reason they try to keep the nurses happy is because there aren't enough of them. It has (almost) nothing to do with lawsuits. I've done the finances for a 400 bed hospital (which is a midsized hospital) regarding bonus pay for nurses. Last year this hospital paid over $1.7 million in bonus pay to get adequate staffing. Nurse staffing is highly competitive and the nurses can, will and do leave if hospital administration abuses them too much.
Most hospitals have also cut down on the brutla hours that residents are required to put in for the same reason. In the resident's case, they do get a place to crash when (assuming) things slow down for a while (and they usually do, even in ERs that are major trauma centers in major cities)
I'm married to a resident. Hospitals are supposed to cut down on the hours but I can assure you that many do not. And "cutting down" means limiting them to 80 hours/week which is still insane. I don't know why you seem to think that giving residents a bed when they are on call is some kind of benefit. My wife has pulled many 36 hour shifts where she got no where near a bed. Even when she did, it's not like a resident is going to get any real rest. Q4 rotations are typical meaning you are on call every 4th night and I've seen people on Q2 rotations which basically means you don't get any sleep every other night. I know at least one guy who did Q2 for almost 2 years! Talk about your death march.
Residents get abused because they have no alternatives. If they want to be a doctor they have to do a residency. At least with programming there are alternatives, even if they aren't necessarily as fun or creative as game programming. For a supposedly caring profession, medicine is just brutal to their employees.
Frankly I'm shocked that some ambulance chaser lawyers haven't gotten the idea that tired residents who make lots of mistakes would make a very lucrative opportunity. I think the ambulance chasers are scum but at least they would be doing something vaguely useful in forcing hospitals to be humane to employees...
If the small studios combined forces and had a single marketing/advertising staff to deal with the sales end of the business, they might be able to fend off the big guys.
It's called a "Marketing Co-op", and many small businesses are in them.
It isn't a coincidence that the stereotypical game programmer/artist is the same person that will spend 80+ hours a week playing Everquest or spend days building complex Japanese robot model kits. The people in charge of hiring look for this sort of obsessive behavior during the interview process (hint: if you want to work as a programmer for EA, don't list any outdoor activities under hobbies on your resume ;)). These are the people who will put up with 90+ hour work weeks.
Once you get these people get started on a project they will not quit. All you need to do is feed them and give them space. As an extra bonus, their behavior will catch on and the people around them will pull insane hours as well to keep up.
Having done my fair share of "death marches" I can tell you that it is less like a sweat-shop and more like a cult.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
and if that isn't scary I don't know what is. The fact is that list is probably accurate and all major corporations are this horrible. We should all flood Smuckers with applications (they are #1).
I know it's really late to reply, but just to throw in my $.02...
Work that's over 8 hours in a day = 1.5x hourly wage
Work that's over 40 hours in a 7-day period = 1.5x hourly wage
Work that's over 7 days in a row = 1.5x hourly wage (if it's over 40 hours too, it's 2x).
Work that's over 8 hours on any consecutive day after the 7th day = 2x hourly pay
It's really easy to rack up a fortune working the hours discussed here. Be frugal, save an assload, and quit to find a new job when they project's done, using that saved money to live on. Simple.
Or, if they won't pay you the overtime, take it to court (find an attorney who will work on contingency) and live off the settlement.
I work 70-80 hour weeks in the car biz, so I understand a little bit of where you're coming from, but believe me... the choice is yours. Don't dream about unionizing, if you're too much of a pussy to stand up for simple (federally assured) overtime, what makes you think you can convince your coworkers to do it? Shit.
Sony ha
These posts are mostly accurate and I am experiencing the same thing and am happy that this has blown into the open. Winds of change are afoot!
But to put things into a more accurate perspective:
1. I have worked for other game companies and have undergone worse crunches for longer periods of time. This is not just an EA problem, it is an industry wide problem with few exceptions.
2. I don't believe EA is offshoring talent. Why would they build EALA and have plans to grow to 1000 people? EA is expanding in multiple countries, and especially Asia to expand influence into that market which is significantly different than it is in North America. Offshoring would imply jobs are getting replaced. EA in America is growing (too fast in my opinion)!!!
3. EA has consolidated nearby studios into larger super studios. I personally don't see anything wrong with this and have personally been part of such consolidation causing me to relocate.
