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Electronic Arts Facing Possible Class Action Lawsuit
As a follow-up to yesterday's story about a frustrated EA employee's spouse, several readers wrote in to report that EA is now facing a possible class action lawsuit from disgruntled employees. Besides the Gamespot coverage, Kotaku has a discussion of it as well. To add to the "frustrated EA worker" momentum, a former employee named Joe Straitiff has posted about his experiences as well. From his post: "So I'm posting under my real name -- you have to stand up to this type of thing or it will continue. And every company will become EA so that can compete... Remember, you can't spell ExploitAtion without EA."
Isn't that like, the whole gaming industry?
if the company is so bad, quit. I'm sure there's plenty of people who will hire you.
so i guess the same can be said about video games
spend money here
that this ties them up in litigation enough that it distracts them from their core business of buying up creative game developers and destroying anything that was good about them.
John Madden says, "You just hate to see that!"
FORM A UNION It worked for GM workers who faced similar situations back in 1937. Stick together and they can't stop you...but then again, in this world where everybody is out for themselves, you've probably screwed.
EA will not retaliate against employees for exercising legal rights, including by participating in the proposed class action.
In other words, your jobs are going overseas. You have the right to look for another job, and we won't discriminate against you for that.
Was it good for you, too?
Rb
Yes, and to think bush wanted to CUT overtime pay.
Instead of relying on the courts to help them in Bush's United States of Avarice, they should unionize, and strike.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
First of all, everyone always needs to keep in mind that HR is not there for the benefit of the employees. That's what every company tells you, but the truth is, HR's job is to protect the corperation. Never trust an HR employee to look out for your best interest. That being said, EA's HR department has obviously failed them by allowing things to get to this point. They should have kept pay and hours legal within the bounds of the state law. And did anyone else notice the featured game on the gamespot article? Sims2 by EA.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWThe response will be to outsource your jobs at EA. Hopefully folks will learn the lesson; organize and plan for the worst when times are good and companies need the services you, as an employee, provide.
It's sad but I can't imagine any large company making concessions to it's employees in the current political climate.
Does anyone know how many of EA's employees are contractors, BTW?
-_-
"Starting this week and lasting through the end of the season, you can get the #1-selling lawsuit game for an unbelievable $29.95!"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
If your employer is not following employment practices laws, you could ask the courts to force them to comply.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm sure a lot of talented Eastern European, Indian, and Chinese developers wouldn't mind being exploited by EA.
But how will the lawyers and the rich-against-poor-against-rich demagogues make a living if productive people ignore them and concentrate on producing stuff under good conditions like that? You're clearly a cruel and horrible anonymous coward, rather than the kind, well-intentioned (idiotic, if you actually bother to look at the consequences!) kind...
Me
(For mods yes, it's called sarcasm.)
uhm... you realize that not everyone has the luxuary of quitting a job. see, most people have things called bills. some have a mortage, car payments, insurance, KIDS, etc etc. Just up and quitting a job isn't necessarily an option because these things have deadlines on them every month, kids have constant needs, food, clothes, blah blah blah. Computer and tech jobs are hard enough to find as it is, quitting is not an option unless you have enough in your bank account to sustain living for weeks or months before you find another job. think before you open your mouth. There's no reason a company in the U.S. should be operated like this, people have rights, it seems EA isn't obeying these rights. Common curtesy is a big thing for me too, with my current employer if they try to back me into a wall, i fire right back and put them against the wall, one of the good things about being in a union. These people are standing up for themselves. it's nice to know YOU can quit, but not everyone can, they need income.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
To use the old cliche - go get a life - hmmm. let's see... would the world be a better place without EA? Mmmm... tempting...
DudeBaron
"Remember, you can't spell ExploitAtion without EA." No, but you can spell "Out of work" without it. In many states (including mine) the employer doesn't need ANY reason to terminate an employee. Period.
Ah, nothing like a trailer-park social darwinist to get the juices flowing first thing in the morning. Has it ever occured to you that some of these people have families and bills to pay? Quitting a job is sometimes not an option for folks who have to make decisions based on criteria other than lifestyle. I'm so sick of the current American/Hobbesian worldview of "each man against all men". We have a name for creatures that endorse that world-view: animals.
-_-
Don't hate the player ... hate the game!
that the class action results in an award for payment of lawyer fees & $5 off their next EA game purchase.
Electronic Arts news release: due to popular demand, and the growing number of civil actions filed in this country, Electronic Arts announces a new game due to hit stores just in time for Christmas '05
commercial begins
-Johnny Cochran comes out-
EA COURTS : it's in the game!
Has anyone ever heard of a "gruntled" employee? Just wondering.
Could the "Free Market" believers just shut the fuck up?
Please?
Thank you.
"Oh, so you were sold into slavery? Why don't you just run away? You're free to attempt that at any time! There are lots of places where slavery is not accepted. Move there you long-haired non-hot-rod-poking-lovin' hippie scum! I believe in this, therefore it's right! Might makes right!"
Belief is the currency of delusion.
While I don't have much against a free market, this is clearly abuse. We take skilled workers, and treat them like shit. People that are great programmers, talented minds, etc. We run them through the dirt and then don't even have the common courtesy to give them overtime.
My father is a construction worker. 5 or 6 years ago, his company started pulling the same thing. He would go in at 8am, and not get home until 10pm or 11pm each night. Sometimes on Saturdays. They did, however, get overtime.
A month of this went by. People were tired. They were cranky. Accidents happened at work all the time, usually involving equipment damage or damage to whatever they were working on. They just didn't get much done in a 14 hour day.
Thankfully, the management saw what was going on and when that job was completed later that month, everyone was given a big bonus, an apology, and promises that they weren't going to set their 'completion dates' that low again.
It was depressing to watch my dad come in, after a 12 or 14 hour day, eat, shower, and go to bed, knowing that in a few hours, he'd have to be right back at work for another 12 to 14 hours. It was barely worth it in my opinion, even with overtime.
EA's shit should be a warning to other companies of what not to do.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Oh, EA...will you ever learn? I'm referring, of course, to the recent incident in which ex-volunteers from Ultima Online sued EA and won.
Poor LiveJournal, facing a slashdotting two days in a row.
This wonderful AC just pointed out the glaring flaw in libertarian economic theory. That the free market is the solution to all corporate ills. So basically, we're supposed to wait years or decades for a large corporation to suffer the consequences of its own bad policies for the market to finally convince it to change its ways. In the meantime, hundreds or thousands of employees and or customers are hurt because enacting faster moving regulation would be seen as "hindering" economic activity.
Absolutely WE-TODD-IT is what libertarians are.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
You can get together and unionize, and rally for better conditions. Like back in the day, when factory conditions in the US were horrible. Quitting didn't do anything. Banding together against the employers did.
Last night I was scanning EA's site trying to find a contact address of some sort so I could ask them to publicly address the message from the employee's spouce. I never found an address, but a lawsuit is more likely to get a serious response anyhow.
EA was one of the best companies that made games for the C64. However, as a gamer, I would have no problem boycotting them now, until they start treating their human resources like people. I would assume this sort of thing is how they destroyed Origin Systems. In any case, I don't need games developed in a sweat shop.
It's about time we stood up as a unit. The spouse's story sounds all too familiar. For nearly three years, I worked seventy and eighty hours weeks-- several times per month at one position. I don't know if management realizes how badly this has become. I don't believe this is necessary to continue this way. One thing not mentioned in the EA spouse's letter was how difficult it is to get another job while you're in the middle of an eighty hour work week. Your options seem much more limited than the reality of the situation. Thanks again to the EA spouse and /. for getting this message out there.
It sounds to me like there needs to be some alliance or union of game industry workers. Is there such a thing? Problems like ridiculous hours were solved a hundred years ago by the introduction of unions in other industries.
From the article:
So the programmers at EA are still out of luck with respect to their own lawsuit. Whether they're exempt or not is probably the crux of the matter.
------------
I have saved some of my Starcraft replays here
If they are properly classified as "exempt" from overtime rules, they won't win in federal court, not on overtime alone.
They might win on religious grounds - many people's religion demands a day of rest. If they get a doctor's note limiting them to 50-60 hour work-weeks to prevent "mental exhaustion," they can win that way. Unfortunately, these are not likely to be class actions. They also might win in state courts.
They also might win by asking other countries and major retailers to classify EA as a "sweat shop operator." This would hit EA in the pocketbook.
If it were me, I'd be inviting the AFL-CIO in. Correction - if it were me, I'd've quit or been fired long ago.
If I were EA, I'd consider either changing my attitude or moving overseas where sweat-shops are legal.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
For the extreme coders in the audience - remember when you first learned to actually do somethign worthwhile with a PC. Something mathematical and complicated, but looked pretty good?
I rmemeber. Icould spend an entire night fuelled by caffeine and pizza, hacking code, learning, not wanting to sleep.
The problem is that a lot of people expect it to continue that way. They think that because they could do that a few yewars ago, they can be as productive now.
And they're mistaken.
Work longer, productivity plummets. Brains need rest. People need to realise this.
I was hired about 8 years ago at Angel Studios to do 'game AI' for Nintendo and PC games, and also for some VR stuff for Disney. We worked really long hours to make deliveries but the owners of the company jumped through hoops to make it OK: really good food, lunch time barbecues, lunch time head shavings, etc. Then there was having the use of a $200K SGI Reality Engine :-)
This story amused me a little because: twice in recent years the human resources people at EA contacted me re: employment. I would have jumped at the opportunity except both times it was to work on sports games. I *hate* playing sports games so I hardly would want to work on them. (I like driving games, and shooter/tactical games are OK also).
-Mark
This is the first example I've seen of Internet Mob Justice. I like it.
Anyone have any other examples (prior art) ?
Ever thought of looking for another job before just quitting? It works pretty good, and is usally what I do. See, companies that hire know you need two weeks and you can use THAT time to work your notice so you don't even have to burn a bridge at the old job.
But wouldn't you like to be working on EA at the moment when they change the practices for the better? Because after this moment, you won't stand a chance in the competition of 100 people per position.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
The blog entry describes how people are constantly forced to work longer and longer hours, to be able to meet a deadline. The project starts off as being on track, but then they are forced to put in 6 day weeks. This will make people tired and inefficient, and the project will still only be barely on track, and they then get forced to work 12 hours a day, six days a week.
At that pressure, emplyees that can leaves for better jobs. A sure way of getting rid of the good people. The rest will be so overworked and tired, that everything they do will be sloppy and bad. People will get grumpy and nobody will enjoy work, thereby getting even less done. And the project will fall further and further behind schedule.
People shouldn't *sue* EA, they should *leave* for greener pastures. If they can't, they should complain to their boss' boss that they are forced to be inefficient by crappy management. Explain to them that nobody gets richer by having a company full of tired people too sleepy to get real work done.
And I have a suggestion for a christmas present for the EA managers: One copy each of "The Dilbert Principle". It uses simple language, and has many easy to understand illustrations. Of course, you may have to write "This is you" and draw arrows pointing to the boss for clarity, but it may very well be worth it.
Let the revolution begin.
They aren't earning the required $90000 p.a. to be exempt.
Exempted Programmers in california are required $45/hr pay or higher. So EA is obviously paying above ~$94k a year. We aren't talking about low paid employees. I'm sure if they quit, EA would have no problems filling someone at the salary range.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
They just hope to get the case heard by an ultra-liberal activist judge who thinks all laws are subjective.
Maybe they'll cite the constitutional right to "live out your childhood fantasy of getting riduculously rich by screwing around with video games all day"
Working for a bad employer sucks, but a company the size of EA has a squadron of lawyers to make sure they're within the letter of the law.
I had an anecdote related to me from someone who recently quit the HR department of some large corporation I cant remember the name of.
Apparently, it was part of their "unwritten" policy to pre-write termination memos and stuff for every single employee, with generic terms like "insubordination" as the reasons. They basically fed a list of employees through a Word template every month.
This way, they could fire Sally for announcing she's pregnant, since her termination was actually decided on months before she told anyone she was pregnant. Basically it's a preemptive measure against any sort of wrongful termination suit.
I once worked in a cubicle under the biggest asshole manager in recorded history. His idea of "inspiring us" was to, each and every morning, walk out, tell us to stop working and listen, and announce that each and every one of us was replacable.
We had it easy, the guys back in the factory worked under some of the worst conditions I'd seen. Temperatures back there would be like 120 in the summer, and the whole place wound up thick with this dust that would just make you itch for days.
That story has a happy ending, though. One morning, he announced again that "each and every one of you is replacable". Each and every one of us walked out.
It was a small enough town to get word around what an awful place it was to work. About three months later the place was gone.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
So quit! --- 51%
Unionize! --- 48%
Odd... I've seen those numbers somewhere before.
--- Ban humanity.
