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EA Reconsiders Overtime Position
bippy writes "An internal memo leaked from EA to its employees says that the company plans to make more employees elgible for overtime. Rusty Rueff, senior vice president of human resources, bemoans the bad press and begs forgiveness: "As much as I don't like what's been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth." GamesIndustry.biz has commentary on the story as well.
It's about time they changed their tune and started paying developers what they're worth.
No sir. Not gonna happen. Absolutely not. I assure you.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
You're finally learning that if you treat your employees right, they won't ruin your reputation.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
This reads more like a PR stunt than anything else. Expect work conditions to be more of the same at EA. The same, constant, broken promises.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
We are looking at reclassifying some jobs to overtime eligible in the new Fiscal Year. We have resisted this in the past, not because we don't want to pay overtime, but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology companies
In other words, we didn't want to pay overtime.
Gah. Dil-bert!
The answer to your question has two parts:
This is games.slashdot.org.
EA is the only game company. Any supposed "other" game companies are either worthless, or EA just hasn't gotten around to acquiring them yet.
Random and weird software I've written.
EA renames Saturday to Monday Reloaded and Sunday to Monday Extended Edition Director's Cut..
It wouldn't take a Class Action lawsuit to get management to recognize that their actions is causing their product to suffer through abusing their staff. So much managerial bullshit, all about profit. If they actually have to pay their employees overtime, that would cut into profits. We can't have that!!!
Whoops, just kidding, the memo linked there is wrong; GamesIndustry.biz was apparently hoaxed into putting an EA memo on its site that wasn't actually written by EA. EA has no plans to clean up its act and no plans to compensate its workers. Hope this clears things up.
Apologies to M
I agree. This is likely total PR bullshit.
I work for a Fortune 500 software maker (non-games), and we get promises like this all the time. In fact, I was just talking to a co-worker who was promised that they were eliminating overtime this season. Last year, he worked Saturdays during the crunch. This year, it's been Saturday and Sundays. And this is a totally seasonal job, very predictable. This is not a company pushing to meet some artificial marketing-inflicted deadline.
The bottom line is that big companies will continue to find new and creative ways to milk productivity from people at the lowest cost possible. The game industry is no different than any other industry.
I'm actually surprised that EA was concerned enough to even go as far as sending out a memo. Most companies that demand the hours like what's been said about EA wouldn't even go that far...
I'm almost wondering if that memo wasn't purposefully released as a PR move...
This is a perfect example of the power of press in action. This is how reporting is supposed to happen in the united states - find something wrong, and talk about it and raise such a furor over it that things get better. And since EA employs programmers and many slashdot readers are programmers, we should all keep ourselves informed.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Balderdash. What's wrong with paying someone more for more work? There's nothing in the hourly wage model that requires set schedules. The only argument I can read into this is, "well, it's just not done," or "hourly pay is just old-fashioned."
It sounds to me like not wanting to pay overtime is exactly why they've resisted classifying people as "eligible" for overtime.
Well, I think work is work, whether it's on an assembly line or writing software, and it takes time that a lot of people would use for something else, if they didn't need to earn a living. That's why they call it work, and not fun.
Time's the most valuable commodity we can give somebody else, because once it's given, it's gone for good. I don't think it's asking too much to be compensated proportionately for it.
Surely I'm missing something here. What is it?
I see this as a common problem throughout the tech industry, it just seems to be more pronounced than most at EA. The upper management creates a flawed schedule, without enough time or resources to do all of the required tasks. When it becomes apparent that the schedule will be missed, everyone goes into crunch mode, working ungodly hours to get the product out the door. The project is saved, but all of the developers have ulcers. Since the management didn't have to pay the developers for the extra hours they worked, there is not cost to the scheduling mistake, and make the same mistakes on the next project (unless they intentionally lowball the schedule, because they know they won't be the one's paying for it). If the developers received overtime, there would be a cost to the error, and it would be less likely to happen the next time.
Sometimes I doubt your committment to SparkleMotion!
It might be that programmers who work their trade out of love of problem solving are to blame for this. I know many people, myself included, have put in voluntary overtime just for the joy of completing a project, or just being naturally engaged in your work. They say if you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life. You don't even ask to be compensated in times like this. You just love what you are doing. At various times in the games industry, very creative work was being done, and it just may be that these carefree problem-solvers created an unrealistic expectation for all the others around them.