4. I believe there is a genuine effort in process to change EA's behavior. We are performing detailed surveys and there has been active attempts to solicit the view of employees and how to improve things.
5. I believe crunch is a result of old habits in a quickly evolving industry. In the beginning, making games was the result of a small group or even 1 person that was passionate about making games. They would spend all their time on it and did so of their own free will. Since then, the industry has grown technologically and has struggled with changing from this crunch mentality. People that are passionate love what they do and spend extra time on their projects!
6. EA is not the evil churn-factory empire that consciously spits out employees -- although it happens a lot! They really believe that working longer hours results in greater productivity. This is their mistake. More on that later...
7. EA pays decently when you consider salary, bonuses, and benefits. However, it is not worth working 80+ hour weeks. That is not right.
8. I hate to say it but I'd rather crunch for a company where survivability is virtually guaranteed. It's far worse to crunch just to survive to the next project where even that is questionable, nevermind not getting any bonuses!
My story: I've been making games for a decade now. When I was younger, I enjoyed working long hours. And during these crunch periods I went through many relationships. It took me years before I identified that working these kind of hours were destroying long term relationships. Now I am in a serious relationship and want to get married, start a family. My priorities are changing. I want to be able to spend time with my family to be and spend more time with my girlfriend. She has suffered so much in the past 8 months where I spent much of that time crunching. She has barely seen me for months now. The problem is that I was much more gullible than she is. I honestly feed her any information that EA tells me in meetings. Turns out we are getting strung along with empty promises. She has a good memory and gets mad at me when there is a change. I work with many experienced people -- no longer just a bunch of kids, most of the people I work with are industry veterans like myself.
The cost of crunch
But the problem in my eyes is that higher level management believes that working longer hours results in increased productivity. But the truth is, it costs far too much!
1. The more fatigued people get, which results in bad decisions and sloppy mistakes. More mistakes dogpile into a bigger mess, resulting in more crunch "needed!" I know myself and after 10 hours of focused effort, I quickly deteriorate into inefficiency. When I'm required to work 12+ hours in a day, the next day I come in tired and haggered and inefficient. Just a couple hours in one day will ruin the very next day! Just this point alone should be enough to not consider crunching... but there's many more associated costs!
2. The family factor is completely overlo
http://snarkyspot.blogspot.com/2004/11/ea-manageme nt-motivational-posters.html
...then you might as well just sleep at the office.
Naked.
Boycott their games. Hit them where it hurts. When they see their sales dropping maybe they will pull their heads out of their asses.
I usually don't bother posting, nor subscribing to anything because that is/was my life phylosofy. :P)and after working my way up from support etc I made it as far as a coder for a commercial software company.
Before obviously stating I completely understood what your article is all about I have to congratulate you on a very well written article. You have put a lot of effort into this it seems. I wish I had your skill.
I used to be a coder to, I was young and "had this dream" of programming a game some day. But I had no credentials nor anything (I liked/like to play games to much
along that path I encountered quite some strange employment practices.
I didn't get involved in a social control my first employer finally went through because I resigned just before it started, but I had to finish my term so I did get to see how it evolved. My well paid collegues covered my bosses tracks (while getting a better paycheck, again) and they still do whatever it is they do untill today. My testimony represented nothing and my collegues hated me, I almost made them loose their jobs.
I worked for a government instance (that got privatised, woohoo) for a couple months as a techy. I got a couple calls in my mailbox evry day that got distributed by the lasiest drunk in the office. From the 15 (yeah 15) calls I would get I would solve 5-10 on the phone (thank god for our over-qualified help desk) in 15 minutes. I started my day at 8.30 and would usually finish it around 10, after solving the remaining calls. My collegues hated me and another even younger kid like me who were 'endangering their jobs' so I left, I was bored anyway.