The workers union for the EA employees must be really angry. Why does they not strike and demand higer pay and/or a more humane work situation?
sounds to me like these people are being so over worked that looking for another job is not necessarily an option.
but yes, looking before quitting is good. unfortunately in my area there are tons of crappy jobs. i work a dead end job at a grocery store (wanna hear my stories, visit my website and click on the "Paper or Plastic" category on the right column). Dealing with the public in this way isn't necessarily the job for me. I prefer dealing with my peers and learning, thus my major is no longer computer science, but teaching (hopefully computer science and english). I can find another job in my area, sure, but nothing worth a damn. I'd be going from one crappy job (with $2.50 more than average starting pay in the area) to another job (that is just above minimum wage)... and they both suck. so the benefit doesn't necessarily work for me. so i try to make the working conditions in my current job better for me and others, that's what this lawsuit is about, to make the working conditions better for everyone, not just themselves. They're doing the right thing.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
Listen. This isn't just the game industry. It's the software industry. And it's a part of the reason why software engineers (at least at one time) made considerably more money than other careers when compared to others with comparable education and experience (the original blog even said the pay and benefits were "right"). I've been there. It sucks. My wife was there too. Both of us chugging away at the eighteen hour day in Silicon Valley, fighting over who had to get the kids from day care that day, make 'em dinner, and get 'em to bed before getting back to work for a few more hours from home. There's an easy answer. Get another job. Move somewhere else. Start your own business. Go back to school. Refuse to work beyond a reasonable amount of time (hint: stopping at 40 hours is not reasonable where you are). I'm so tired of people who think the world owes them and who think that they have some right to an easy life AND good pay AND benefits. I really hope these whiners lose in court. I don't love big corporate software companies, but as long as people keep putting up with it, they'll keep doing it. So move on; go somewhere else. If all the good developers and artists do that, they'll be forced to offer more sane practices to lure people back. This is not unskilled labor; there is a finite pool of talent, so make the tough choice to leave, tell your boss/manager how you feel (and not anonymously), or if you're too scared to do one of those, then buck up and put up with it. You do have options; resorting to the courts is a whiny loser path and you'll get no sympathy from me, sorry.
what the helld o EA do any way? Last time I checked they updated the teams for the latest football/American football/Rugby/whatever game and did not much else...
I'd say "hey we should boycott EA!" but we're not the ones who buy sports games so they wouldn't even notice..
I like muppets.
A lot of this sort of thing would go better if management didn't pick dates out of their backsides and think people will work all hours when planning a new project.
I am never going to buy their games ever again!
Oh wait, I use Linux...
StarTux
While I am an engineer, not a programmer, I have to say that the real answer to this problem lies in the company's culture, which includes the culture of the management. As long as there are people willing to submit to this sort of treatment, it will continue, EA being a very extreme case. Here are two examples of situations that I have worked in recently to compare and contrast.
Company #1: While it was never specifically stated that the employee should put in long hours, it was common for employees to work 7:00 am-5:30pm m-f with weekend work at least every other weekend. This was with no "crunch-time" effect. The culture of the employees was simply "I work more than you do so I am a more valued employee." The odd thing about it, is it was still impossible to actually complete an improvement project, and those employees who worked long hours were more adept at creating more work for themselves than completing it. A common joke at this company was "If you are working from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm, you are only working half days." Very funny. Even funnier, this company regularly makes the fortune magazine 100 best companies to work for list. Needless to say, I am no longer with this group.
Company #2: This company's culture is "Get your work done and get out of here." Much more relaxing. The value is placed not upon how much time an employee spends at work, but on how much the employee gets done. I would feel completely secure in this position if I would work myself out of a job by automating all things possible, because the company recognizes innovation rather than time at the grindstone. The 4.5 day week is common practice, and if you have to work overtime, other employees feel honestly bad for you. The best part about it, if an exempt employee works more than 40 hours in a week, management actually insists that the employee takes comp time. I could go on and on about this, but the culture of the employees and managers is the key.
The culture of a company is a very difficult thing to change, and it gets more and more difficult to change as the number of employees increases. The best thing that an individual can do at this time is to find a company whose culture is acceptable to their work habits. If enough of the best and brightest employees find the companies with the good culture, eventually the corporate giants with bad work practices will either change or die off.
If you think that you are the best and brightest, prove that you are the brightest by changing your own situation. Not only will it help you, but it will help others in the long run.
-ShelbyCobra
Living life in the right side of the s-plane
I used to work for the Mouse, and though the pay was low, they at least had good OT rules. Did I say good? Make that GREAT! For example, if you worked more than 8 hours on a shift, they gave you time and a half. Also, anything over 40 hours a week was time and a half. If you had shifts less than 8 hours apart, the second was time and a half. If you had 3 such shift, less than 8 hours between each, the thrid was double time! and any other following were too! I knew guys that were hourly for about $10-11/hour, and were pulling in 70k a year becasue they'd pull a really long week or two, and then take a week almost off. I never could do it, and they didn't force us to work me than maybe 50 hours a week unless we wanted to, but it was cool how their rules worked. And the free access to the parks... yum :)
William George
I see the same thing happening in nursing!
My girlfriend just worked a 16 hour day only to have to go back 5 hours later and work a 12 hour day. I wouldn't want somebody that tired changing my meds! What's wrong with this country? We're working people to death! AAAAACK!!!
get your dirty sig off me, you filthy APE!
Anyone remember the deal with the Sonic on the Saturn game?
One guy ended up in hospital for over work on that game and it never saw the light of dawn let alone day.
Yet everyone whines when game X is delayed because they want it NOW!
Well maybe we should start showing these people (I'm looking at you Duke Nukem forever fans!), what people go through so we can get our 5 minutes of kicks.
I like muppets.
yeah, sacrifice yourself so the next guy gets better pay, better work environment, and better benefits. how does that make it better for you? forget that, fight for yourself! if that doesn't work, then leave. c'mon, sometimes it's right to bitch. squeaky wheel and oil? jeez.
One of the theories is people who have debt load (In the US its easy to get lots of debt) will work very very hard to keep there heads above water.
The trouble is alot of people want that bigger house or flashy car without thinking about how exactly there going to pay it off.
I'd rather have less (condo) and not have to worry about a huge mortgage/car payments. Gives you more time and freedom.
In our senior design class, our professor had us do a paper on our career goals and said that about half the computer engineers in the class (100) had down "be a video game programmer" as their goal.
The thing is, they AREN'T exempt. EA's HR department is just trying to convince them and everyone else that they are. Unless you are making $40/hour plus (about $90k per year, which you can guarantee those guys aren't making) and/or in a management position with enough autonomy to be responsible for determining your own schedule, you are NOT exempt from overtime pay. The courts, if the class is certified, will determine this rather quickly, and EA will find that it doesn't pay to treat your employees like a disposable resource.
Remember, unions only work if everyone buys into them. Join the game developer's union, pay your dues, and you can no longer work for an game shop who hires non-union developers. (If a company is able to find non union workers to replace you, they will!) In exchange, you get guaranteed working hours and/or compensated overtime. Welcome to the clock in/clock out daily grind where minutes must be accounted for. It's all part of the collective bargaining aggreements that the union lawyers and leaders hammer out with each individual company that hires game developers.
Basically it comes down to this: Companies don't like unions. It forces them to work within the stipulations of the CBA's, which can be very restrictive and cost-prohibitive. Employees don't want to *have* to work under the shield of a union. It severely magnifies the lens under which they work, and every action becomes scrutinized. They have to stick behind union decisions, whether they agree with them or not. Employers and employees are benefitted more from working together under mutual conditions. In most areas of software development, this is what happens. In the cases of a few specific companies (like EA) they take advantage of their employees. In this case, a class-action suit will soon sort it out. Yes, it's true that unions are established to prevent worker exploitation, but if you explain to everyone in our industry everything that is involved with establishing a union, you will find very little support.
I'd concurr with this. HR is about 'people gambling'. They do what it takes to keep you on board for as little as is possible. Remember, the more they pay you, the worse their numbers are. They in effect are incented to screw you.
Most companies have a way around this though, they just make your life hell, or in the case of EA I suppose more hell than it already is. Move your desk to the back room with no windows, perhaps near a noisy AC unit and with a power plug that overloads regularly so your PC reboots itself. Throw in some lighting and other conditons that make your work area look more like a level from doom3, and basically you're put in the position of quit or suffer hell for years until legal retaliations can be made.
While I agree that the conditions imposed are/were arduous, and I myself have endured employment by an equally demanding employer, I'm curious about the rights of a salary worker to demand overtime. As much as we enjoy deriding doctors and lawyers, many of them work 80-90 hour weeks, albeit usually for substantially more money than the average programmer. If you agree to be paid on salary, and you agree that time worked in excess of 40 hours per week is acceptable when your employer deems necessary, then can you still complain that you have to work overtime without compensation? I guess I'm a little fuzzy on labor laws in the US.. Perhaps someone can elaborate.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If the job is so horrible, EA will eventually have trouble filling it and change their practices. Magic of a free market.
There are still hordes of young people without a house, wife, and children who want to be part of this industry for a year, or maybe two.
The tragedy of these practices is that the game industry continues to rely largely on young and very enthousiastic, but inexperienced programmers.
"If you want to earn the big bucks be prepared to pay the price."
Except that the game dev industry doesn't really pay all that well relative to other software development jobs. Because everyone and their cousin wants to develop games. They'll burn you out like a backyard BBQ because they know they can just replace you.
And all the while they dangle the high salaries of the Top Tier Talent as the crack-laced carrot to keep you slaving away.
You'll find exceptions, but reality is quite ugly.
Ever thought of looking for another job before just quitting?
Yes, it sounds like these folks have plenty of time to look for new jobs between their 85 hour work-weeks.
Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. --Ludwig Wittgenstein
Those samples are ridiculous, but selective quoting of ridiculous complaints doesn't invalidate some of the truly braindead management activities going on, formost being a lack of work-life balance respect.
Of course, this is pretty indemic to the industry as a whole, so maybe EA isn't much worse, but it really is a pattern that is not good.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Really, who gets hurt the most? Well, yes the programmers get screwed, but really the long hours lead to bad code. I mean after 8 hours of programming your code can get a little messy. These work conditions lead to bad bugs and bad games. We sometimes hear stories about big bugs in software and wonder how they got passed QA, it's because the employees are over worked and don't care.
I know of several software companies that actually discourage working over 40 hours a week most of the time. It is because they have learned that the overall cost in the extra bug fixes and employee turnover negates the bonus of making these people work extra hours.
Just some examples:
They can put anything they want in the contract. It doesn't mean it is enforceable.
A contract I once received had all kinds of kooky stuff in it: I wasn't allowed to contact any of their "potential" clients after terminating employment. I ran that past my Lawyer and he laughed; it was patently above and beyond the bounds of any contract and thus not likely to be held up. The best comment: "They probably downloaded this contract off the Internet."
That's also why you get what you get when you sign anything without getting it vetted by your lawyer.
Yeah, right.
Unions may cause there to be less work by making wages higher. It may also spur more outsourcing.
For freedom's sake, feel free to unionize. But they're free to get out of Dodge as well.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
To the authors of Excuse me sir, but could you please evolve?, Libertarianism at its worst, and the post beginning with uhm... you realize that not everyone has the luxuary of quitting a job.:
Do you expect to have the right to decide who you want to work for, and to leave one employer for another if, for instance, they offer more money or more desirable conditions?
If so, then why do you think that a business should not be able to choose who it will employ, and for what salary and under what conditions?
The freedom to choose your means of livelihood brings with it responsbility for your livelihood. No one is responsible for you but you.
Actually, I have another question: Why does it seem that lefties are more apt/willing to resort to really nasty, personal insults when characterizing their enemies? I don't see people calling you folks "animals" just because you espouse a hive/pack mentality rather than believing in individualism. Why is the reverse OK?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
A business (the movie business), with an unstable labor pool (infinite supply of people with stars in their eyes), short project lifespans (1-2 years), ...
yet there is a Screen Actors' Guild.
i worked for origin when it closed down and was offered a nice healthy raise and bonus to move out to redwood shores, and turned it down for just this reason. i won't say austin is perfect but it sure is more laid back...and EA is basically nuts.
You think that free markets are a panacea? Look, I'm certainly on the Libertarian side of the scale, but totally free markets lead to immoral results (at least in my world view).
Do you need money now? Then send you six year old to work. Need a lot of money, then send you six year old into prostitution (there are enough sick people in this world to make this work). If you don't like that idea, then I'm afraid you'll have to give up on the idea of a totally free market system. Maybe you can regulate it, but just a little....
Do you see what happened? By regulating the serious problems, you discovered other problems. When you decided to regulated those, you discovered further areas where the free market system was being abused. Do you know where that led you? That's right - to today.
