Slashdot Mirror
NYT on EA Games
The New York Times has a story investigating the EA Games accusations that we reported on before. They use the phrase "toiling like galley slaves" to describe EA's programmers, and note that EA has a formal policy of hiring young, naive people who are willing to work long hours for low pay.
"EA has a formal policy of hiring young, naive people who are willing to work long hours for low pay"
Isn't that how most large companies work?
uh, mcdonalds, walmart, etc
has a formal policy of hiring young, naive people who are willing to work long hours for low pay.
Isn't that good? People often bitch that no one will hire you unless you have some industry experience, and how are you going to get that if no one hires you without it?
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
In a chicken farm, the owner doesn't really care if there's enough head room for the chicken, or whether they have enough exercise or eat healthy food. The owner only wants these chicken to grow fat, fast, so that he can put them out on the market as soon as possible.
What happens when one of the chicken complains about the living condition, maybe by mean of fasting-protest (so that it doesn't grow fat enough in time)? Well, the owner will just find another chicken to replace this naughty one, because there are so many more chicken hatched and ready to grow.
What if this bad chuck told 999 of his mates to do the same? Well, in a farm of 3,000, the owner will simply replace these 1,000 bad apples as long as the rest still grow fast enough, and the 1,000 replacement grow even faster to make up time.
What about the free range chicken? Well, they have found a good owner, who has a consumer market that demands free running healthy lean chicken. With that demand that the owner cannot ignore, he's set to exercise his chicken, offer plenty of land for them to run about and feed them only the approved corns.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I hope the NYTIMES keeps hounding on these issues. While i'm not a Game programmer I am a consultant and I get shafted left and right with abuses of power like this.
The *ONLY* thing that keeps me from working even more insane hours is to adjust my billing rate - and that is almost a catch-22 - surely to limit my hours but surely to get me replaced in the long run.
I do Oracle financials, database and applicaiton server stuff. Its not just gamers, but "IT" in and of itself.
Part of my issue is the H1-B workers don't have family here or bust there arses off to get enough money to go back home and retire early, so they don't have many qualms about the workfload.
I don't see it as differences of trying to be a lazy american as much as other corp heads see it, i just see it as i'm busting my arse off to have a family life at home.. you know, pay my bills, buy my family dinner, pay my mortgage and have some cash left over to entertain and put my daughter through college.
So please, NYTIMES, keep it up. Do your investigative research even further. Don't pull a fox/cnn/cbs/nbc news report and have it end at that - show the world what gets taken forgranted and show the world that us supposed "white collars" aren't necessarily all living it up high and dry doing nothing but pointing fingers like many assume.
What really disgusts me is that people get treated like this and there is no "thanks". Work late hours and stay in a hotel? non-expensable, have a cell phone or pager they bother you on? don't try and expense it. Get stuck working remote? good luck expensing it. Just isn't what it used to be in taking pride in your workers..
Good luck EA employees - i'm there fighting for ya and WITH YOU!
EA strategy seem to be : produce lots of expansion packs / sequels / add-ons that require no or little effort to implement, and throw a bunch of willing-to-work-hard newcomers at it, 'fire' them (if they don't go first) so you don't have to pay them more for experience (etc), and repeat.
The Sims 1 and 2, with their gazillion expansion packs. Simcity 4. Sports games (Football, Hockey, Soccer, Basketball edition 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, oh god I must buy the 2005 edition!) Recently, NFSU2, which is (in my opinion) less polished / fun, even if its a sequel. Easy money. These game sells year after year, you only need to add a little content and a 30$ price tag.
Clever business model I guess.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I can't help but get the impression that the way it got like this, regardless of the companies, is that the managers came from an environment where they had a bunch of extremely enthusiastic coders who really were hyped up on their projects, putting in volunteer extra hours because they liked what they were doing. Then they assumed that that's just how coders are, and that they could come to expect that from them.
Maybe this is just wild speculation. But perhaps managers need to be taught to recognise voluntary additional work as just that, and not to count on it in the future -- especially, not to work it into their business models and work flow charts.
Someone had to do it.
Where are the eggs??? That could solve some very important nutrition problems in the cubicle...
Wait, ew, gross... eating your own eggs??
OK That's great, now I don't think I can eat dinner tonight. BTW, do chickens in cages get to leave to go to the bathroom? Because that would be gross if workers couldn't leave a cubicle to do that. But, the way some cubicles smell, maybe you couldn't tell the difference...
I don't want to directly comment on the EA issue, but why is anyone at all surprised about these kind of accusations?
Companies have long histories of over using and abusing employees. Its the primary reason unions exist. Would anyone need to collectively bargain if they got good hours, decent and safe working conditions?
...or many other consulting firms. Hire them fresh out of the frat, work them to death in the crappyest positions and pay them next to nothing. They use the on-the-job training in some enterprise software package and are soon using these positions on their resumes to move on to greener pastures or lucrative independent contracting. I'm sure EA has the same cache' for these gamers who use these slave positions to get better jobs as they move up in the world. If you don't like your job, get another or make your own.
