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?
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.
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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?
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.
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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$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.
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.
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.
how is that different from other companies
Umm, you work at mcdonalds/walmart while you goto school, you dont make that your career.
The problem is EA is abusing people who already worked their way up. This is a multiBILLION dollar company paying less than other companies in the same market. Its the black sheep of the entertainment employment.
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.
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.
"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.
Walmart/McDonalds/factory work can consist of entirely OJT. You don't need the skills coming in. You can bounce around all the time and still move up the food chain because of your prior experience.
In programming, and IT in general, you need some form of experience before you even go in. Chances are, you've already paid a buttload for training, too. College, certs, something.
That and, as mentioned, because IT work is being considered "white collar" these days, those extra hours you put in mean jack when it comes to your paycheck. I've seen companies bend over backwards to arrange "blue collar" workers' schedules such that they will *not* have to pay overtime.
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.
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".
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)
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.
The mistake is to believe that above sentance is a true and worthwhile premise. Truly free markets result in sweatshops (minimizing costs), and monopolies (minimizing competition), to maximize profits.
Truly free markets do not take into account damage to environment, people, societies and economies. Some government is necessary to counter act the societal ill that is caused by "free markets".
The supply of people that are willing to be abused to provide for themselves and family is reasonably large. The fallacy is that it is "ok" to be abused by your employer. And it is also a fallacy to believe that the only one who should be able to keep the employer from abusing the employee is the employee, and that the only way to keep from being abused is by quitting.
No, just as with many things, there are some things that are wrong, even if there is a pool of people willing to do it. And the way to make it better for them, and for everyone else, and to raise the whole moral value of the pool is with moderate government intervention (like minimum wage, and overtime laws).
If too much government intervention then there is a downturn in the economy, too little government intervention, there is also a downturn in the economy, and tremendous societal costs. The rub is finding the balance.
Thanks for the economics lecture. You might be surprised to learn that many Slashdot readers, many EA employees, and even many New York Times journalists have taken an economics course at one point or another, and yet don't see that as a reasonable excuse for EA policy of employee mistreatment.
Here's the interesting fact: The United States (along with the rest of the world) doesn't operate on a free market. We tend pretty strongly towards capitalism, but not totally. Just like we tend pretty strongly towards democracy, but not totally. The framers of the Constitution established a system of majority rule with minority rights, since they knew that free-thinking people can't always be trusted to make humane decisions. In a pretty analagous way, the United States government has intervened throughout the years to amend egregious human rights deficiencies (coal miners, Industrial Revolution factory workers, etc.).
This is really a fundamental prerequisite of social systems. A society that doesn't protect its members from extremes is hardly a society at all. It's an element of the social contract that defines the benefit for individuals of working within the society.
The burden of competition should be (and easily can be, as it is in most other professional fields) on the talent of the employees, not on how brutally they'll willing to sacrifice their mental health. It's not a step I would recommend, but hypothetically, if the government were to mandate tomorrow that all employees in this industry aren't allowed to work more than 40 hours a week, then EA would probably stay in business. They'd have to make their organization operate more intelligently, by doing things like retaining experienced workers rather than burning everyone out before they have said experience. The game industry, probably even more so than the rest of the programming industry, responds well to intelligent workers.
Your last statement is a little bit fallacious on a few levels. Firstly, as I hope I've indicated, you only get what you're worth within the confines of social edicts. Secondly, EA is not necessarily paying employees what they're worth or what they deserve. From what I've read, they're taking an approach of paying employees less than they're worth and making a concerted effort to make their employees think that they deserve even less than what they're getting. Economics doesn't justify this kind of psychological abuse.
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!