This system isn't great, but it was designed to prevent the abuses that a totally free market would otherwise allow.
how there is a link on the gamespot.com page to The Sims 2, which happens to be an EA title.
So we have a page covering the lawsuit against EA that is marketing an EA game. Go figure.
Considering the unemployment rate for programmers, EA will have no trouble filling it even if they paid 1.95 & a lashing an hour
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I mean, Free Market Believers, just think of this: A Corporation is, abstractly a Person. Only a BIG, POWERFUL person. In the free market game, this BIG POWERFUL UGLY person just have no problem to do pretty much whatever it wants when "competing" against single human persons.
So what's wrong about these individuals forming a stronger person (say, a UNION) to play the market game vs. the Corporation? Or, why not
My point is: it's just not FAIR to let Corporations do whatever they want, humiliating individuals, in the HOPE that GodFreeMarket will eventually put them in place. Actually, is a little something between naive and evil.
I don't have a sig.
nt
Aw crap, ninjas!
for a gaming company, their corporate bio page has nothing but management graduates.
i don't find it surprising now.
A business (the movie business), with an unstable labor pool (infinite supply of people with stars in their eyes), short project lifespans (1-2 years), ...
yet the movie/tv business has one of the strongest unions around.
"see, most people have things called bills."
Unfortunately, most people don't things called budgets or short-term savings. Why don't you have enough in your bank account to last you for a few months? Perhaps you bought too much car or too much house. It's amazing how many people complain that they don't have enough money to put back as savings but drive a $20,000 or up car and spend $50 - $80 a month on cable or satellite.
Jobs don't usually last forever. Make sure you have enough in savings to make it through at least 3 months (national average time spent between jobs).
I'm not condoning what EA is doing here and I am personally for unions, but being in a union doesn't garauntee a job. Just ask the air traffic controllers during the Reagan administration.
Where do you fucking commies come from anyway? You just seem to seep out of the woodwork whenever some story whining about bad work conditions comes up. Quit whining and find a better job!
Troll, sure. But it's a good opportunity to point out something...
It's blatant hypocrisy to support the right of companies act in their own interests (as supporters of the "free" market often do), then whine and start name-calling when employees do the same thing.
Companies acting in their own interest. Employees acting in *their* own interest. Seems like the true free-market to me.
No-one said the company owners on the receiving end had to like it; but they should take it like a man instead of screeching "Communists!" when the employee market (which is how you may care to look at it) decides to act together in its own interest.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I've worked 60 and 70 hour weeks in the game industry. It was fun, challenging, and rewarding. However I wasn't working for EA and I didn't have to deal with antagonistic, lying, demanding bosses.
Within the game developer's community it is well known that EA is Evil Co. I haven't worked there but I've talked to people who have. I'm glad to see their reputation catching up with them.
I hope the class action lawsuit goes through and EA has to pay out.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
I don't know where everyone is getting their information on the requirements for "exempt" status, but I was actually researching this the other day and I stumbled across this. It is the Fair Labor Standards Act fact sheet. It states that "Exempt computer employees may be paid at least $455 on a salary basis or on an hourly basis at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour."
Also interesting is "Being paid on a "salary basis" means an employee regularly receives a predetermined amount of compensation each pay period on a weekly, or less frequent, basis. The predetermined amount cannot be reduced because of variations in the quality or quantity of the employee's work."
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
IANAL, but I did a little research on this when I left my short unpleasant stint as a 'manager' at EA, so I could pass it along to the people I refused to victimize. I don't believe that any of them followed through, however.
According to California state employment law, the MANAGERS can be fined for requiring unpaid overtime in violation of the California employment laws.
California Labor Code
558. (a) Any employer or other person acting on behalf of an employer who violates, or causes to be violated, a section of this chapter or any provision regulating hours and days of work in any order of the Industrial Welfare Commission shall be subject to a civil penalty as follows:
(1) For any initial violation, fifty dollars ($50) for each underpaid employee for each pay period for which the employee was underpaid in addition to an amount sufficient to recover underpaid wages.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
You got that right. From '93 to '98 I worked at Motorola. For some of you who don't remember, let me set the stage: the WWW was in its infancy. At the company, we had just gotten access to it, and we had Mosaic. Intranets didn't really exist yet,and I was actually on the team that helped create it in our department. (I actually got an award for it, which is kind of funny now) We were on Solaris servers, 10 users per server. So we each had "web space", and people created web pages. It was kind of cool because it was new, people were putting information out there for the whole department to use.
On my page, I had lots of work related stuff, but I also had a small collection of engineer jokes. Nothing dirty at all, just dork humor. And so it went for a few years. One day I was called into Human Resources, and my manager was there. Neither of us knew what was going on. It turned out I was being written up for using corporate resources for non work related activities. My manager stood behind me, and fought for me. He explained that my web page was internal, and that it had mostly work related things on it. There was nothing offensive on it. As it turned out, some other people in the company had discovered the intranet, and found my jokes. They were looking at them, and their supervisor got pissed because they were goofing off. So they called HR. I wasn't even informed, and asked to take the material down, and neither was my manager. I was just written up for it, and it was considered a serious infraction. All we were able to do was argue it down from a class 1 infraction to a class 2. That meant that one more infraction could result in termination. I got a little livid with the HR person, and asked her if she had ever used her email for something non-work related, even saying hi to a family member. She didn't want to answer me, and I pressed her and kept asking. She finally admitted that she had. I asked if she was going to write herself up, and my manager stepped in at that point and ended the meeting.
I left Motorola about 3 months later. There were other factors, but I have to admit that the HR interaction helped me to realize that I didn't want to be there anymore.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Somehow, I find it amazing that on a site chock-full of libertarians and liberal weenies, unionization comes up so infrequently. I know striking is difficult, but software development is a field in which it is uniquely effective: it's imperative that the same people finish a project who started it, or you waste months showing the new team the ropes. You can't just hire a bunch of scabs to stamp out code like it's steel.
Another one bites the dust
Milton Waddams: [talking on the phone] And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire.
Just don't buy EA sports games. They have a marketing lock on the video game industries. Their sports games overall don't compared to Sega ESPN games in cost or quality. The only reason why Madden is a success is the 15+ years of football game monopoly. They are slipping away every year.
EA's best games coame from small-mid size company acquisitions. Electronic Arts themselves are just martketers. Like SCO is to lawyers. The real product comes some where else, and the company is just abusing the hell out of all the developers with their over-achieving marketing tactics.
I'm not a pro-union guy. They just seem to corrupt themselves, and start to operate only for their own benefit.
Unions have a bad reputation, but as you pointed out they do serve a purpose. The trick is to find a balance. In the mid 80s in Australia, the government did just that, with what was known as the accord.
Basically it meant that unions could only ask for a pay increase if they could show an increase in worker productivity. The workers had to work harder and smarter, and the employers had to pass some of the increased wealth on.
This worked very well, and Australia had the lowest number of hours lost due to industrial action. Store clerks also earnt $AUD15 per hour (about $US11), and a Big Mac value meal went for $AUD4.95 in those days. Win-win.
When the conservatives got into power in the late 90s, they took the guts out of the accord with what was euphamistically called "enterprise barginning". This would allow Australian corporations to achieve the same level of exploitation as overseas. It was very contraverisal, but Howard did it anyway, just like sending Australians to Iraq against the will of the people.
The point is that unions have a bad reputation, but if both unions and employers are forced (by law) to work with each other, the results are worth it.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
What an excellent idea! When I start my company, the first thing I'm going to do is build a corporate dungeon.
"Corporate Dungeon" sounds more like the place a sweaty, overweight middle manager would visit to get whipped by a generic dominatrix in leather.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I believe they kind of have to. You don't want an employee who's disgruntled take it out on the customers. PR nightmare my friend.
Go for service industries, their customers is your hostages.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
"Except that the game dev industry doesn't really pay all that well relative to other software development jobs. Because everyone and their cousin wants to develop games. They'll burn you out like a backyard BBQ because they know they can just replace you."
There's a gap between "wants to" and "are able to". Desire isn't enough, hardwork and talent are. Since that's a much smaller crowd. Word gets around quicker that so-and-so is treating people badly. There are other companies to work for, and the nice thing about game development is that you can plop a company down anywere (Id is in Texas for example). A bunch of talented people can form their own company anytime they feel like it.
"And all the while they dangle the high salaries of the Top Tier Talent as the crack-laced carrot to keep you slaving away."
That's every programmers "carrot".
AC wrote: "A six year old is under the complete control of the parent, and is thus not a participant in a free market." And that's a limit on the free market, ergo it isn't part of a true free market. This is exactly the point that I was trying to get across in my original post.
I feel for this disgruntled spouse, because I was young and stupid once. I worked the same kind of environment when I was an Aeorspace guy, and LOVED the work. 80-hour work weeks, regardless of deadlines, was the norm. And in a tie. You know, we were *creating something great.*
I got smart. I started up my own company whch sells stuff to MegaAeroCorp. I worked my own hours, kept all my money, and had the satisfaction to be able to say to my former management, 'you ain't the boss of me.'
Everyone has choices. The worker bee made his biggest mistake when he found out that 85 hours per week were the expected norm, and he didn't do anything about it.
If EA is operating illegally, rape them in a class action lawsuit. Otherwise, put up with it, or quit and support your family like a man. It may mean that you have to do something you don't 'love', like flipping burgers, or moving to Iowa.
Seriously, quitting is almost certainly painless to EA, as they can get other people to do the job pretty easily. Just send an email saying that you're only going to work 50 hours a week, and stick to it, and see what happens.
Because firing people has consequences. I run a small visual effects production company, and we hire freelance people as we get projects, for the length of the project. The State of California doesn't see it that way, though, and to the state it appears that we hire and fire people at a high rate.
This causes our unemployment insurance rate to be insanely high -- we pay about 10% of our employee's earnings into the state unemployment insurance system. Now, we consider that the cost of doing business -- we could even avoid it if we wanted to by various means but it does seem to us a reasonable price to pay for the privilege of hiring people just when we need them.
But, if EA's unemployment insurance rate skyrocketed, it'd hit them right in the wallet. They might even do something about it.
Just a suggestion. Any EA exec reading this (Hi!) can thank me privately -- as you must know, long term, that these "crunch" policies will destroy the company.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Here's a way better idea: Don't like the job? UNIONIZE! If the job is so horrible that all the workers strike, EA will immediately have troble filling it and change their practices. Magic of group negotiation.
Another one bites the dust
It's true, American work more hours and get less vacation time than other industrialized nation--two weeks less than the Japanese.
A non-scientific analysis of how fewer work hours might not be as bad for productivity as we thought can be found here. (note: this link is only authoritative for those who view interesting thing of the day as having authority).
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
My biggest problem with your train of thought is this: "Hey, employees can come and go anytime they want - why should'nt employers have the same right?".
Your assumption is that there is parity in that relationship, when that is not the case. Companies recieve larger tax breaks as corporate persons than individuals do in many instances (especially public ones). Companies can leave the country to find cheaper employees and are constantly being lured away to do so. American employees certainly are not being given free work-visas and being invited to work overseas.
One thing I've never understood about people with your point of view is that you claim to be anti-regulation and free-market, but it always translates into "pro-business".
Another thing to poke holes in your argument about the parity between the employee and the employer is political clout. Large companies wield more political power than individuals do. At this point personal responsibility should play it's biggest role because the only way employees can match the political force of the company is to organize. However, the company can just leave the country if that becomes burdensome - and the left-over American workers are now completely "responsible" for their own livelihoods.
I am sick of the hive/pack mentality of large corporations that I find totally antithetical to individualism. How is the enrichment of a tiny few oligarchs like Ken Lay and his ilk beneficial to the concepts of individualism?
If you don't like being called an animal - then I suggest you stop behaving like them. And if you havent heard so-called lefties being called names then you must not have ears.
-_-
I knew there was a reason I got out of the game industry and into one that paid OT.
The industry exploits the youth, enthusiasm and naivity of their young suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H workers. Of course, the brain dead market for games also helps encourage this.
Who wants an interesting and innovative game that doesn't require insane hours to produce?
Several tens of thousands.
Who wants the latest FPS so you can live out your socipathic tendencies!?
SEVERAL MILLION!!
That kind of money is just too hard to say no too ("They drove a big dump truck of money up to my door!" -- Krusty D. Klown). And of course the market clamors for the game >>NOW!!<< which makes the Crunch worse.
Of course, there's the "productivity" factor. When you factor it all in, it's cheaper to make your workforce give insane hours than to do things right. Sure they make more mistakes, but the time to fix it is cheap for the company. Sure they get ill, but because their sick days is part of their vacation time, it doesn't cost you anything. Long term health costs? Luckily, they'll quit before it becomes an issue for the company. It will be someone else's problem by then.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
So basically, we're supposed to wait years or decades for a large corporation to suffer the consequences of its own bad policies for the market to finally convince it to change its ways. In the meantime, hundreds or thousands of employees and or customers are hurt because enacting faster moving regulation would be seen as "hindering" economic activity.