Having gotten through all the rounds of interviews for a game developer position at EA -- I am really glad that in the end it went to a dude with a Ph.D. with more experience than me.
I was interviewed in Toronto for a position at the Vancouver (Burnaby) studio. I am glad I didn't get that job.
The reason why they recruit young grads is because we are naive. I was naive. Afterall, it was my dream job at the time, an illusion now shattered.
You know EA is just a factory when you play Need for Speed Underground 2. The Cingular "messenger" logo is on your screen all the time, a box pops up to tell you what song is playing and who made it, and there are at least 100 billboards in the world AND racetracks with ads for Autozone, Eclipse, and Cingular. There's no love put into the game, you can tell.
can the gamers come together to influence the EA situation?
This suggests that it needs to conduct a survey to learn whether a regular routine of 80-hour weeks is popular among the salaried rank and file.
Next, EA will be conducting a survey to determine if employees like to be fed poison, being impaled or imolated...
how long until
With the -rare- exception, companies will squeeze their employees for the most they will give for the least pay they will take. We wonder why unions are still necessary? Because companies don't look out for employees' interests, they look out for their own.
If a single employee demands better working hours or more pay, he or she is replaceable. If five hundred of them do so, the employer will take notice. If five thousand do, the employer is facing a crisis, especially if these employees raise a large, public, well-founded stink. If you are being mistreated by an employer (tech or otherwise), chances are you aren't the only one. (If you are, perhaps re-examine your definition of "mistreated?") If this is common practice for the employer, your co-workers are probably just as pissed off, and sitting around waiting around for someone to tell them what to do about it.
Maybe you should consider telling them!
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
This is Slashdot.
He graduated RIT with a 4.0 in CS and EA offered him 50k a year with a 7k bonus. They helped him move to Florida (hes from NY) and put him to work doing the layout for Madden 2k4. He hates it since the games are essentially assembly line made. He does very little coding since EA has their cross platform tools and spent most of his time aligning menu items. Last I heard he wanted out. I remember how excited he was to get a "game development" job and was crushed to find out how that means tweaking stupid crap. Now he wants completely out of the game industry.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
EA has earned a name of being that Company who pumps out the same sports title ever year, with updated rosters, milking the cow for everything its worth.
EA is also the only company that literally FILLS it's games with billboards and advertisements.
EA now is becoming notorious with mistreating it's employees.
The problem is that this is a successful business model, and the only way to break it is to stop buying their games.
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Dude, you are seriously bumming me out, because it was like that at the job I just quit, and now I'm looking for a new one. Thanks a bunch :-)
Actually though, you're totally right. Sometimes I try to tell myself that later in life when I'm too old and tired to work like I do now, and in some middle management position, that I'll be greatful it's like that. At the same time, I have to wonder whether things are getting better, or worse, over time. Certainly we are now headed for four years at least of an employment market that wants labor to be as cheap as it can get, fie on the consequences.
Someone had to do it.
$60K isn't a lot if you're living in a major urban center like Silicon Valley--it's only a little more than $30K in the sticks. And the $120K in options is only good if EA's stock price *quadruples*, something that's totally unlikely; the actual amount will end up being more like $30K, which, spread over the four years it takes to vest, is less than $10K a year.
So what we're really talking about here is about $70K/year in a high-cost-of-living environment for 80 hour weeks in a highly skilled environment. You're right, things could be a lot worse, but they could also be a lot better. My salary's around that, and I only work 40 hours a week.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I realize that potentially unfair labor practices take presidence here, but people are quick to forget some of the great game/developer houses diminished & crushed by publishers like EA.
I grew up on Origin & Westwood games so I'll use them as an example.
Wing Commander
Ultima
Crusader
Dune
Command And Conquer
EA chased out two creative minds like Chris Robert and Richard Garriot. Origin and Westwood have now gone the way of the dinosaurs.
Hey but now we have the all the Sims games/expansions we can fit down our throats. Theres no Samurais and ninjas in UO (wtf?), and there a new/redundant sports titled every year. Nothing really creative, but plenty more of the same.
Not to worry, if theres any money to be made from someone not in EA, EA/Vivendi will assimilate them and be sure to repeat the process.
I really hope somebody puts the screws to these publisher's for their behavior. Even if the development and enforcement of a Programmer's Union could lead to increase costs placed on the consumer end.
Somebody has to win one for Colonel Blair and the Avatar.
You mean I can get paid for doing this stuff?
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Who is at fault here, the company for paying low wages or the people for accepting them?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Slashdot is a lot about the discussion. The blurbs are obviously short, and the people hardly read them. The topic is brought up and the meat is in the comments. I, personally, keep reading these articles to gauge the response on the issue and see if there are any opinions about it that are unique. I'm actually rather torn on this subject. Understanding both sides of the argument, it's interesting to read for me.
Since these are being posted, I have a feeling others feel the same way. These discussions most likely get a lot of hits.
That's scary.
I for one welcome our new long hour programming low pay overlords!