I started as a helpdesk monkey after that, outsourced by my new company. It wasn't the original job I applied for but they didn't get the contract so they had to do 'something' with me. I foolishly accepted hoping for a better tomorrow (hey not all companies you work for are the same right?) i actually attended extra courses and made it very clear I wanted something else. Unfortunatly, I was so good my manager wanted to KEEP me while all the good jobs became available to other managers of that company. Meeting a new kid who a. had a better paycheck then me while I was convinced EVRYONE started at the same paycheck while b. he was doing the job I wanted while c. having no experience that all, I told myself again : it's time to go. And go I did... on top of that, changing jobs like this and working for more and more 'respectable' companies, my resume started to look 'interesting'. Being married with the intention to build a house, I wanted a stable well paid nine to five job like I heard about in fairytales, for my own and to please my wife. So the next step came very unexpected : I applied for a prestigeous job as a programmer, and I even got selected. Being young and having no coding credentials I was a sitting duck for my project manager. Not only that, but I ended up in a team of people just like me, who had no credentials what so ever and wanted to proove themselves. We worked close to minimum wage but did get a car to drag ourselves through endless traffic jams to get to work. After six months we would get our first evaluation and after that we would get an evaluation evry year that would allow us to get a better paycheck. We were all very happy monkies. I admire the cruel genius of our project manager. In a time the company was doing it's worst HIS team of loosers got the most praise. Not amazing, we worked twice as hard at one third the pay generating good revenus. And what kept us going was the team itself. We didn't stab each other in the back, we did no job protection and communicated vocally and resolved issues internally. Evry managers dream, an autonomous self managing team ( we hardly ever saw mister project manager, besides the one time upper management made a remark he didn't work over with 'his team' and he kept us company on a 'build-day', making himself usefull (and Oo so popular) buy bringing us some pizza (while whining about how c
That guy is actually using his free time to fake a spouse who waits for him.
To do list for Windows
The problem is that EA has so many games under thier wings that I've got addicted to over the years. I'm a Sim City addict. Even with the shit EA introduces to what was maxis the game is still more addictive than crack to me. SSX and NFS series also seem to be somewhat well finished compared to some of their other garbage. I wonder if EA Canada isn't quite so unreasonable with their scheadualing.
Moo!
I know for a fact that EA management is aware of these three articles in Slashdot. They're not stupid, and they don't have their collective heads in the sand.
One must wonder, then, why they let these articles go unchallenged? Would Roblimo post an article from so high-up EA manager describing their point of view? Of course he would, it's a guaranteed 1,000 comment article!
So, one has to conclude that EA is being intentionally silent. The only reasons that I can think of for doing that are:
1. They can think of nothing to say, they have no justification for the practices that seem borderline illegal and certainly cruel.
or
2. They like the articles, and enjoy the reputation for complete balls-out insane production schedules.
Think about it.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Perhaps this person's spouse is just screwing around a lot, they get off work at 5 and go party with some person they met at a bar.
See!? Look what happens when you lie!
If your philosophy is "work to live" then no, this is not rational. But if your philosophy is "live to work and serve the man," then 80 hourse per week is great.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
"Do the same number of people work as hard for as long to produce a movie? "
Yes, they do, it's constant and since we (most of us) understand the reality of the business we work in, we don't go whining on bulletin board so people pity us. Because we know better, we know they don't, they never will. They steal our work day in , day out, justify themselves with some fucking dimwitted comment (they unlawfully protected their work against thieves! How unjustified, we will crack their encryption make it availlable to the public so that ANYONE can steal them, see, it's called justice... or my favorite: they fuckin make millions it doesn't mather; I don't, you don't, no one does except the producer which isn't a person but a company filled with person which are paid a salary, the fact that their stealing cost me some job they don't give a flying fuck about, I could fucking die of hunger they wouldn't care, in their mind, they have the right to steal...) and absolutely don't give a fuck about you.
So public whinning lead you to nothing. If you can't take the reality of a market just leave it. As for me, I worked for television, in studio and I now work in live, I've been installer, consultant, operator, editor and supervisor, in all case the same reality repeated itself: the show is thuesday 8H00, not friday, you can't call millions of people to tell them "sorry I'm late" deadlines in television do mean something, if you can't accept that leave the field. That is what separate the big boys from the cable pullers, some can take it and be good at it, others can't. Most of the time those others who fail are the same one that will steal and justify themselves with the sort of dimwitted comment you can read above...
Reality check, it hurts but its true.
If your hapiness can cost them 1cent you could die they wouldn't care, except on bulletin board.
BTW, have you even wondered how many people, the ones who wrote back to you telling you that they are on your side and so on, have, not even 5min. after writting this, went on supernova.org to pirate a game...
hint, a lot, and your husband long hours are the result of the cost cut necessary to sell them the game to the acceptable price of 40-60$, which they find too high anyway...