1. Those employees are free to work for another company.
2. Those customers are free to buy from someone else.
Where exactly are the customers and the employees being hurt, of anything but their own volition.
Freedom works both ways, it has the power to let you help or hurt yourself. Unfortunately, the opposite of freedom, government control, offers to help you, but usually fails, providing you with a false sense of security.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Word!
Depending on how EA responds to the expected lawsuits, this may well reveal the software giant to be a house of cards. Firing a few employees here and there may not do much, but an all out open revolt could bring EA to its knees. Massive outsourcing of projects would be very difficult given the nature of the business, and the game designers may not go along with it either. Imagine EA becoming the poster child for exploited third world labor, high tech or not!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Why is this YRO?
Does anyone know what the situation is like in EA's Canadian development offices? I am graduating from university soon, and EA has posted a job listing with my university looking to hire new graduates for its Burnaby BC office. However, with the recent issues regarding EA's employee situation I have been reconsidering my decision to apply.
This is not a sig.
In this case, the information is coming from the California Labor Code.
Uhhh, ok -- they may not be physically chained to their desks, Mr. Star-eyed Libertarian, but if they have mortgages and families and other responsibilities, then they can't quit so easily. Not in this job market.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Programmers line up at the door to EA (and other studios) to get jobs in that industry. They jump through the interviews and HR hoops. They work as 9-5 institutional programmers, government contractors, MCSEs, or anything, hoping to score an opportunity to make games. Not everyone wants this, of course, but believe it or not, thousands and thousands of people look forward to working extremely long hours to make video games. Let those people apply and work the jobs. If everyone walked out of EA today because of unfulfilled expectations, their desks would be filled in fairly short order by people who want those jobs for the guts and glory. The unionizers amongst you may call these people 'scabs', I suppose.
Aspiring game programmers write games in their spare time, graphics demos, etc. and put these things together in a portfolio to apply for a paid job as a game programmer. I know; I did this, I write code, and I hire other coders. Show me another industry where you'll work for hundreds and hundreds of hours on your own time to craft a software demo to impress a potential banking/government/oil&gas employer...
You could argue that programmers are lined up to work there because economic times are hard for the North American programmer right now. If you've been watching the games industry for the last 15 years or so, you'd know that programmers have been begging to work at video game studios (large and small) constantly, through boom times and bust. Not so true of other (less glorious?) programming specialties.
During the late nineties boom times, I can assure you that the hours worked at EA Sports were brutal. I was there, coding like a monkey, and it was just fine. We all could have left; there were lots of opportunities to make more money in software for less hours. So... Different economic climate now, but what's constant? What's constant over the decades is the fact that plenty of people are willing to work unusually long hours to make video games (and other software). If game programmers see no glory in that sacrifice, why on earth did they get into video games?
"They shouldn't have to work so much" is mostly what I'm hearing. Not an argument. They don't have to. If EA is breaking laws, nail them to the wall. But if they're matching a certain personality type and inner drive to really hard jobs, and there's a clear pattern of people freely willing to leave easier positions to code games, well, then chalk one up for EA finding a good business model.
The other thing to consider, is that things have an end to them, and jobs don't need to last for 20 years. Some jobs simply can't because of their demands. There are jobs so physically and mentally demanding that they're simply not life-long jobs. Maybe game programming is like that.
Hey! What's wrong with Iowa? I grew up there...and got out as soon as I could!
Well, I just think it is pretty obvious that they should have some kind of union, especially when something like this happends (that must have happend several times before).
I think the employees of EA/other programmers/game devs are stupid that they have not formed their own union and made union agreements with their employers. That would increase job security and give the employees a fair share of company profits, etc.
i dunno, to me the whole idea behind unions is that the employer is out to screw the employee so in return if we all band together we can in turn gouge the employer.
and from the sentiment i've seen toward unions the struggle is now just in the opposite direction.
unfortunately in industries such as game development where the abuse of employees is possible due to the imbalance in employee supply and demand, more often than not managers say, "wtf, we'll just keep screwing them until the potential employee pool equalizes or until they form a union"... all in the effort to pad the bottom line.
i've read a lot of comments from this and the previous article on these EA happenings, and i agree that a happy, focused, rested employee performs much better (at least in the software industry) than a cranky, tired, disgruntled one... the only problem here is that the EA managers are operating on false premises (e.g. the more overtime someone works, the better they perform and crank out).
it's our job to make this painfully clear that their premises are wrong.
btw, the way these kinds of things happen is when people who are good at certain things (perhaps organizing a business, providing financial support) are placed into management positions because supposedly that's more prestigious and pays better, but in turn they are horrible managers but since they now are in the position to decide who stays and who gos, they would rather blame poor performance or worker disgruntledness on the workers and not themselves.
and like in many situations... despite their best efforts to fail... they succeed and are validated in their management decisions.
oh well... that's what the courts are there for i suppose.
Parent is actually a damned insightful idea (I'm not saying it'd work, but the very thought of it is clever). However, the author should realise that posting as an AC at this stage means it has little chance of getting modded up as it should (IMHO).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
your right and it is a very valid point but what about layoffs? i see it happen before. guy stays in his job though he's not happy with it because he needs to support his family and then out of no where gets laid off. while ea may not do that, it's another grey area to consider in what seems like a lose/lose situation........
Well, to some extend, and reading your comments, I'm amongst the lucky ones because I still CAN quit my game industry slavery, because I'm single and don't have heaps of loans on my shoulders yet.
On the other hand, working on games has also been pretty devastating on my social life and relationships.. so in some way you can say it's allmost balanced, except that the silly guy doing the job is eventually completely going banana's from the life behind the screens.
Which is where this all comes down to. I'm glad this 'revolt' is surfacing right now, because it was about time that some of this got some air. We may like our job a lot, but there are limits to the amount of sacrifices one is prepared to make to do it. Of course we get constantly reminded about the kids of today that will replace us any time, that anyone wants our job, that we're cool because we play games everyday. But the reality is that 95% of the people want out. The other 5% is simply in bed with management.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
"The country doesn't need white collar workers to "get over it", it needs workers to stand up and tell managers to go piss up a rope. Remember people: management doesn't actually DO anything. No company can run with only management because they don't actually do any of the work. If enough people get up and walk out at once, they're screwed."
Well I guess that explains all those companies run by geeks.
Lets be honest with ourselves here, instead of letting our emotions run away with our brains.
It takes all kinds to create, and run a company. Saying things like "No company can run with only management because they don't actually do any of the work." only makes you look ignorant.
Want to prove my point? Start your own geek only company. No managment types. See how long it lasts.
"If enough people get up and walk out at once, they're screwed."
And the end effect is different how, when all the managment for Boeing walks out? A body has a head for a reason, and neither could exist without the other. So start using yours.
Actually, yes, it's even more expensive in this part of California (I am typing in Redwood Shores at the moment) than in Manhattan.
Gas, which is required because we're not on a small island, is ~$2.50/gal (50 cents more than the national average), and the typical house price here tops $800,000. We're not talking about mansions; most of these sub-million-dollar "houses" are condos. A $4,000/month mortgage payment is typical. $100,000+ is not the extreme salary it sounds like. (Knowing the industry and the area, I doubt he made much more than $100,000, muchless $999,999.)
No, no one's forcing us to live here, but this is where the work is.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Why is everyone b*tching, whinning, and moaning about this? We're a fairly smart bunch of people, with a couple of exceptional heads. Think this through: It's how the market clears itself to supply these jobs to the highest bidders. That's all. Nothing machiavellian going on here. As someone else already said, "Hate the game, not the playa!". Dab GAM!
Question: How is that extra 1500-sq-ft of house qualify as "spending money to make money"? I mean, other than trying to flip that McMansion onto a bigger fool in 4 years?
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Don't kill yourself for another man's dream. Don't waste your life making a private business owner's dreams come true, and don't waste your life to making a shareholder's dreams come true.
Chase your own dreams. If you don't own your own business (and I'm not advocating that you should, necessarily), then your professional life is merely a tool in that pursuit.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Correction. You used to work for a Theme Park that happened to be owned by Disney Corp.. Actually working for Walt Disney Studios is quite another thing. Their Feature Film division is gutted now because they treat their best talent like scum. To avoid long term stability, they only contract hire animators now and fire... er, terminate their contracts early for bonus completion, when they get ahead of the project and finish a bit early. After the Great Purge of 2002 the only people that are left are accountants and lawyers. There are little or no long term employed creative staff. Those that are hanging on by their nails are expected to work very much longer hours (and yes, they are unioned employees, but you don't mention the longer hours for fear of not getting the next contract renewal) and are constantly under the fear of not having your short term contract renewed again, thus keeping your unionized thinking in line with what the Rat Bastards want you to do. There is NO "magic" anymore, unless you're counting the poor bastards that manage to eke out a miserable existence under the constant threat of "contract termination".
Sigs? We don't need no steekin Sigs!
If it's not worth it then leave, don't hold EA at the tip of a gun and make demands.
That "gun" is called the law, and it's just another market that EA will have to compete in with its employees. One would think that you -- being a free-market whore -- would respect that.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
China on the other hand has Hong Kong and Taiwan with established semi-official industries, and EA is setting up shop in Shanghai.
The problem at the moment is that so many jobs at small companies have been outsourced *to* EA - as developers go broke or are bought by the behemoth. When all the jobs get dragged into California it becomes the only place to work, and there is a single point of failure for the industry.
It is imperative in a free society that two parties may engage consensually in a contract and be able to expect no retaliation so long as the contract is upheld.
The law in our "free society" covers the legal extents of contracts, hence places restrictions upon them, no matter how private or consensual they are.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Challenge EVERYTHING!
EOL
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
for mistreating employees.
... nearly everybody spends there own time improving their skills. Thats why so many of them have compilers at home.
And making salary employess work those long hours is mistreating the employees.
If you have so many people knowking on your door, you pay them less, but you don't mistreat them. Market forces should apply to what you pay for something, not how you treat people.
"Show me another industry where you'll work for hundreds and hundreds of hours on your own time to craft a software demo to impress a potential banking/government/oil&gas employer..."
There are lots of insutries where the people spend there own time trying to craft something to make a name for themselves.
Movies, music, radio etc..
If you mean other areas of the software industry beside the time minority of game programmers, than I'd say
I see this as a trend in the software industry. Peole having to work longer and longer hours for less and less money. If this behaviour isn't stopped, eventually we will have to to 80 hours a week if we want to eat, no matter where we work.
Plus, if people work sane hours, they will build better products.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Drew Carey Show:
... it's called everyone. We meet at the bar."
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
Kabaddi League 2005
EEOC violation suits aren't just about getting jobs back (in fact, you typically don't...)- they're about getting restitution for wrongful termination, discrimination, and harassment.
This is about getting punitive damages out of the company for doing something illegal in their hiring or employment practices.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Japan's average age of death is actually around 38, due to stress, alien invasions, and giant mecha battle collateral damage. However, their medical facilities are years ahead of everyone else's, and a good 70% of the population are revived as cyber zombies or have ther conciousness transfered into computer systems.
The 350 year old eunic sorcerers don't hurt the average, either.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This means that working is at-will instead of contracted. In exchange, the employer is strictly prohibited from keeping you from working for anyone in your profession with a non-compete agreement. While they always put those stupid things in your employment agreement, they're unenforceable so long as you don't use trade secrets, etc. from the previous employer in your next job.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The occupations mentioned in the article are artists, not programmers or IT. If you classify them as programmers you might as well say all secretaries are programmers since they use microsoft word (which is just as turing complete as 3ds max).
I've been writing software for fifteen years, and games for ten. I've worked on a major 3D game title (albeit not in the critical path to development) and have voluntarily stayed at my desk for 12-18 hours a day, seven days a week, for 2-3 months at a stretch. I am no stranger to hard work.
But my game development time was spent in a small team, three coders and two artists, funded out of our own pockets and creating our own 3D engine from scratch.
Game programming is not special. It's not fundamentally different from any other area of software design. Do you intend to claim that 80-hour work weeks are the norm in the game programming industry? I have half a dozen friends working at variously-sized game development houses in the bay area who will dispute that claim.
If EA is so mismanaged, and their employees so underproductive, that they are throwing their teams into 85-hour-work-week crunch mode for upwards of HALF the project's development time, then there is something very, very wrong at EA. They need to come up with more realistic schedules for their projects, or find more productive coders, or find managers who have a clue about software design, or learn to reuse code, or SOMETHING.