ItWasFree.com - Take the mystery
Somebody has to win one for Colonel Blair
n00b. Back in my day, we had to crank our Rapiers and Claymores with a winch. When it got stuck in the snow, we had to get out and push it all the way to Kilrah and back, uphill both ways! We also didn't have any namby-pamby Mark Hamill playing our lead. No, sir!
Man, Origin really did "not suck" before EA bought them. Ultima 9 sealed it for me: EA sucks. It's in the game.
Does all this bad press predict an employee revolt at EA? After all, the people who are considering employment at EA is the very same demographic as those reading this very forum so it's not like they'd be uninformed before entering employment. This could effectively lower the rate of new hires. So then retention would become a spotlight issue with EA and an employee revolt would then be very well timed so that people could get their employment contracts renegotiated to include specific work hours and specific days off guaranteed.
There's no denying the capitalistic desire to get more for less. Every Walmart shopper knows this desire. Should we even go so far as to say there's nothing wrong with it? Maybe. But we are talking about PEOPLE, not products... employees, not slaves... and we are talking about some pretty abusive and inhumane tactics that clearly involve intentional deception on the part of the employer.
In short, we clearly observe a situation where a company's management is willfully acting in an immoral way and I don't see where it matters one bit that it's a natural desire or that other people are also doing similar things. Wrong is still wrong no matter how frequently it occurs.
But the thing here is now there is an opportunity for the employees to make a change. If a large enough number of people formed a strike, there's no way they could retrain replacements fast enough. It would be huge bad P.R., a relatively newsworthy event and a wake-up call to any new hopefuls.
It's too early to predict an uprising, but I see great potential.
OK, so I'm feeding the trolls:
I'm supposed to believe that "just go home are a reasonable hour" never occurred to them?
When you get a little older, young grasshopper, you will learn that sometimes you are expected to stay late and just get the job done. If your company expects this to happen every day - it's a crappy company. But unless the entire staff can be persuaded by a colleague to leave at a reasonable hour, any one person is going to see this as a career limiting manouver.
I'm supposed to believe that "it's Friday night, see you on Monday" never occurred to them?
See previous comment.
I'm supposed to believe that "go work somewhere else" never occurred to them?
Grasshopper, you assume that alternative jobs are just waiting to be plucked from the trees. Many aren't long out of college. Without experience, finding a job is considerably harder. Finding the time to conduct a job hunt isn't easy if you're working 80 hours a week. And resigning is an excellent way to ensure you get no unemployment benefits in many countries.
I was unaware that stories had investigative ability. I want to see a story running around investigating things. That'd be some story!
"IMO attention needs to be paid to this, but with the government's complete hatred of unions and workers rights, somehow I don't see anybody even telling the corporations off."
I hear the a lot but frankly the people I know that worked in unionized places hated the unions. They could not get promoted even if they did a better job because they where there less than other people that did a crappy job. The hatted paying the dues for basically nothing. My only personal experience with unions has been at trade show. Having to some smuck $200 to watch me plug in an extension cord. Lets not forget about the link between organized crime and the unions.
What people do not seem to get is the reason union membership is going down in the US is many workers do not want to be in a union. The UAW has tried to unionize Honda and has failed and has tried to unionize Walmart and failed. If the majority of workers wanted it then it would happen.
For the people that do not know how a "union shop" works if you work there you MUST join the union. You MUST pay the union DUES. You have no choice in the matter.
What really needs to be done is to enforce the labor laws we have. It is not illegal to require people to work more than 40 hours a week. It is illegal to not pay them overtime. Somehow computer programmers got exempted from this rule. I see this as an issue. I would prefer to fix the laws and enforce the ones we have than to force unions on the workers.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And the $120K in options is only good if EA's stock price *quadruples*, something that's totally unlikely; the actual amount will end up being more like $30K, which, spread over the four years it takes to vest, is less than $10K a year.
The irony there is that if their worker abuse case is decided in favor of the employees, those options will likely be worthless. But they'll take it. I recently started a job with a local community college; they're starting to offer game creation courses. I was talking with a coworker who's interested in the field and when I mentioned EA to him, every time, his reply was "But you get to work on games!"
Maybe, just maybe, they get what they ask for.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Apple's campus is a little different, though the result is the same. Steve Jobs is really into micromanagement and he's actually good enough to pull it off. However he's also verbally abusive and extremely overbearing. As a result, employees work under a sort of omniscient eye (though they do have other bosses). Everything that the omniscient eye approves of becomes a smash hit. So they work their asses off on their own for some sort of approval.
It's a really interesting way to manage a company (though incredibly draining psychologically on the employees) and it explains a lot of the way Apple seems to work. Just look at the care that goes into the little details of the system. It ensures that while employees are being pushed, they are the ones pushing themselves and this passion shows up in their work. I don't know of many bosses that could pull off this sort of atmosphere without frustrating employees and making them quit.
In addition, after the release of 10.3, the OS development team took a serious break. Having used the OS for over a year now, for how much it has progressed so quickly, I can say that they really deserved the change of pace.
