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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?
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
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.
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/
"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.
The problem at EA is the same reason unions were first started, over 100 years ago. Employers would drive their employees to the brink of physical and mental exhaustion with little compensation (monetary or otherwise) to show for it. Today, unions have become nothing but organized gangs out for political power, but their original purpose was valid. There aren't an infinite number of jobs available out there, so if a person quits working at EA, they aren't guaranteed to get a job anywhere else, and then their family starves. Sometimes you have to keep working at a job that is terrible because the consequences of quitting are even more terrible. I think EA (like other gaming companies) should stop rushing junk out the door, and if they use a reasonable, efficient methodology (i.e. extreme programming, or something along those lines) then they will not have the infamous crunch time.
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.
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?
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.
From now on...I prefer contract working...If I had to go direct, I'd push for hourly pay...if you get caught in this salaried thing...they'll kill you.
I'm not a pro-union guy. They just seem to corrupt themselves, and start to operate only for their own benefit. You gotta be a good negotiator for yourself. I find that works best these days. You gotta look out for yourself, your company certainly is not.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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
The problem isn't (just) that EA was unfair to a lot of people in the past, it's that it continues to lie and manipulate new people into the same trap -- because as long as people ship a title before quitting, what does EA care? There are always more people who want to work there.
What EA is doing is illegal, and they are pursuing it as a deliberate and continuing policy. This isn't just a couple employees who are upset because they had a bad experience and want to win money with a lawsuit, and individual employees quitting won't change things, since that is already factored into EA's strategy.
I am the man with no sig!
true
require "something.clever";
Could the "Free Market" believers just shut the fuck up?
That's nothing that prevent you from opening your own employee friendly company. So I suggest that you shut the fuck up and lead by example since bitching about it on Slashdot doesn't change anything.
BTW, there are plenty of IT and non-IT jobs out there that doesn't require you to do unpaid overtime. The pay will probably be lower but what's more important? Free time or more pay?
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
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?
Wrong.
At Walmart for example everyone is considered a manager which means they no longer get time and half after 40 hours a week.
Its also great since they can not fire more employee's and overwork the ones they have without penalty.
http://saveie6.com/
EA keeps bringing in new people by lying to them, and then running them into the ground.
As long as the consumers keep buying products from them and workers keep applying for their jobs, they have absolutely no incentives to quit their practice. Any geek gamers out there willing to boycott EA's products until they change their ways?
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
My Uncle used to tell me: Unions are the club workers have to protect themselves from exploitation.
So quit! --- 51%
Unionize! --- 48%
Odd... I've seen those numbers somewhere before.
--- Ban humanity.
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.
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
In a completely free market (which the US is not), that would be true. That's why there are federal and state laws to protect workers from these sorts of situations. While we may not know conclusively for a while, it looks like there's substantial evidence that EA is violating some of those laws. By all means, boycott their products, but there should be some other way of checking this behavior (such as this lawsuit, although there may be other approaches as well).
Especially given the turnover rate, it seems like the only reason EA gets so many people who want to work for them is because they are a big name in a popular industry, and they lie to people about what the jobs entail. Hopefully the lawsuit, even if it fails, will bring more attention to EA's behavior, lowering the available pool for new hires, so that they are eventually forced to change their practices.
I am the man with no sig!
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.
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.
really good food, lunch time barbecues, lunch time head shavings, etc.
The food part sounds good, but I'd prefer to work for a company that gave me at least 30 minutes of spare time every three months to get a decent haircut. Or do they take missing deadlines really seriously?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
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
As long as the consumers keep buying products from them and workers keep applying for their jobs, they have absolutely no incentives to quit their practice.
Uh... they would have an incentive if they started getting sued left, right and centre.
If they were lying to employees, that would be (breaking) a verbal contract, right? (I am assuming the US allows verbal contracts, assuming they can be proven).
If one employee is lied to, they're going to have a hard time proving it. If it is happening repeatedly and systematically to many employees, the case against EA would become stronger.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Exactly. This is the basic thing which people refuse to see, because seeing it would be too horrible for them to contemplate:
In many industries, free enterprise is now dead.
The entry costs have risen far too high and the established businesses are so well-grounded that no new entrant has any hope of competing - or at least, they might have a slender hope, but nobody's going to invest the required amount on the basis of a slender hope.
Some argue that free enterprise exists as long as they have the "right" to start a business, or are "free" to do so. But the freedom to do something that is sure to fail and have negative consequences is not freedom at all. If it was, any US citizen would be "free" to shoot people, because they CAN pull the trigger on the gun; it's just a bad idea and will have negative consequences.