OTOH, it sounds to me like EA is WELL managed. They've cottoned to the idea that more productive teams means smaller teams and a shorter development cycle. By setting aggressive schedules, they're insisting on a level of productivity from their employees that is unattainable to the employee of average skill and intelligence. So they ramp the hours up, ever more, in order to fit the overly-aggressive schedule they've devised.
Now, if there is no incentive against EA -- or any company -- employing such a practice, why don't all of our employers go that route? How would you like to live in a world where every job keeps you at the desk from 8am to 10pm, seven days a week? If all employers have been obliged to adopt the same grueling labor practices in order to compete, then you no longer CAN leave your job -- any other job you find, will be just as bad.
The problem with letting the market do what it will is this: optimal efficiency is achieved through destructive means. The greatest profit can be had by he who is able to create the most externalities and therefore seat others with the cost of his operations, while taking the gains for himself. This is true in the mining industry, it's true in the petroleum industry, and it's true in the software industry. If you don't impose SOME regulation, then a rational entity will always choose to maximize its own gain regardless of others' losses.
The goal of labor legislation should be the same as the goal of environmental legislation: to close the loop, to provide a feedback path that curbs the number and magnitude of the externalities that businesses can create, and holds them accountable for the negative consequences of their actions in situations where they are not already fiscally responsible for those consequences.
You only illustrate that it is becoming vitally important to save money. Many people are in a position to save money; if they aren't saving, then they just need to dismiss some number of their luxury purchases. For example, 98% of the cellphones in America are luxuries. A $24K car, when a $12K one will do, is a luxury. Keeping the thermostat at 72deg in winter and 65deg in summer, is a luxury. Once these things are totalled up, you can reach a big figure. I reason that the average yuppie makes over 1000 excessive decisions each year, ranging from a couple of dollars to hundreds of dollars per decision. At an average of $7 per decision, said yuppie is probably spending $7000 more than he really needs to each year ... and after 8 productive work years, he's missing a $56000 savings account, hence is much more vulnerable to abusive employers.
I can cast blame upon abusive employers all I want, but until the worker owns up to being a conspicuous consumer, we really can't solve the problem.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Many people are working exempt jobs and making far less then 94K a year.
It may not be legal, but companies do it anyways.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
200k new Computer Science Graduates a year in India, only a couple thousand here. That nice new campus that EA opened in Marina del Rey, CA...hmm, guess they won't need it much longer.
I agree they need to try to get a handle on OT there, but some balance needs to be achieved or they'll take the easy way out and end up doing most of the programming/design/etc in India or Eastern Europe.
Supply and Demand folks..
TekMage
The short version of what I read was "Hey, lots of people like making games and are OK with long hours, so it's OK to exploit them." This seems a bit like saying, "Hey, the crack addicts obviously like doing crack, so the drug dealers are simply providing a service to them." Taking advantage of someone is taking advantage of someone, regardless of whether or not they enjoy it. **What's constant over the decades is the fact that plenty of people are willing to work unusually long hours to make video games (and other software). If game programmers see no glory in that sacrifice, why on earth did they get into video games?** Yes, but what's changed is the number of hours, and the benefits received for working those hours (i.e. comp time, overtime, bonuses, etc)
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
That one of the big problems in game development is the stranglehold that the big 3 have on the consoles. It looks like their certification process is long and expensive, and might be truly arduous for a smaller company, with a good game, to pass. So you need to be part of a larger development house if you want to release games for the consoles...
What if some of these disgruntled software engineers team up with some hardware engineers and come up with a more open x-box like console. I'd guess that it would have to be more expensive than MS's, but that the games could sell for a little bit less. (Make a profit on everything, rather than having the console as a loss leader for the games.)
You'd still have a certification process - you want quality games - but it would be "at cost", with the theory being that you want to entice as many talented developers to develop for your console as possible. And you wouldn't discourage "non-certified" games, you'd just make it known that they haven't been tested, and they can't put your trademark on the game to certify it passes the quality measurement.
And you'd purposefully tout it's open and programmable - with free tools - interface as features of the console - again, trying to get as many developers working for the console as possible. (Rather than needing an expensive developers kit to develop with.)
You'd probably need to use BSD or Linux as the operating system to keep costs to a minimum. You'd need to convince N-videa, ATI, or one of the up-and-coming 3D card manufacturers to open source their video card drivers...there would be a few other licencing hurdles to leap - like the DVD and/or blue ray one.
You MIGHT even want to come up with some form of online service, similar to MS's. You pay one monthly bill. You get access to all the games that have an online component. I'd imagine patches and other "large" things like demos and what not could have a bittorrent download - build into the console, the trickiest thing would be building a quality network that doesn't get bogged down...
Or maybe this is all a pipe-dream and there is no competing with the large corporations and their marketing expertise...
When you twist the company's arm for a fat compensation package, you can expect to be called on to hold more responsibility. They're not going to give you that fat paycheck just because you're you. The more you get paid, the more is expected of you - it's that simple. If you hit them up for a six-figure check just for relocation, you shouldn't be surprised when they start expecting you to work long hours to get the job done...
I worked for a company stocking shelves. It's not admirable, and I take responsibility for it. However, they were a union store. I earned minimum wages, so that means after union dues, I earned less than minimum wages. The union sure wasn't too helpful to me. The supervisor was verbally abusive too, in my opinion.
I hate unions a lot.
testing out my trending skills
He's talking about making change in society, not the severity of the adversity.
testing out my trending skills
That is exactly the issue...who is exempt, and who is not. Salaried != Exempt, although that is a misconception that most corporations want to allow to persist.
If you look at the laws (in the link I provided), to be exempt in California, you must be making over $41/hr (as of 2000, it has been increased since then), and there are jobs which are explicitly laid out as not being exempt, regardless of how much you make...Computer Graphic Artist is one of them.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Unions for assembly workers function much better than geek unions because assembly workers are regular people who actually talk to each other. So do coal miners and all the other normal folk. Geeks mostly keep to themselves and confine their discontent to Slashdot. It would be pretty hard to organize a strike when most of the participants don't know, or trust, each other. Geeks also don't respond well to rabble rousing. I speak from personal experience, mind you.
Working like that for 3 months is bad, but you can endure it, by dozing off at work. It's not really stressful until the future becomes unknown.
The punishee should be forced to work for 6 months at peak performance or face castration.
The punishee should be forced to work for 9 months at peak performance or lose his home.
If he works well for all 9 months, then he has a chance at competing for another job which requires more hours per week for the remainder of the year. If he fails to be a team player, then he will be fired. It's important to fire him, so that he doesn't have any good employment references for the entire contract. If he succeeds as a team player, then we can lay him off, due to lack of work.
Then he'll know.
testing out my trending skills
> What's the point of having a job if it destroys
> your health and personal life? The current
> conditions arn't tenable; ridding the US of such
> labour practices, either by offshoring or
> improvement, is necessary.
The problem is that this is eventually going to lead to all jobs being done by slaves, with little or no pay, and little or no choice in their employment. Most people don't care about slaves and the lack of quality in their lives, but when all the jobs are filled by slave labor, what are regular people to do? The choice narrows to: get a job and tolerate your own slavery, or starve. In a world of slaves, there is little room for free men to sell their skills. You might argue that slave labor can not do creative work. Consider how little work requires any creativity at all. Most programming jobs are nothing but assembly-line code factories where programs are slapped together with "proven" methodologies and any ideas "outside the box" are not only unwelcome, but are actively supressed. I suspect EA jobs fall into this category. You just can't get a job where you get to think any more. Sure, employers say they want intelligent people, but what they really are after is absolute obedience and just enough brains to do the job (and no more). This world is going to the dark ages, baby. And that's the only thing that will cure it.
...invite him out for a 5 day retreat, get him to relax, and at the end of it all, tell him that those hours were unpaid. He must make up for it in the next week, to keep up with the schedule.
testing out my trending skills
But its also normal in the commercial and broadcast production as well. And its not right and needs to stop.
:)
;) ... is that when a team decides to pull an all nighter on a project... DONT EXPECT THEM TO WORK THE NEXT DAY!
For example. I had worked at x company doing a 3d work for a broadcast project. I would come in at 9am and leave at 11pm. This is in New York City.
So the next day i come in at 12pm... and get yelled at! "You need to be here at 9am"
I complained "BUT I WAS HERE TO 11PM LAST NIGHT.. HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY EXPECT A HUMAN TO FUNCTION LIKE THIS!"
It really is insane work ours in 3d art and game developement.
The funny thing is a lot of the less important workers would leave on the dot at 6pm every day and there were no problems with that.
sigh.
This really is a major problem. Working like that is very exhausting. I know very important higher ups in the major broadcasting networks and i know for a fact that they work endless hours, weekends etc... they also make a lot more money than i would doing 3d for their shows!
But whatever.. i really dont mind working a late night sometimes but it is not fair at all to be expected to show up EARLY the next day.
If there is anything i've learned from watching the discovery channel's, Monster House
We're human beings... we need sleep. And higher pay if they expect us to be this intense of a work force.
Earning those burnout level wages for a year plus... How much of of that money went into savings/investments? If I earned $100k+ for a year's efforts, I'd be well on my way to being able to retire - 2 years, and I might - 3 years? all done. Union might be a good idea - a solid financial plan would be a better one.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
I am a great fan of FOSS, but I don't think of it as a panacea. There are software categories where nothing can beat FOSS in the long run, but I don't think games are one of those
> house or flashy car without thinking about how
> exactly there going to pay it off.
Well, you see, that's EA's fault too. People who spend a lot of time playing the Sims get a lot of really strange ideas about how life works:
So let's name some names of the EA managers and executives who are dishing it out. The following are my opinions. If you don't agree, then tell me what you think and let's debate. If you've worked for EA, please post your own opinions about these and other people who you think are responsible for fucking up.
I'm extremely disappointed with how Lucy Bradshaw ran Maxis into the ground as General Manager. In public and in person, she appears to have a very nice agreeable personality. But she has consistently dropped balls, strung people along, made promises she had no intention of keeping, ignored phone messages and emails and attempts to contact her through her administrative assistant, claimed memory lapses in spite of repeated reminders and follow-ups. Lucy Bradshaw gets an F- for communication.
If Lucy reads this, she might be able to figure out who I am, because she knows the sordid history of what she's failed to do, since I've told her what I think, although she won't acknowledge she did anything wrong. She just ignores anything she chooses to, and pretends the communication never happened whenever convenient. I'm quite disappointed in Lucy Bradshaw, and she knows it.
I have mixed feelings about Luc Barthelet. He's brilliant and has tried to do some great stuff, but in the long run he just makes promises to employees and fans he has no way to keep, and doesn't follow through with what he says he will do. He talks the talk, but only walks the first few easy steps of the walk, which is better than some, but certainly not what anyone would expect from someone in his position. I could understand if he were a lowly engineer, but as vice president he should use his responsibility to make good on all his promises, instead of just making more promises he can't keep.
Also, Luc has a charming way of doing the end-run around managers and dropping in on the engineers, then dumping a bunch of work in their lap that he would like them to do for him. When a vice president of the company stops by your cube and asks you to do something, you're compelled to do it, even if your manager would rather you work on more important stuff, and HR would rather fire you for not doing exactly what your manager told you to do, because you're also working on Luc's tasks. The jilted managers who were left out of the loop don't give you any credit for doing favors for Luc, and Luc gets disappointed with you if you don't prioritize his latest whims, yet takes credit for anything you do that he suggests, even if somebody else already thought of the obvious idea years ago. Luc is not as original as he thinks he is, because of his position people humor him and pretend he's the one with all the great original ideas, even when he's just parroting something Will Wright said three years before. So if Luc drops in at your cube with some suggestions, you're fucked no matter what you do.
Luc is a dilettante. He should be teaching academic classes at some technical university instead of running a game company. He likes to do the fun easy part, and make grandious promises, and pretend to be a user advocate, but he won't put in the hard hours, stick around for the long grind, or stand up for the fans and players when it really counts. He would rather tell people what to do without taking any the responsibility of leadership. Like an Enron executive, he prefers to have a chauffeur drive him to work while he dabbles on his laptop in Mathematica, but he doesn't like to actually do any work once he gets there. It's all just a big social game to him. Although I must admit Luc was very effective at play testing The Sims, because all it required was playing games all day, bitching about bugs, and making outrageous feature requests. But any 15-year-old kid could fill that job, and live like a king on a 10th of Luc's salary. I once had hope that Luc would knock some heads togethe
Let them. Using fear of outsourcing to control people is a bluff that needs to be called. I think they would have done so already if they could. Everyone assumes that third world countries are populated with slaves but it just isn't true. Many of these countries are socialist and employess have more rights that in the U.S.
I know someone who moved his company to Mexico, expecting a windfall profit hiring cheap employees. Well, it turned out that labor laws in Mexico are much more strict that in the U.S. and it cost him more than it would have here.