I doubt that many people could say the end result wasn't worth the effort and I agree sometimes you need to pull in some extra hours. We all get those bastard problems that seem unsolvable, but there's a difference between getting a few staff to iron out a bug, and getting the entire team to work bonusless 80+ hour weeks and at the end giving them a kick up the arse as gratitude.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
That's my first reaction: I'm a stockholder, you see. Now my second reaction: shit, that's not very nice... It's interesting to see how your priorities shift and you start rationalizing all sorts of evil when you have a financial interest. I mean, a good liberal like me, and I often find myself rooting for the tobacco companies and saying stuff like "well, it's their own damn fault for taking up smoking".
It's interesting though... we human beings seem to be able to have pretty flexible morals when it's in our own best interest to have them. It's weird , interesting and depressing to see how much your own solid convictions will shift when a buck is at stake. So keep up the good work, EA! Aw fuck, I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or sincere or a bit of each... oh the moral agony of making double-digit returns.
The complaints I've been told about involve being told there's a crunch period early on in the project, in order to reduce problems at the end, only the crunch time is extended indefinately. The point is that months of 80 hour weeks are written into the schedule at the beginning and continue even when the project is hitting all it's milestones. That's not working 50% and making up for it later, that's EA managment deciding they'd rather have burnt out employees doing a bad job for more hours.
And especially young people who don't have a clue, have no idea that if it wasn't for labor unions, things like 80 hour work weeks and no weekends would be common throughout most industries.
Obviously unions aren't perfect, and like any powerful entity, there are abuses and corruption, but the fact is that for the most part the game industry is not organized and as a result the workers are treated unfairly.
like pretty much every other large tech company, they have a sweet stock purchase program.
and in case you havn't noticed, their stock has more than quadrupled in the last 4 years.
so yeah, it must be rough working your ass off as a 'young programmer' making -video games-, for an incredibly sucessful, profitable, tech company in silicon valley these days....
very rough indeed.
"young kids don't know what's impossible."
From first hand experience I would have to definelty agree with this and say that's the entire reason why they end up working long hours.
At my company we began a huge project not too long ago with other remote sites. It was a great project and great work and we were fortunate enough to have expriened higher level workers with families. However another remote site had only young enthusiastic people who were no older than 25 (that includes their leadership)
During the requirments and design phase, higher managment began cramming way too much onto everyone's plates. Fortunately our leadership knew how to scope and scale back. The other team didn't.
During the end of reqs upper management came down on our site and said, "Everyone's giving us 110% and you guys are only giving us 90%! How dare you!" The response to this from our leadership during that telecon was so classic I'll never forget it.
"We give you only 90% because the other 10% is going to be devoted to workers taking sick days, holidays, and when unforseen bugs crop up. If we were to give you 110% then what we would be saying is that not one single worker is going to get sick, not one single worker is going to take a vacation day, that not one single unforseen bug is going to stop us by more than a few minutes, and that we will be working extra hours. That's as likely to happen logically as it is to give 110%."
Well as the project progressed you can guess what happened. We delivered on time and underbudget to boot with what we agreed to. The other remote site with the attitude, 'Nothing's impossible!'? Well, they're working overtime for no extra pay, have tons of bugs, a few of them have quit now, they're over budget, are not going to make their deliveries, they're in some deep hot water, and for me to quote one of them, "I'm in hell!".
You can be the brightest mind comming out of college but unless you respect the wisdom of elders you're going to get screwed.
That's what you have to do if you're starting out in the record industry (working at a major recording studio).
That's roughly $12,000 a year. $70,000 sounds like a dream. So as far as "$70K/year in a high-cost-of-living environment for 80 hour weeks in a highly skilled environment.", I kinda wish I had stayed in software.
mund freud.
If you raised wages, EA would have to use less programmers to get a given job done, produce inferior work or have to charge higher prices
Bullshit on a stick, newbie. EA had an operating profit of over $500M USD last year, and spent several hundred million dollars on marketing alone. You want to argue that globalization should fuck workers here? I think it should make life better for workers everywhere.
EA's financial status as of last year.
Sales $2.82 bil
Profits $.50 bil
Assets $3.34 bil
Market Value $13.28 bil
Employees 4,000
CEO Probst's compensation package
$1.45M in cash this year, $145M in stock options granted over his career. Stock options may look free, but they damn well aren't-- the difference comes out of the company's profits same as any other compensation.
So, EA games has 3,300 programmers. Hire another 1,650 at $60,000 a pop, and the wages cost you $100M a year. Adjust to ~$150M a year for benefits, and you're still taking up less than one third of EA's operating profits from last year.
Productivity goes up, and it costs you less than the money spent compensating the CEO in the last 10 years.
We can also compare it to EA Games' marketing budget, estimated at >$100M in the last quarter. Cut your marketing budget by 30%, and you can hire enough programmers for them to have normal lives and increase production.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Most companies are looking for people with experience in their field. It's only in certain fields where fixing errors doesn't mean lost materials that young and naive and working 80+ hours a week is prefered.