Socialism may have been a horrible failure but its final criticism of capitalism stands: that the capitalist process inevitably results in something like this happening eventually, and when it does the system basically becomes a socialism anyway except the corrupt people running it are a bunch of corporation heads instead of a government with accountability. So capitalism was never a sustainable choice: it was always socialism now or socialism later.
"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.
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.
Understand that the USA isn't strictly a free market economy. There's entirely too much governmental meddling going on, some of it good, most of it bad. There are a hell of a lot of ways to abuse the system and get away with it, and few people know better ways to do it than fat cat PHBs who have been practicing it for decades.
The people hailing free market are right, it does work. It's just that the reality of the world's economy isn't strictly free market, so while the idea is a good one, the implementations leave a lot to be desired.
Their best bet in this case is a class action lawsuit (which they will easily win, because the kinds of abuse they are taking cannot be legally invalidated away by signing any number of waivers) and a tech labor union to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.
The amount of sheer power an IT labor union would wield is terrifying to think about. Anyone who has worked in system administration and programming can testify to exactly how fragile computers and networks are, and how quickly they crumble without constant management. Take away that management for even a day and the company is taking a real risk that a single problem can sink them. Take it away for a week or two, and the network is gone. Oops. Good luck hiring replacements... any network of sufficient complexity requires a significant lead time to acclimate a newcomer, regardless of how good the documentation is (and docs are typically incomplete).
Yeah, a tech union would be a heavyweight. Now if someone can just figure out how to make it work where people shift jobs, careers, and states every few years... that's a tough decentralization problem.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
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!
I could do a boycott... I was getting tired of taking every damn sport to "the street," anyway.
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.
One possible tactic would be to claim you own copyright to the code in the game, since EA broke your employment contract, or didn't pay you for work you did. Start selling copies, and force it into court on the copyright issue, and only tangentially the employment issue. These things take a while and by the time you are in court, with EA's turn over, all your co-workers will be working elsewhere, and be more willing to testify.
if the company is so bad, quit. I'm sure there's plenty of people who will hire you.
What if we applied this to everything that we did?
Live in a city with high crime - just move out.
Have a spouse that's not making you happy - leave.
Too much pollution, move somewhere clean.
Sometimes you need to move on, but some times you need to clean up the place where you live.
disputed
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).
My brother recently quit EA. He's a character animator, and worked on the Harry Potter series. He was recruited directly out of Classical animation at Sheridan college (Canada) and worked for them for 5 years in England. After lots of late nights and weekends he decided he needed a change.
When he left they gave him a 6 month severance package so that he could find a new job. If you know anybody looking for a charactor animator trained in Maya drop him a line. His website (www.ray-guns.com) has some animations he did as well as sketches.
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
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
Now mind you, my management team is not in the U.S. ... hmmmm...
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
Because there's a competetive advantage to not paying your employees what they're worth
Due to this flaw in your logic, the rest of your argument is moot.
SOME companies may feel it is an advantage to screw their employees, but it normally comes back to haunt them. For example, they get sued. (Ahem.)
MANY companies, like the one I've chosen to work for, understand that if you have good employees, you treat them well, and they will produce for you. This is also a competitive advantage.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
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.
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.
Word!
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.
"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.
About time someone had a free market opinion here. Why can't employers offer a crappy compensation package? Employees don't have to take it. The fact is that employees typically choose their industry. They choose the company that they work for. Most coders are compensated very generously.
Now, if labor laws are really being broken -- fine. However, 9 times out of 10, I am against regulation. Regulation essentially says that the market is not smart enough to sort itself out. (We are the market, remember -- we are smart enough to work this one out, right?) Nobody forces EA's products down out throats.
Now, I'm not saying that I support EA's work practices -- but I'm also not applying for a job there. Let's all take some responsibility for ourselves. If you're getting a shitty deal, find another job. Sure, it's not easy and probably less than fair -- but stop blaming everyone else for your choices in life. Nobody ever said that life was fair. If you're that pissed, work somewhere else and stop buying their games. Write EA letters explaining why you won't buy their games. Nothing makes a company move like a threat to their profit margin.
I guess that this can appear harsh and heartless to someone who is pro-regulation. But let's look at the facts. These people have a contract that says that they're OT-exempt. They took on the job knowing this, and worked the hours knowing this. Now, after they've worked all of those extra hours, they're coming back and screaming for more money like they were entitled to it in the first place. If they were entitled to it in the first place, they should have asked before working all of those hours. I wouldn't be so adamant about this unless it reminded me of something else that bugs me even more...like registering a patent, waiting for someone to put the hard work in by developing and marketing your idea until it's suffessful -- then suing for royalties. See the problem here?
-Turkey
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
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.
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...
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
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.
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"
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 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.
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.
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.
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.