For example, when you fire someone down there you have to give them 3 months pay PLUS a christmas bonus. I'm not joking. While he did pay less hourly for people, he got raped by lawsuits, no count good for nothing slackers that had to be paid 3 months pay to be fired, and employees stealing equipment so that in the end it just wasn't worth it.
Also, many managers are hands on people and just can't manage a remote project. I've managed outsource teams myself and most of the code had to be re-written by local talent.
So let them outsource. I dare them.
Right folks, time to give up on compete India. Jesus, these people work for 1/20 the pay (if you factor overtime), no health, no Social Security, no Unemployment Insurance, no Safety regulations. You can Unionize or not, it doesn't make any difference. You can't compete with that.
:)
Instead, Localize. Switch your IT solutions to Open Source alternatives (*BSD, Linux, etc). Have everything done within the local economy. In the short run it costs more, in the long run you're plowing money back into your economy.
In the past this was a bad idea, because of enonomies of scale and the whole reinvent the wheel thing. Open source takes care of the problem quite nicely.
There's one real big problem with this: no one's gonna get _really_ rich. After all, the only way to be really rich is to have a substantial base of poor to work off, and if everything's local your base is too small. Best you can hope for is being well off. For that reason, people, greedy bastards that they are, might never go with this.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The class action suit enriches the lawyers.
The developers, after the lawyers are paid, get a $5 off coupon on the next version of Madden.
Singapore gets the jobs, as EA simply decides the hell with this and moves out.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
testing out my trending skills
If I had a million or one Mod points, they would all be yours. Your above statement hits the nail right on the head.
This is what Americans should be caring about. This is what Americans should want more then anything.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
If you worked at Disneyland, in California, they didn't do you any favors. Everything you describe is explicitly required by California law.
If you work over eight hours in one day, all hours over eight must be paid at time and a half (or more).
If you work more than twelve hours in one day, all hours over twelve must be paid at double time (or more).
If you work all seven days in a given work week (as defined by the employer), the seventh day must be at time and a half (or more).
If you work more than eight hours on the seventh day of a given work week, all hours over eight must be paid at double time (or more).
You must be given a break of at least ten minutes (for which you will be paid) every two hours.
You must be given at least thirty minutes for lunch, which does not have to be paid, every four hours.
Any two shifts with less than (I think) eight hours between them (might be four) is considered a single shift. This is cumulative, of course; three shifts with three hours between them is a single shift. All overtime rules for a given single shift apply.
This is all California law. Most of it is federal law, as well.
IANAL, so if any of this actually matters to you, you'd be a damn fool to take my word for it. Consult a local attorney who specializes in labor law.
I too remember those glorious salad days. They did quite a bit for the Atari 400, 800, Apple II, and even some PC stuff. They were a game company then rather than a multinational giant, and they seemed more intent on making games than money.
Language is a virus. It might also help if you referred to them as "workers" or "employees" instead of "human resources."
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Unions are organisations representing their members. And the members can make their union how ever they want.
They don't have to be based on seniority The Union could (for instance) negotiate that a particular year the company may eliminate no more than n% of the workforce, or m% of the union salary pool. This particular arangement would limit both the elimination of huge numbers of employees, and the exclusive elimination of those with the best pay package.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
The Union's job is essentially to stop management from putting a [possibly illusory] chance of short term profit ahead of the longer term interest of the employees (and the company as a whole).
Yes and no, respectively.A union may ask for any deal that is in the interests of the membership as a whole - and many unions happily work with systems that reward performance. They may demand that the systems be fair (and avoid victimisation), or that the overall increases be good, or that no employee be too badly disadvantaged. But that's quite compatible with rewarding excellence.
Good unions won't have a problem with fair termination of bad employees. On the other hand, they may assist all their members with any appeals or due process there may be. At the end of the day, a fair process is in everyone's interest (unless you're the bad employee). In the UK that's called a "Closed Shop" and it's illegal - one of the more enlightened reforms of the Thatcher era. Unions cope just fine. A good union (especially if the employer's management is moderate to poor) will be able to attract members on its merits. Quite the reverse in some cases - I know of unions that guard their members' overtime a little too zealously. I think you miss the value of a union - at its best it provides balance, and promotes enlightened self interest and good management. Industrial relations are not supposed to be a zero-sum game!Personally, I didn't used to be a member of our union - but I joined because I thought it was doing a pretty good job.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
The Japanese stats specifically exclude people eaten by Godzilla.
That's pretty much it. Libertarianism would probably work, but the costs are way too high.
Just for interest, here's a question for libertarians: Nuclear power plants currently have stringent safety regulations that are enforced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I'm assuming that a under a true laissez-faire system, such regulations are best left to voluntary regulatory organizations in much the same way that manufacturers of dangerous chemicals insist on voluntary guidelines for securing their plants against terrorist infiltration. The logic is that market forces will weed out companies running unsafe nuclear facilities, which of course is completely true - following a nuclear meltdown, its likely that the company responsible will go out of business. Unfortunately, in this case, "market forces" would include (let's say) an uninhabitable area the size of Montana. Don't you see? The market corrected itself!
That's somewhat of an exaggerated example, but I can't really see how else the situation would be handled.
Another thought-provoking problem is this: Libertarianism assumes that consumers will make rational choices that reflect their best interests i.e. not buy products that are harmful and faulty. This assumes that the information that consumers receive is accurate, and not manipulated or blatantly fabricated by companies who also happen to own media outlets, or who advertise using false or misleading statements. I suppose it could be argued that the media has a financial interest to broadcast truthful statements, but judging from the state of the media today, I'm not so sure that's true. Wasn't it Fox News who successfully argued in court that they have no obligation to broadcast the truth?
Another question I have is on contract law. Why should the government regulate and enforce legal contracts between companies, or indeed, between individuals? Surely that's also an unacceptable interference by government into your private affairs? After all, companies and individuals have a long-term financial interest to keep their promises, and if they don't, they will eventually go out of business/be shunned by society.
"It's Dot Com!"
I'll let you eat lunch but I think I can distill our differences down to your comment:
Honestly, it seems to me that ethics is aesthetics writ large. What strikes any given individual as 'good' or 'bad' is almost never of a product of rational decision making, but rather of what is pleasing to the sentiments. It's the cumbersome gray areas between where things grow tricky.
I believe that we should strive to engage in rational decision making even if it is an affront to our sentiments. I personally believe that the striving for this, even if it is an impossible ideal, is better than succumbing to sentiments alone. I belive that we are in the possesion of, like the stoics used to refer to it, a ruling or rational faculity that distinguishes us from the animals and that it should be used (although most choose not to). You believe that rational decision making is not something humans are reliably capable of and, more times than not, use the guise of rationality to present their prejudices and sentiments. Assume they will act in accordance with their lower-natures and react accordingly.
-_-
It is no wonder he was turfed. Wow, what an angry, incoherent ramble.
Why the 7734 isn't that post score 5 (at time of this post)?
/.ers won't RFTA, then their not going to read a multi-page treatise on it either. Ug.
If I had to guess, I'd say: because it's too long. If
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Doing software for a film production is a pain. Either they're in development, and they don't have any money, or they're in production, and they don't have any time.
Thanks so much for showing your true self in this reply. My case is made.
Indeed. I work for a medium sized company, and there is no pressure at all to work more than 40 hours (except when there are things that must be done at night or on the weekend - which is not very often). In fact, this is my fourth S.E. job, and this story has not changed. So the use of "every" in the grand-parent post is way off.
A new game concept:
You are a bright-eyed recent grad employed at a sausage-making company with a REAL shiny new logo. You write code for the sausage casing machines.
Every hour you are at your desk working decreases your energy bar. Also, every time a a) manager, b) hr rep, or c) senior exec corners you in a meeting, you also lose energy. Once in a meeting, you have to do everything in your power to avoid having "action items" added to your "to-do" list or you lose energy.
Every hour you are out of the factory, your energy bar charges. Dodging emails, performance reviews, hr reps, senior mgmt, "demos" etc and not getting fired gives extra bonus points.
The setting of the game is dim, flourescent lit hallwalls with cubes in a multi-story building. Its a first-person "shooter" with endless drone zombies wandering around in your way and muttering phrases like "bought-in", "synergistic", "shareholder value" and "target audience". If you can actually engage a zombie in a meaningless conversation which results in s/he saying something meaningful or leaving early scores you major recharging points. Otherwise, if a zombie gets too close, your energy level gets drained.
How do you "win"? That's the great part about this game that makes it so realistic--you can't! This way, people will keep playing endlessly until the next release comes out.
well-written, properly spelled out: it's the only way to do business with EA.
Try it.
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
Talk to a lawyer, but I rather doubt the "work for hire" part counts if a court finds that they weren't given the consideration agreed for that hire. Challenging their copyright is actually a rather clever suggestion, IMHO. Of course, we're talking about the US legal system, so sanity may not be relevant here, and if you could prove that the contract was broken, the copyright issue is probably the least of EA's worries anyway...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
I can't find the statistic, but for young people, the suicide rate I believe is quite a bit higher due to the cram-course/get-a-good-college-or-you're-a-failure culture--but since I can't remember the exact figures or place, take that one with a grain of salt.
What's ironic is that this is a no win situation for everyone involved. Employees work long hours for no extra pay, but the company also loses because studies have shown that after a certain number of hours per week (around 60 if I remember correctly) weekly productivity actually starts to decline as fatigue sets in and people start making dumb mistakes.
The net result is that working more than about 60 hours per week actually makes things progessively worse.
I recall at SIGGRAPH, say, 3 years ago? My buddy and I, highly interested in new game technologies, stopped by the EA booth. My buddy lingered. He talked for quite a bit to the rep there. The rep had stated that EA has the highest divorce rate of any company, and they were proud of it. They could suck the souls out of their coders. They would eagerly replace the older coders (late 20s?) with the young kids of the street if the kids knew there things.
The place sounds like occupational hell, it has for years, glad it's getting the (geek) press finally.
"EA Sports: it's in the pain"
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
It's a little different when you are getting $200.00/hour. Also as a lawyer you can set up your own office (I know not easy) and still charge $200.00/hour. If people got reasonable compensation for overtime (comp or $$) it would not be so bad. So what makes lawyers so special?
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
I work a 9-5 day?
Where do you find such a company? I worked Texas Instruments back in the late '60s when the division had a standard 45 hour week. And you were expected to be there "at least" that many hours. 30 minutes for lunch and work till 5:30. That's 8-5:30, not 9-5! Many people worked longer, but no-one ever was allowed a 10am start time. In fact every company I have worked for (Collins/Rockwell, TI, Honeywell, NCR, and 5 smaller ones, have all had 9 hours with one hour lunch. I would like to have one of those short day jobs sometime.
What's wrong with the job market? I see 'Help Wanted' ads in the newspaper every day.
Oh, you mean you want a GREAT Job? Well that's what you keep your eyes open for while you're working at Mediocre Job and cutting back on family expenditures until then.
You aren't going to change anything by continuing to work at the Shit Job.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Gotta love workplace filtering
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I'd like to share a few stories... I used to work for a software consulting company that specialized in the telecom industry. When the telcos hit hard times a couple of years ago, we suddenly had a lot less projects. Of course there were layoffs and pay cuts. Then we caught a break. We had a telco partner who had a relationship with a large cell phone company. We wrote a small client-server app for them, so people could get account usage, etc. directly on their phone over HTTP. Soon we landed a deal to do a game for this company.
It wasn't long before we had many more games projects than telco projects. Of course they paid way less than the telco projects, but could be cranked out quickly. We split the company into two divisions, mobile and telco. We hired a guy with experience in the game industry to run the mobile division. We started bringing in all the usual types you need for games beyond just programmers, like artists and producers. Meanwhile our telco division survived the tough times, and about two years ago started to turn things around.
Everything seemed really great for our company, but there was trouble on the horizon. I started to notice a huge turnover in our mobile division. People were constantly leaving and being replaced with new people. I sat down and talked with one of my colleagues who used to work with me on telco projects, but now was a technical lead for games. He explained to me the game programming culture.
First I should talk about the programming culture I was used to. I think it was pretty typical for software: people worked pretty much whatever hours they needed to work, as long as they got their work done and were available for necesarry meetings. I managed several programmers, and I had one who would usually be in around 11 AM and work until about 8 PM. I had another who was in around 8 AM and would work until 6 PM. People usually worked longer hours near milestones, such as releases, customer demos, etc. If somebody got behind on their work for whatever reason, it was up to them to get back on track. That might mean long hours, or weekends, or whatever.
The game culture seemed to be much different. People tended to work very long hours, often there until after 10 PM on most nights, and often on weekends. They also tended to be much younger programmers, typically straight out of college. Most of our telco programmers were much more experienced. Not surprisingly, the game programmers were poorly paid. I would estimate that our telco programmers were paid about 40% higher than our game programmers. So our game director had a very simple system. Hire young programmers. Pay them very little. Work them incredibly hard until they burn out. Repeat.