Consider a cabinet company who hires young and naive workers. Even if they're putting in lots of hours, the errors they make eat up the lumber which means lower profits for when the product finally does get out the door.
With software, as long as it meets basic functionality and ships on time, it doesn't matter how many unpaid overtime hours or how many electrons were used.
Take note: this is how labor unions got their start "back in the day."
Eventually, the coders will together and realize that without them, senior management is fucked. And I don't want to hear any shit about exporting the jobs to India or where-ever. The studios making these games can't do it because the quailty would be worse, they'd lose control, etc. etc.
Unfortunately, they are probably already working on a "pre-emptive" outsourcing, so coders better wise-up and organize before it's too late...
They work hard to get here and then they work hard here and bank their paychecks.
They do this for 5 - 10 years because they know they'll go home after that and RETIRE and live the good life at home.
They'll have about the same standard of living there that I have here, but their's will cost a LOT less.You don't understand what the Industrial Revolution was about, then. Look up some info about the begining of the Unions. If you think those conditions were "good" then you have a very warped sense of "good".
Except that married or not married, >80h working weeks suck you mentally dry. You never get any actual free time. You start to find it hard to focus on you job and your work quality and speed will suffer badly. Many will come sick. You lose your friends (if any). And so on. There's a reason the weekends are off for most people; more than that is too much.
:).
So yes, you get a little bit more money than you would from, say, McDonalds. I still say it's not worth your health (if you snap, you might be sick for many years). No amount of money is; I find the salary irrelevant in this respect.
And another thing, many people seem to think that EA is recruiting new (to the industry) folk. Because the industry is in the state that it is, there are many qualified people on the market; some will end up at EA (no need to hire rookies if you get the real deal). Also EAs recent strategy seems to be that EA buys any competition and merges the companies. Think about it. Maxis, Westwood, Criterion, DICE and so on. Those people will then be moved on to EA projects and be forced to EA habits. There goes the neighbourhood
If you read the original sources of the article, you would see that "Crunch time" isn't so bad. Its when "Crunch time" consists of the beginning, middle, and end of the project and you're required to work 7 days a week 18 hour days the ENTIRE TIME.
I've just finished an internship (hourly, not salary) working for a small game company. I left so I could finish college in a somewhat reasonable time frame. I never worked over 40 hours a week, rarely more than 25 during the school year, and only once over the weekend on a special request. Granted, many of my co-workers were consistently working quite long hours. I had been asked to work longer, and there was playful co-worker pressure, but I knew that I would burn out if I did (and end up getting LESS done), and they seemed to respect that, and have indicated that I am welcome back when my schedule eases up. Whether or not this is a rarity, I can't be sure. Personally, I'd gladly take a low-hours job, even at a lower salary. I was in it for the experience, not the money, which also seemed to help the dialogue.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I don't necessarily agree with the way EA handles its employees but mandating EA's policies is not the way to handle this issue. Granted, if you are an EA employee, you might think so.
I'm not trying to be patronizing if you understand what I'm going to explain but it is clear that many don't.
1. The *price* of a going employee at EA is a function of the supply of employees and the demand EA has for these employees. With such a high supply of willing programmers who want to break into the games industry, EA can pretty much dictate the price of the employee. Please note that I *'ed price because price does not necessarily mean just a wage. In this case, it also includes working hours and work environment.
2. Many slashdot readers are complaining that you cannot get a fair wage in the games industry despite working so hard, having to know so much, and basically not making what you are owed.
3. Now the point is this: Your skills, your hard work and your knowledge are NOT what constitutes your value. Often they are related but not always. This is not what makes free markets work. The fact is, to make a better wage, get into an industry where the supply for workers is lower than the demand. You can probably find some great paying work doing business sytems. I'm only being slightly cheeky here.
4. Which brings us full circle. A lot of programmers don't WANT to be in anything other than the games industry. This is why there is such an oversupply of talented game programmers compared to other technical talents. How sexy is programming a database after all? The point is, the cost of BEING a games programmer is higher due to supply/demand. If no-one wanted to be in the games industry, you can bet EA would be doing a lot more to attract game programmers with reasonable hours, better pay, better work environment, etc. Mandating that the government (or anyone else) get involved simply tries to cover up the underlying supply/demand issues.
So, the solution to YOU getting paid better, is get out of this industry. They don't NEED another game programmer and every new one reduces the average compensation to each employee. Not only that, it ironically raises the value of employees in every other sector. So if you love game programming, be prepared to bite the bullet: lots of other people love it too.
Mandating that EA treats employees better will have marginally better treatment (though in the long run, manipulating free economics almost always backfires), people will see that you can get into games programming (which they already love) AND be treated well, the supply will go up again, demand is (relatively) stable, and there will just be a bunch of unemployed games programmers.
You see, when we complain about EA, people get scared of going into the industry, free economics works(!) Already a lot of people who may have considered going into this industry might have second thoughts.
The mistake is to think that you should get what you deserve: you don't. You get what you are worth.