It's like the woman at the office who's husband sends flowers to every day. All the other women in the office adore this unseen male, but be sure that all the men in the office hate this guy for making them look bad.
Seems that everyone goes about their job (and love, for that matter) in different ways. Over-management and over-regulation do strange things to the human spirit.
The penal system can't hold all the people that do it. Fill in your own blank.
First of all, an absolute cap at 80 hours a week under any conditions would make sense, since you are only fooling yourself if you think you are productive working even longer hours, and allow an 80 hour work week for 1 week maximum, cap it at 60 the rest of the time. If they can't meet their deliverables under these conditions, then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that they need more staff, or have an unreasonable delivery schedule.
My rights don't need management.
More like a choice between unpaid overtime and unionization. Workers aren't the powerless peons your comment makes them out to be.
Another one bites the dust
On reading this I'm sorely tempted to write to Rusty and outline to him in very precise and specific terms exactly why I think the company he works for gives capitalism a bad name. I wouldn't actually do it for the purposes of being purely vindictive, either. I don't necessarily want EA destroyed, because I really value the work of some of the assimilated companies. (Maxis, Origin)
What I *do* want however is for them to get a clue in a very big way, particularly as far as MMORPGs are concerned. UO is still headed for the gurgler and gaining speed, and The Sims Online has become an online sex pests' paradise, when the game was not originally intended for anything even remotely like that.
Electronic Arts needs radical reform...at the core ideological level. That article on here a few weeks back by the college professor showed me that...when he talked about EA's execs thinking of the company as being simply a vendor of boxes. If they don't get that reform, then they *will* sink. It won't happen overnight perhaps, but it will gradually happen. They need to start innovating again, and they need to prevent the soulless bean-counters from being in charge. There is more to games...and life itself...than *just* money...and if you don't realise that, eventually you'll get to a point where you're not making money either.
Don't get me wrong - companies *do* abuse people when the company has sufficient power. Unions do provide protection to those workers, but it's not a panacea.
In the software development realm, some programmers are 100x more productive than others. Many times there are more than 2x productivity differences between workers.
When you move to unionized protection for the workforce, you are essentially mandating compensation for producers to be normalized. Even though you might be 5x more productive than your cube neighbor, your compensation will not reflect that value difference.
When you're talking about manual production activities - assembly line manufacturing, product delivery (bread suppliers) etc - it makes perfect sense because each breaed delivery person has a maximum capacity that he can accomplish, and the variance in production can easily be normalized and compensation level can more easily be established.
In this industry, do you really want to have collective bargaining where the people who are the most productive derive the least benefit from exercising their talents? If you can accomplish more in 2 hours than your coworkers, should you need to put in a full workday to be compensated the same as they are?
I'm not convinced that the traditional model of collective bargaining is a great solution to this problem.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Why is EA in the news? For the same reason Vioxx is in the news. Some lawyers are trying to get the word out in order to find members of a class action. They're also trying to gin-up hatred for the company and sympathy for the "victims" in order to cash in on a big judgement against the company.
Jesus, talk about cynicism. I'm guessing you don't work in the tech industry or you'd know exactly why the EA story is a big story, and hint, it's not what you seem to believe.
The EA story is a big story because the problems at EA are endemic to the video game industry, and are at least somewhat prevalent in the IT industry as well. Employees who by law should not be treated as exempt are being treated as exempt. Being that this is a tech news site, and being that EA is such a large company, what happens at EA in this case could have a big impact on the tech industry in general. This is a chance to improve the quality of life for tech workers across the country.
That's the idealist response. The most cynical I'd ever get about this, though, would be to say that this is a large company that its employees believe are breaking the law, and it's always news when large companies break the law on a large-scale basis. Either way, it's news, and I hope this site continues to follow it.
Gee, how many times have we (the trench workers) seen stuff like this before. After reading the memo and the ea_spouse posting, there was an all too fimilar 'ping' in my gut.