And it worked. Our game division was and is very succesful. Our telco division grew as well. At some point, the president of our company must have compared the two divisions and decided that what worked for one would work for the other. We had several new projects last year and were severely undermanned for the projects. New people were hired for them, but they were young and inexperienced. Problems arose and the more senior people took up the slack because of professional pride. Things shipped on time, profits swelled. New projects were added, and the same pattern became apparent. So what happened? All three of our tech leads resigned within a month, after being with the company for five years on average. The president of the company tried to replace the technical leadeship, but after trying for a month or so, instead shut down the telco division to concentrate on games.
Is there a moral to the story or even a point? I don't know. I thought that the game programming culture that I witnessed was crazy and unsustainable. Then I read about this EA business, and it sounds like it is indeed sustainable. Of course offshoring is a big fear here in Silicon Valley, but it looks like game programmers have little to worry about. Their work winds up being very cheap when you look at the amount of money they earn compared to the number of hours they work. Will more sophisticated gaming systems require more skilled game programmers that will command more money? I don't know enough about game programming to say. I'm just glad I'm not a game programmer.
The law provides few barriers to contract formation. The law assumes that the parties contracting are of similar bargaining power. Not only that, but it also supports your freedom to, when in doubt, ask questions! There are few essential terms (subject matter, etc.) and the parties' conduct is often evidence of an existing contract. To be a contract, an agreement must be based on mutual assent. The standard used to determine whether the parties have met this requirement is objective, that is: Each party must, through her words and conduct, lead the other to believe that she wants to contract. We use a "reasonable person" standard here.
That's the basis, then you have:
The Offer: Usually a contract begins with a proposal, called an offer, which is a serious expression by an offeror to form a contract with another, called the offeree.
For example, purchase orders used by buyers to purchase goods to be resold are typically offers. For a communication to be an offer, it:
1. Must manifest contractual intent - using objective test, the offer must lead a reasonable offeree to believe that the offeror wishes to contract;
2. Must include essential terms (common law: subject matter and price/UCC: subject matter and quantity); and
3.Must be communicated to Oee. An offeree cannot accept an offer of which he has no notice.
You both will probably have some idea about 'Duration' which is pretty straight forward. - Unless otherwise stated, an offer is open for a reasonable period of time.
An offeror can revoke the offer at any time before acceptance. This included those cases in which the Oor tells the Oee that the offer is open for a specified time. Exceptions: 1.Firm offers (UCC 2-205) - offer in writing and signed by merchant giving assurance that offer will be open for stated or reasonable time. 2.Offer to enter into unilateral contract - Oor can't revoke once Oee begins performance. 3.Option - Oee pays Oor to keep offer open for defined period.
Acceptance of the Offer
Having general rules:
1.Occurs in any manner reasonable under circumstances;
2.Must be communicated to Oor
3.Must mirror offer- if attempted acceptance doesn't mirror offer, then is counteroffer.
One thing that is vital in a contract is what's called consideration
Generally this is what is required to observe to see if you actually have consideration.
1.Consideration is the legal benefit or detriment flowing from each side of the agreement to the other.
2.Must be a bargained-for exchange of promises (bilateral agreement) or a promise for performance (unilateral agreement).
3.Freedom of Contract: Adequacy is not issue; i.e. assuming a bargained-for exchange, the court will not examine the relative worth of the exchanged considerations.
4.In determining whether consideration exists, courts should look only at the agreement (and time of agreement), not to pre or post agreement happenings.
For example, my promise to give you $100 dollars because you were nice to my child is not enforceable because you have given no consideration in exchange for my promise.
The term Legal Detriment is a promise or performance in which a person forbears doing something she has legal right to do. If bargained for by other side, it is consideration.
You would have to prove that you actually formed a contract with the other person. The potential employer is probably doing something the law might see closer to advertising than actually offering something. Your actual contract with an employer probably starts with an employment agreem
Hear, hear.
I worked at an ERP software company for years, including through the dot-com explosion. Early on, we were all young, mostly childless. After a couple of releases, people started moving along in their lives. Some stuck with it, some moved to management or testing or strategy or left the company. Some stayed and complained, some stayed and refused to do the same level of work as their peers (with the obvious consequences).
Needless to say, the people who pulled the all-night shifts and endless hours right before code freeze were usually rewarded with large bonuses and generous stock options. You rarely hear people complaining about that aspect of the business. I had one quarter where we had a major release, and my bonuses and stock options (at the exercise price) were over twice my base salary.
Game companies have the additional advantage of being a highly desirable occupation for 20 year old fan-boys with a decent brain, no kids, and no real plans or direction in life (not to mention, no mortgage). A "family man" can't compete with them unless he wants his kids to grow up as strangers.
> [They can't quit] if they have mortgages and families and other responsibilities, then they can't quit so easily. Not in this job market.
This should be taken into consideration when choosing a job. You don't go flipping burgers permanently when you have a huge debt and a large family; don't get a new house/car if you're planning to wash the dishes for the next 10 years.
That said, I'm not arguing against suing EA for violating the contract/agreement, I think it's a valid (even from a liberterian POV) defense.
No cure in sight for nurses' strike
The four-month-old walkout at Lourdes Medical Center is at an impasse. Both sides say they remain determined.
It is no surprise to their union that nurses who walked off the job at Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County more than four months ago are still picketing this Labor Day.
Shortly before the union's two-year contract expired at the end of February, its leaders showed the nurses video of a similar hospital strike that lasted two years. They wanted the nurses to know they would need resolve.
The labor action remains bitter, with no negotiations scheduled since talks broke down early last month.
The Willingboro hospital has hired permanent replacement workers, and as many as half the striking nurses are working other jobs to help support themselves or their families.
As the strike drags on, union representatives say that maintaining big pickets has become harder, but that nurses are determined nonetheless.
"We have been staffing the lines during rush hour," Pierre Joanis, a negotiator for JNESO, said Friday afternoon when no nurses were picketing. "The pickets have dried up some because so many have found other jobs."
One sign at a hospital entrance on Sunset Road read: "Friends don't let friends work at Lourdes."
About 80 of the 280 nurses who walked off the job April 19 have crossed the lines to work, Joanis said. About a dozen of those have resigned or been fired, he said.
About half the nurses honoring the picket line have found supplementary or full-time work elsewhere, Joanis said. Other health-care facilities have been recruiting them because of a nationwide nursing shortage.
A central issue in the dispute is a management push for contract language that would allow it to change nurses' schedules as it saw fit for flexibility.
Nurses say that would be a giant step backward and alter their lifestyle and finances because some of the changes would mean three 12-hour shifts instead of five eight-hour shifts - a loss of four hours a week and full-time status.
Indeed, nurses began fomenting resentment almost a year ago under the last contract when the hospital began making shift changes and laying off workers.
Few talks were held after the nurses walked out. Negotiations stopped Aug. 10 when both sides agreed they had reached an impasse. The hospital said it had given its last offer.
Scott Share, a hospital spokesman, said Friday afternoon that no new talks were scheduled. Both sides are awaiting rulings on several issues under arbitration.
In the middle of last month, an arbitrator sided with the nurses on shift changes, but the ruling is unlikely to have an effect on the walkout.
The union has filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board, contending that management had no right to hire permanent replacements. So far, union officials said, the hospital has hired about 12 replacements.
Management said it had to act because the high pay rates for temporary replacements were a financial strain. It also maintained that the National Labor Relations Act permits the move.
So both sides said they were dug in for the long haul.
"We will be there for the fight and engage them every step of the way," Joanis said.
This is exactly what I've been saying for some time. Untill the world reaches an ecconomic equilibrium, western civilization will be at a lull untill 3rd world catches up to our standard of living...or untill we drop down to meet theirs at some halfway point.
I don't have any answers to this issue. As much as I would like to rant and rave about how parts of this world has gone hell in a handbasket, there is nothing I can do about what happens in Africa or Asia. But one thing is for sure, I'm starting to think a simple life is a better life. Maybe...just maybe I should just drop all this high-tech industry stuff and just be a local farmer. I would be piss poor. But then again, what the use of money if I will end up spending it again on medical bills from all my long years of stress i've accumulated in my lifetime.
Irronic isn't it? At first we fought slavery. Now, we are fighting slavery put forth on our selves.
Life is not for the lazy.
For the most part Indian game programmers could do little to program up a game that would appeal to american kids.. it's a huge culture thing. Sure they could probably do back end mechanics of the game but everything else would have to be put in by the american programmers.
Don't know about now (I've since moved a long ways away), but in the worst of the dot-com craze, I was paying $2k a month for a little 2 bedroom apartment in Pleasanton, which isn't even close to the most expensive part of the Bay Area. Down in San Jose, rents were routinely going up $400 a month each time the lease came up for renewal.
Living in Manhattan is expensive, but you expect that; it's a large metropolitan area. It would be comparable to the Bay Area if it was just as expensive to live up in Poughkeepsie as it was in Manhattan (I happen to know it's not, having lived not too far from Poughkeepsie right before moving to California). The Bay Area is huge, and the whole region was swept up in the craziness of the late nineties and early 2ks, and much of that still lingers on the Peninsula. Believe it.
" and kids with groceries"
A modest proposal?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I worked a lot in software development in the 1970's and 1980's, First as a programmer, but by the later 70's as a project manager and then later as a line manager for a unit built customer systems to a deadline based on a product and its enhancements. (although I am in the same company still, I now am doing business development in another area)
One of the most important lessons that I learnt during that period is that although you can raise productivity with overtime when you are reaching a deadline, trying to do so over a long period is just counterproductive and normally makes you miss deadlines AND budget and deliver crap code. In one mess I had to sort out, the previous project manager had driven the team so hard that they reported the project ready for client acceptence when it wasn't. This was an international project and the client came one quarter way round the world to witness acceptence tests only for them to fail dismally. It took us nearly a year to fix that mess. But proper re-planning (remembering every extra man day on this project was off the bottom line - since it was a fixed price contract) allowed us to beat the revised schedule by a month.
In the late '80s early '90s I was the "chief engineer" of our particular subsidiary and I spent some time examining the software development process in depth to understand how to get better at it. I looked at this overtime issue and why productivity goes down.
There are several reasons for this
1) With an alert mind, programmers (or anyone doing a serious mental task) have to move into a concentration mode. If not tired, it takes about 15 minutes with out interruption to achieve. Firstly when you are tired it takes longer to get into concentration mode, and secondly as the time pressures grow the supervisor level spend more time interrupting you to get "progress reports"
2) when people rush around without taking time to stop and think its a lot easier to go in the wrong direction. To solve bugs, or just to plan what to code need the ability to release oneself from the pressure.
[I vividly remember from my early days working in the middle of London and slaving all day over a bug or a design problem. Many a time, I remember realising what the problem was within a minute or two of getting on the train home]
3) A large part of a project is about communication and a common understand and vision of how everything fits together. Its the leader that is pulling the team forward and creating the environment for good communication that makes things happen more right the first time (nobody gets it completely right the first time do they). When the "workers" in the team get pressured into long hours then resentment sets in and that in itself kills productivity.
4) People use their lunch hours and the time after work to do essential domestic chores - such as visiting the bank or posting letters etc. If they skip lunch they just do them anyway in other times.
I would very rarely allow my project managers to authorise overtime - normally it was only when a deadline was close. In the later days I also used to teach on our internal project management courses and this point was always somewhere on the syllabus.
1. Grow long hair.
2. Marry a lawyer.
3. Get in EA and record their promises.
4. keep a recorder always with you.
5. First month do as long hours as management makes you.
6. Get T-shirt where in your back reads, (under your hair so that no-one sees it)
MY WIFE IS A LAWYER
7. after that 40-50 hour weeks if management starts shouting at you, well that why you have the recorder. Best thing would be talking to a mobile phone while walking away. Let manager shout at you.
Say him that your wife needs you at home. And she heard EVERY SINGLE WORD HE SAID and has recording device always on her phone just in case. Then pull your hair in front and turn your back at boss and walk away.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Perhaps you slept through the last twenty years. We don't making anything here in the U.S. anymore, manufacturing all got outsourced years ago. Now, in the last few years, knowledge worker jobs have started going, top. Not only is it a contest, the odds are against us if we don't buck up, stop the whining, and find a way to compete in the face of the harsh new reality of today.
Suing our employers is not likely the best way to stay competitive.
Going down on EA, there wont be to many people wanting to work for EA anymore, guess EAs lets get skilled people and press them out like ripe oranges hire and dump scheme will backfire in the long term.
The name of Company #2 is?
Share and rate p
but they'll feed you pizza or Boston Market every night. Oh yeah, you can play foosball at work too. As long as your priorities are warped enough and your standards are low enough, you can have a happy career in game development.
word.