Sunny
Be my Friend
And what does the consumer end up getting? A cardboard box with some paper and plastic disks. Same as the music industry.
But if we are willing to pay outrageous prices for the games, then most of the problem is with us right? A few years back I was paying around $30 USD for games. Now I'm paying $50? Someone please tell me how games became $50 dollars?
This story ends up being the old standard. They can charge you what they want because you are willing to pay it. Companies have no desire to price their products realistically. And whatever became of the "volume" argument? Pricing lower because of volume? There are now more people on the planet that there ever have been in the history of mankind. Where is the volume pricing?
I just don't understand business.
+1
You're missing the point. The real reason why this kind of thing has to be done by regulation is that if it's beneficial to business (which it probably is, else EA wouldn't do it) then sooner or later every business is going to wind up either doing it themselves, or having to compete against others that are doing it.
The whole idea of business regulation is to block off this sort of thing so that the need to compete with others who are doing it, doesn't force firms to start.
If you read the original slashdot story, you would know that EA commits verbal fraud on new employees. They break the law, but they do so in a manner that makes it difficult to catch them.
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In my second job, I cheerfully slept under my desk once, and worked really long hours all the time. I remember bragging that I had our IT manager beat wednesday night - she'd worked 42 hours since Monday. I was young, and in my time off I just programmed hobby projects anyhow. The company was on track to IPO, I had shares, and I was collecting big raises frequently.
Anyhow, I don't regret that at all. Now that I'm older, have a daughter and different priorities, I hate that young people are still willing to do that, because it makes me look like a less desirable employee.
The problem with EA, however, is not the way they work their employees with long hours, but the way they deceive people to get them and keep them before turnover finally claims them. If EA said: we're going to pay you $25k/yr base, but work you 100 hours a week, so you'll make $85k with overtime, then there would be no problem. (And, quite possibly, no people accepting jobs there)
Thanks for reminding me, I had forgotten this detail. I am not a lawyer, but I've heard in some states verbal agreements are legally binding, even though they are hard to prove.
I hope new hires will be aware not to accept verbal agreements, if they can do so without being dropped from the roster. A class action lawsuit should be able to fix this, and if the employees start getting compensated for their crunch times, EA will realize that it'll be cheaper to get more people and ease the individual schedules. I know it sounds wrong to make a place better because it's cheaper that way, but the nature of this industry has made it possible for EA to get away with thinking this way. Hope things get better soon for all the folks working 80 hour weeks there...
It wasn't a troll.
You're right - sometimes you are expected to stay late and get the job done. And, if you like your job, and you employer is good to you, you are probably willing to sometimes stay late and get the job done.
Of course, you ultimately have the final decision. The big bad company didn't take your car keys away. The worst thing that they can do is fire you.
Anybody who is any good at what they do in the silicon valley could find job that pays $60K without much trouble in the valley.
Anybody who isn't good, well how much sympathy am I supposed to have for a guy who isn't any good, and makes $60 grand a year?
Look I'm not some naive newbie - I've been a well paid software developer in the valley for more than 10 year.
My sincere advice to everybody who feels that they're being overworked is this:
First: stop spending all of your money. Put a little bit away. You'll find that it's a lot easier to stand up for yourself if you aren't worried about where next months rent payment is coming from.
Second: Stop working so damn much. Work 55 hours instead of 60, and see if anyone notices. In all likelyhood, nobody will. If someone does, though, don't make excuses. If they call you out, tell them that you worked nine hours today (or however many you worked), and give them a "what kind of bozo questions somebody for only working 9 hours" look. Do that a couple of times, and they'll leave you alone.
The worst thing that could happen is that you get fired, and if you're complaining about how awful your boss is for making you work so much, maybe, just maybe, having your boss tell you that you aren't allowed to come to work anymore isn't the worst thing than can happen. There's other work out there. Better work. Maybe getting fired would be the kick in the ass that you need to go find it.
P.S.
Rent Office Space again - it isn't as far off as you think.
Specifically:
In order to make all those huge profits EA is exploiting their employees and breaking the law. It just does not get any clearer than this.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
How do you get into the building every day? I'd figure your head wouldn't fit through the door.
You talk a lot, but your words have little meaning. A nice 7 paragraph rant about how much better you are than everyone else. What bearing this has on EA and its mistreatment of its employees this little rant has however I do not know. Perhaps you are meaning to imply that EA is doing the things it is because clearly none of its employees could match your amazing skill. Do you mean to say that if these employees could attain your level of excellence then EA would not do the things it does? Well, I have bad news for you. Employers like EA will abuse their employees no matter how good they are. Yes if you worked at EA they wouldn't say "well you're so productive we don't care if you only work 40 hours." They would be pulling the same shit with you, despite your amazing self proclaimed coding abilities.
I suppose I could be wrong about your intent. You did ask them to get out of YOUR industry. I don't think you said that because you think YOUR industry is overcrowded. It seemed like frustration that everybody else isn't as good as you. Maybe you know every single employee at EA and have come to the conclusion that you are better (although I assume you come to that same conclusion with everyone you meet).