John Forbes Nash
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
SilentChris wrote:
Contrast that with this guy: a game programmer. Paid to sit by himself and code all day for entertainment purposes. His boss hands him a long list of assignments, some of which come last minute. A network administrator would say "fine" and finish the job, regardless of the fact that it ate up some of us weekend.
You missed the part where these assignments didn't come from his boss. They came from other people. As he stated in his entry, which you obviously didn't read or retained little of, he was supposed to and did prioritize and complete items given him by his boss. Other items were, according to his understanding as given to him in a previous meeting, subject to his own prioritization:
Well the week cruised by with me not hearing a peep from my supervisor except in reply to almost daily status reports I was sending him (on my own perogative, to forestall any suprises). I worked my butt off and completed the list. I had several "great job" emails from my supervisor during this time.... Now we had discussed this in the previous meetings and I wasn't supposed to prioritize stuff from anyone except from my supervisor, and he also said we'd talk if something new was supposed to replace anything on my must do list.
Then he came in on Monday and started work on the (as he understood it, non-required) items he didn't get to the previous week, and was still reamed for not meeting expectations which were never communicated to him.
SilentChris wrote:
I knew going headfirst into system administration that I'd work some crappy hours. Things break, people mess up, it happens. But I don't sit around like a pussy programmer and complain that my 6-digit salary isn't enough, or I have "special needs" when the company moves. He wasn't part of upper-management, he doesn't have the right to make those decisions.
First of all, get off the completely immature "pussy programmers vs. manly sysadmins" trip. I'm a sysadmin too, and from your comments you wouldn't last two days in the shops most of the admins I know run. They have no tolerance (nor do I) for that kind of artificial ego-inflating crap.
Second, he and I and you all have every right to decide what we consider acceptable. And if the company decides to meet your or my or his demands, they better make good on their promise. They had the choice at the beginning to say, for example, "No, we just can't do that kind of relocation package, here's what we can do" or just "See ya later, you greedy bastard." But they decided to hire him. To my mind that's not being a pussy, it's smart negotiating to extract whatever you can out of an employer who most people here know can more than afford it.
Don't imagine that being a grunt employee in the computer gaming industry is a bed of wine and roses with a hot blonde secretary who gives you blowjobs every day after you knock off at 2 in the afternoon (except Fridays, which you take off and she comes over to clean your house, wash your BMW, and then spend the rest of the day in bed with you in full bondage gear). If you really think that, you obviously haven't ever worked in the industry and probably don't know anyone worth anything who has.
-- Old Man Kensey
Gentoo and BSD. They'll follow them down the path to oblivion. RIP Gentoo, BSD, and EA. So long and good riddance.
Yeah, good luck with getting a decent freelance gig for a gaming company.
Marketplace takes care of the problem, there is no need to add inefficencies to the process by adding unions..
For example, if EA treates its top talent really bad, and if it managment sucks, then what does the top talent do? It either a) forms its own company or b) joins the competitor with capable managment team...
Bottom line EA treats its human capital bad = human capital leaves = EA left with no good human capital = EA games start sucking = revenues go down = Wall Street punishes EA = EA goes under.. thats how it works.. its a nice process, and it works.. Those companies with best procedures get rewarded, those with bad managment get punished... simple...
I see this type of thing all too frequently in my government job too. Only a drooling moron manager would believe that Taylor-style micromanagement is going to improve the quality or speed of a job that is so complex. My guess is that the guy was expensive, and they were looking to get rid of him.
The best way to do it is what I call "piling". It's basically sabotage. The manager gives the employee more/impossible work. We're all human, we have limits for endurance. Even if the employee makes his quota, there's a good chance his work is going to be subpar.
So it's a lose-lose situation for the employee. I'd bet some senior manager took a walk down to HR one day and saw the 6+ digit figure they paid the guy for relocation costs, and made the decision to try and force him out without obligation for unemployement or severence.
It also didn't help that the rest of the guys team was working 16-18 hour days and he wasn't. Not saying that he was somehow "asking for it", but I'm sure his secret antagonist was using this as justification for further piling.
p.s. I'm union. It's both good and bad. I don't think the software industry should be unionized, but some of these companies are just asking for it.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
While I'm not terribly fond of unions, I'm going to have to disagree about your apparent disbelief in RSI.
I've been working as a systems engineer for about ten years. I don't play contact sports, but eat well, exercise moderately and am in good health. How exactly do you think I developed tendonitis? I'd say that 60-80 hours a week with poor ergonomics over the last few years certainly didn't help.
You know it's bad when your neurologist says that it may be time to find a new job, and the pain in your wrists and forearms may be permanent.
It's amazing how many people complain that they don't have enough money to put back as savings but drive a $20,000 or up car and spend $50 - $80 a month on cable or satellite.
Here here! I was definately in this class at one point: while life was rather pleasant tooling around in my Mercedes and eating out constantly, I never saved money, and that became a tremendous source of stress later in life.
I get by just fine right now driving my ailing (but still working) $800 Volvo wagon and cooking at home. On that note, I get more dates now that I cook
I have worked in both the US and the UK and I paid more in direct taxes (Federal+State+fica+casdi) and tax related expenses in California than I ever did in the UK. Admittedly the indirect taxes go some way to balancing this out BUT in CA I then had to pay extra for inferior health care and way more to educate my children.
...but weren't new rules for overtime pay implemented under Bush's first term? - I specifically remember something about programmers/IT workers no longer *qualifying* for overtime pay ("overtime exempt")
Googling for it turned up this link
But if EA pays by the hour, they are in trouble. Salary jobs may have a difficult time.
As an indie game developer, my hours are similar. But since I can basically do what I want/enjoy - so it isn't quite so bad - I'm not in it for the money. (I may change tunes if I ever start a family or something.)
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
insane hours
little pay (when you project your wage over the hours you work)
offshoreing
sounds like maybe it's time to unionize software development...strength in numbers and all that.
It might interest people to know that according to an article in USA Today, EA CEO, Mr. Lawrence Probst, III, pocketed $696,535 in salary last year, with an additional $1.1 million in bonuses. Mr. Probst also retained $15.2 million in options in 2003, bringing the total compensation to well over $17 million.
Seems to me that Mr. Probst needs to have his wang reeled in.
HR is not your friend, just like legal is not your friend. It doesn't matter if you know the person working in HR from a chat system, from your bedroom, from the coffee shop, from your AA group, THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIEND. If they are your spouse or significant other in general, they might not be willing to fuck you over.
Otherwise the HR person's job is to make the decision to fuck you over on behalf of your employer and they are NOT repeat NOT your friend. Assuming they are doing their job, their mind is working at all times on providing you the bare minimum service and that means coming up with creative ways not to do things for you.
I know this sounds paranoid and/or trollish but I am dead serious. There are two pieces of advice I can give you in life without getting older, and they are 'always get a receipt, contract, or other piece of paper when doing any form of business' (the "worth the paper it's printed on" theory) and 'never assume the HR person is your friend'. Hold these two principles dear and they will help you avoid undue woe.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It may be time for someone to start sending letters to every winblows user demanding payment for each illegal copy of the software.
Well, in order for all the knowledge worker jobs to complete with overseas outsourcing, we'll have to start working for a few dollars an hour, if that, 190 hours a week, 365 a year. Because that's exactly what "Big Business" is looking for in its labor force, which is why everything is outsourced to India, the Phillippines, and Mexico.
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
If the preproduction planning is tight enough, any creative work can be outsourced with little inconvenience. You're right that the quality isn't nearly as good (and the Blizzard comparison works in regard to many US feature animation houses), but do you think that's going to stop big name publishers, especially when they're releasing mostly repetitive franchises like Madden?
It turns out we were both right and both wrong. Although both youth and middle-age suicides are bad and getting worse, the highest number comes from the elderly, which is surprising considering they are only 19% of the population (2004 statistics)
Anyways, an excerpt on the youth rates:
"The latest NPA data confirm that suicide by elementary- and middle-school students is a serious social problem. The suicide rate for this group rose by a massive 57.6%, representing a total of 93 innocent lives lost, 34 more than in 2002. Among high-school students there was also a sharp rise of 29.3%. In total, 225 young lives were lost in this category. There was also an increase in the number of college students killing themselves. The overall suicide rate among people aged 19 or younger rose by 22%."
And generally:
"Based on provisional data for 2003, Japanese male and female suicide rates per 100,000 people are now roughly 40.2 for men and 14.9 for women, approaching levels normally witnessed in countries suffering severe economic hardships such as Russia, Latvia or Lithuania."
Anyways, here's another source for more up to date statistics.
If only I could still mod in this discussion.
Someone mod that guy as funny for me. :)
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
Forget my first paragraph. Hell, just ignore that whole post for now. I apparently don't know shit.
http://www.unionreform.com/taft.htm
— darco
So who put those chains of mortgages, etc., around their necks?
It's sad that I'm in the frigging military and my hours are better. My hours were only close to being that bad last time I was in the desert, and was working 5 pm to 5 am for 4 days, getting a day off, and then doing another 4 days of 5 to 5. But I got paid lots for that deployment. My opinion is, you get paid for the hours you work. If it's a 9 to 5 job, then you work from 9 to 5 and you get paid for 9 to 5. If they make you stay longer they pay you more or compensate you somehow. Failing to pay a person for the work they do is called stealing. Far as I'm concerned, EA is stealing from the people who work for it. If I had any desire whatsoever to play a crappy formulaic EA game, stories like this would make me not feel bad about getting that game in a less then legal manner.
~~"How can you have a war on Terror? It's not even a noun!" -Jon Stewart~~
And this system you propose has done so well for Cuba.
My other first post is car post.
I then had to pay extra for inferior health care
but the "inferior" health care is pretty much available on demand rather than getting put on a waiting list to see if oyu die before you get care.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Have you experienced both systems?
I have, and there are waiting lists in both countries that can of course be skipped if you are wealthy.
Yes, for non-urgent care you may wait slightly longer in the UK but everybody gets treated with no questions, no paperwork and no insurance companies second guessing doctors!
For urgent cases the care is outstanding.
Let me give you an example, my father recently recovered from cancer surgery. For the 3 months following the surgery (he was in the hospital for 2 weeks, not rushed out before prudent as happens in the US) he had home visits from doctors once a week, and nurses twice weekly. Everything (medication, supplies etc) was top quality and delivered at no cost. When he mentioned that his son lives in the US several of the nurses were scathing in their condemnation of the mercenary US healthcare system and pointed out that many of the supplies he was getting would not even be offered to equivalent patients there as the cost was unacceptable to the insurance companies.
To bring this back on topic, one of the advantages companies in the US have over their employees is the chains that health insurance bind them with. It is a lot harder to quit your job when treated badly if you know that would lose you your healthcare, especially if you or one of your dependents have a chronic illness.
My sister-in-law has a serious heart condition, here in the land of the free she is shackled to her corporate job and denied the opportunity to start her own business because she would not be able to afford the health insurance premiums.
We (programmers) unionize. They (companies) outsource the work to overseas, or open the main branch of the company elsewhere.
I believe unionization -- at least in North America -- at this point could be more of a detriment to programmers.
Nothing is wrong with Iowa. My point is that this family may have to go where the jobs are.
Further, to "unionize" you do not need to form a new union from scratch, you can join an existing union and have them extend their charter to cover your field.
If you see unions strictly as a "blue collar" thing and don't think that unions are for technical and creative people, check out the Directors' Guild of America's basic agreement. Why aren't video game designers and video game directors represented by this union?
And you video game artists and programmers, why aren't you represented by IATSE? All of the digital special effects guys over at ILM are, and when _they_ go into crunch mode, it's _real_ crunch mode; and I'll tell you, they get _paid_.
Ex vitio sapiens aleno emendat suum
You're right. If you want to own a house and have a family, you should be prepared to be a slave to corporate America and its rich owners. It's the patriotic thing to do.
Dick.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
In the US 13.4% of the GDP goes towards health care. That's almost twice the rate of some of the "inferior" systems. Yet we have a lower life expectancy. Which system is inferior?
Nice to know that you're edumacated.
Actually I have a great job with great pay and average benefits (I negotiated for more $$$ in lieu of some benefits.) My last job sucked and my boss treated me like crap and because of that I left. Not long after I left the company it went out of business because the other sysadmin and 7 of 9 developers followed my lead and found greener pastures. The free market works for the people who work. I can see why people who refuse to try harder so that they are more valuable to a company never make it in life. My mom and I were homeless for much of my childhood. After I graduated HS I joined the Marines, used the GI Bill, and now I make more than 80% of the people in the region where I live. If I can do it then anyone can. Now if you're handicapped then I'd be more than happy to point you toward some of the organizations that I make charitable contributions to that help people with disabilities.