Maybe I am looking at it in the wrong way tho. Perhaps this is a rant based on pent up rage. Perhaps you have spent so long being better than everybody else that you are starting to get angry that nobody can keep up! Maybe this has been building for so long that some random story about mistreated EA employees was all it took to set you off. If so, then that would mean your rant actually has nothing to do with EA. Must be horrible being better than everyone else.
Whatever relation your rant has with EA and its mistreated employees, if any, I just have one thing to say to you.
GET OVER THE EGO TRIP!
Flaw in your math there is that EA doesn't give overtime.
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
I hear the a lot but frankly the people I know that worked in unionized places hated the unions.
Funny, I work a Salary job in the heart of Canada's Auto Production center; Windsor. I work in an iron foundry. We cast blocks and crank shafts. Very serious working conditions, high stress, dangerous, dirty (to the point of damaging your health), loud, stinky - terrible.
The people in our union stick together. They understand the roll their union plays in keeping them employed, safe and properly compensated.
They love the union. They understand and appreciate its roll. They dont 'hate the union'.
What people do not seem to get is the reason union membership is going down in the US is many workers do not want to be in a union
Union membership is decreasing because their is a very sophisticated propaganada war being wadged against the working classes. They are being led to believe that "if they work hard they will get ahead. Your labour value is a determined by the market. If you raise wages, or demand better conditions from your employer, you endanger your employment." All ideas that Unions were created to thwart.
The all work is valueable. Workers need to be reminded that they have power in a Union -- without it, they, their community and their families *will* be robbed by the Railroad Barrons.
The USA is a plutocracy, and saying so gets you branded a Communist... you dont want to be called a Communist do you?
Its time the left begun to communicate the problems America's working class are having to face at the hands of the Capitalist Oligarchy.
Working young programmers to the bone should be made illegal. EA can damn well pay them for the true value of their work. That would be everything that the company produces is borne of their work. They are the company.
1.) When the front cover athlete for EA sports game always end up in career-threatening injuries. It's like god's way of disapproving EA's practice.
2.) The classic Electronic Arts as we know it has been gone for a long long time. EA is just a rich marketing force slaving over all the little companies.
3.) EA has a very microsoft-ish marketing tactics. EA has tried hard many times to lock in sports association licenses so that non-EA sports games can't use authentic players. Luckily they failed.
4.) Competitors have to sell at lower cost to keep up with EA's monopoly. Like ESPN NFL costing 1/2 has much as Madden. EA has already created a deadend market where innovation and good product can't beat them alone.
Some of the comments I've seen here, to put it quite bluntly, are disgusting. I have seen it said several times now that companies "owe nothing" to those who work for them.
May I have someone's logic on this? These people are working literally every waking hour, in some cases, so that the CEO of the company can be a millionaire or billionaire. Do you mean to say that that CEO owes nothing more to those people who put him where he is then to flip them the finger, pay them the minimum possible, and take his private jet out to his yacht to reap his rewards? Do the stockholders of the company not owe it to these people to insist that they are compensated fairly for making their stock profitable?
Human beings live in a community, NOT in a vacuum. There are some rules to living in a community. It is not my belief that making one of those rules "Take as much as you can get away with and give back as little as you possibly can" is a guideline for a healthy community of any type, small or large. These workers do owe the company they work for to work hard and well, and they have done so, EA has come out with some excellent games. Now EA has a responsibility to make sure that they pay these people back for their hard work.
The concept that a company owes its employees no more than the smallest paycheck they can give them, coupled with a boot out the door as soon as they aren't useful anymore, is sad, and a serious problem. A company (and a country) owes its workers a living wage, the security that their job will not be outsourced or eliminated unless the company is in dire financial peril, and some personal time to enjoy it. We are not talking about some type of freeloaders here, we are talking about people who went through college, have sought out jobs, and are now being told to devote every waking hour to that job or they will be replaced.
I am not talking about "skilled" or "unskilled" workers, I am talking about those who work for a living, period. They are owed a decent existence. Construction workers and waiters are every bit as necessary as CEO's and accountants. Everyone who goes out every day and works deserves not to be in poverty, yet currently a 40-hour a week job at the minimum wage would place a person well below the poverty level. Something is very, very wrong.
Most of the restrictions of living in a community are moral, rather than legal, obligations. If your friend, who has helped you move five times, asks you for help with the same, he cannot take you to court to force you to help him when he asks. But he shouldn't have to. You are under a moral obligation to help.
I have no problem, however, tightening the legal restrictions and requirements on companies, since it seems evident that many will ignore their moral ones.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The more attractive the industry, the crappier the pay. Is this news to anyone?
Want to work in film? Crap pay.
Want to be an accountant? Not crap pay.
Want to work for a video game company? Crap pay.
Want to work for an insurance company? Not crap pay.
Want to work for MTV? Reeeeally crap pay.
Any questions?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
With that in mind, let me say that this whole "EA is using young kids" schtick is one of the three major reasons why I think all computer science students should get out and work an internship or two for a company they might be interested in before graduating.
Why am I saying this, and how does it apply to EA? I have no regrets about working there: the people there were by and large excellent and I learned a lot. However, I also saw EXACTLY what was expected of their new engineers, witnessed the turnover and the new college hires wandering around like zombies with keyboard marks on their faces, and returned to school a much wiser person for my experience. I assure you that I now take an entirely different spin on the "do you have any questions for us?" ending to your standard technical interview.
So, in sum: empower your resume, your outlook on what your degree is preparing you for, and yourself by getting some experience before rushing into a job based on its outer sex appeal. Trust me when I say you will be thankful for it.
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Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Go read "the Jungle" by Upton Sinclair and you'll realize that what the parent said is a lot like what someone from the early 20th or late 19th centuries would have said to almost any worker who complained today.
Actually, it's story largely parallels what seems to happen at EA (though not to the same extent): Optimistic young people come here and eagerly work long hours, then realize they're getting screwed by the system.
I would share few thoughts on game development.
Actually management faces several tasks - develop innovative games, availability of specialists to implement high end and low end subtasks ( I mean design of soft and on other side some really hard coding of well known things).
and while 'optimizing' the production way game companies usually come to that - 'older specialists' facing new problems would spend amount of time which is not allowable for the project. As in game development there are actually a LOT of different difficult tasks to resolve. still young guys would always miss the things - but could move forward due to their young power.
Thus to reduce the pressure ( if it is possible) is a way - that there are MORE really good lead developers which plan and resolve tasks ( looking ahead and not gathering all the difficulties) in a way which makes less time to implement. And from what could be seen at EA job site they look for specialists with several years of experience. Do they find such specialists - I do not know ....
so I think the focus of an article is somewhat incorrect. If only there were enough specialists and they could resolve tasks quickly leading others - then there would not be need to overtime. But the game development lacks the necessary amount of specialists thus there is an overtime.
For game companies here in Russia - most successful are those which found a balance between overtime and good leaders which lend working ideas to the projects.
as for age...
just few years ago there were no such a discipline - game development or graphics development.... thus older specialists with required skills are in shortage. Also to move from another field these specialists need somehow self educate or something - there are NO way to get knowledge other than to study - but if there is time and desire for those who already have some working experience which bring money positions etc?
I personally suffered from overtime working as game developer. But still the overtime was a result of short seeing the outcomes. Which was unavoidable. as the steps forward in game development are always steps into unknown. Bright persons are good to resolve the things - but again - there are no much bright guys out here around. If the team has bright - then the pressure on programmers is much less - as things go smoother. Still there are anyway problems which require efforts to resolve.
so my conclusion - the situation is described ( if to extrapolate the facts on game development in whole) correctly. Still if one wants to play games should understand - the way games are developed is naturally grown from the limitations - lack of enough specialists and also that younger people really could resist less to try to fast implement innovative things and most probably it comes that older specialist underestimate the time which younger spend on the task ( I know from my experience :) in a month I developed an animation demo with advanced internals starting from almost no knowledge at hand on human animations - I thought it will take me half an year - still it was finished in a month - so kick was necessary -thought kick was really a pain....) again as in previous example - if I knew the animations well I would know things - still older people do not have knowledge at hand on most of gaming technologies - thus they tend to resist much more than young people.
For myself - to avoid problems in my future career
after I finished one attempt to develop own way to develop games ( using remote approach - guys in russia for company in europe) - I really had a lot of experience what might go wrong ( and byt my will I worked 80 hours a week... as it was my creature ;))
I spend last year gathering ALL gaming tech knowledge ;) so I hope in future I will be resolving tasks fast and people under my lead will suffer less - as they will always know better - where to go.... but I think that t
I work for EA as a programmer.
It's not as bad as some people here think. If you're working 80 hour weeks, I guarantee that you're either volunteering your time, a spineless moron, or in the process of looking for another job/quitting.
This isn't just a problem at EA. This sort of stuff happens everywhere else in the games/IT industry, it's just easy to sling mud at EA because their a large evil corporation. The guys at Id software work the exact same schedules and I can assure you that they're not all millionaires.
There are much shittier jobs to have. This is really a non-issue. Anyone who's thinking of quitting their cushy IT job, try working a 12 hour day on a construction site. When you pull a 14 hour day at EA, you're not mining coal or assembling BBQ's. You get free meals, video game machines abound, a beautiful lounge area. It's not a bad place to be at all for 14 hours a day.
That being said. I work at the Vancouver studio, and I have to say that I'm not really feeling all this EA negativity. I work normal hours (40 - 50 a week), my project is on schedule, and I'm very passionate about the game I'm working on. I may be a special case, but this just isn't seeming to affect me? Any other EAC slashdoters care to comment?
I think that a lot of this negativity is just sensationalism. I programmed games as a hobby many years before I started doing it proffessionaly, and I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. There are a LOT of people who are extremely happy with their jobs in the games industry.
- Mr.Oreo