The EA management team should be paraded around the town square a whipped with wet noodles (or harsher) , pelted with whatever gum can be pried off the sidewalk, and humiliated in what ever manner seen fit. It is completely true that the ones that make the big salaries don't give much of a care about those minions below pumped for the bulk of the grunt work.
True, we (the worker geeks) used to be the cool ones a few years back. But that was then and now, it's back to the same 'ol same 'ol where the execs once again have the spotlight, the workers know their place, and the economy favors mostly those on top.
Frankly, I'm not much of an game player and will make it a point to specifically not buy EA games anymore - for myself or anyone else.
The leaked memo needs to go much further and pretty much include everyone in overtime rules. The fact that some will be looked at leads to a bunch of magic hand waving while the practices continue. EA's made a boat load of cash and should share the wealth with those who are probably most responsible for it.
But alas, the top execs and management need to maintain their pecking order and paychecks so their lifestyles can continue. Such is the way of things.
My advice to EA employees: stage a mass demonstration or walk out - organize! It's no fair that you get crap from all the hard work while others reap the real benefits.
I really hope the class action yields some cash for those who deserve and more bad press for EA and in fact, the rest of the software industry where this happens more than not. This type of work is not sustainable and we Americans need to stand up for better jobs and better working conditions (gee, that sounds historically fimiliar). Otherwise, companies will take everything they can, including your life.
You know, sometimes things are wrong and need to be corrected. Even when lawyers are involved.
Bingo! One of Murphy's Laws of Software Development States: "adding more programmers to a late project makes it later". Also read "The Mythical Man Month" and "Death March". Good software management is NOT easy, thats why there is so much poor management. Just telling the lead programmer he is now the project manager is not the way to do it. Technically EA does not have to pay OT or they would have been sued by now. What they MAY do is pay for the extra time but not at 1.5X and maybe not for everyone. It's mostly a PR stunt, they might do it for one project, get the heat off, and then go back to the old way.
This was intentionally leaked. No exec. writes an internal memo that long with that tone. This is an unofficial press release.
What I don't know I just fake...
at a former employer. Company policy required managers to be present any time their employees were working overtime. As you can guess, we had to get management permission to work overtime, which was granted only when it was really needed. An interesting side effect is that our managers became very good at estimating the time needed for a project, and we were almost never late - with or without overtime.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I don't support mistreating workers, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed to companies having positions where you work 80-hr week jobs.
Therefore you support mistreating workers. You can't have it both ways.
My grandfather worked in the textile mills in Lawrence, MA, circa 1905. You worked every day for 12 hours including Saturday, and you worked hard, and if you were sick and didn't show up or you didn't work as hard as you were supposed to, then they fired you, and there were a zillion immigrants standing outside shivering waiting to take your job.
You got paid by how much cloth you wove. If your loom broke, you sat there idle, thinking about how you were going to put food on the table that evening if the loom fixer didn't come by in time.
The foreman would actually walk up and down the line of weavers and put his hand on their backs to see who was sweating and who wasn't, and God forbid you weren't a sweaty bastard like the rest of the slaves, because you were gone instantly.
I have a problem with this. So should you. There is nothing conceptually different between the Lawrence mills and the environment people are describing at EA. Just wait for EA to open its "Bangalore technology center," if it hasn't done so already and I missed it.
That's why there are labor laws. That's why unions were formed. If you let businesses make people work like slaves, pretty soon everyone will be working like slaves, and then we'll all be slaves.
So it has to be stopped, and this HR asshole can whine all he wants about EA "discovering" that it is understaffing its projects and overworking its employees (after developing how many games, now? Come on. What a crock of shit). Anyone who didn't know whose side HR is on should read this guy's memo carefully. He promises nothing. He pretends surprise. He cajoles. He soothes. He's worried about the process. He's got great ideas for the future. The labor laws on the books are obsolete, and just don't apply to EA or other high tech jobs. Because high tech "creative" people are special. They need to work 80 hours a week. California should recognize this. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.
Yeah right. The guy makes me puke, as does every other HR asshole I've ever worked with, both in senior management and as a programming grunt.
We are looking at reclassifying some jobs to overtime eligible in the new Fiscal Year.
We have no concrete plans to do anything at this time, but we do plan to talk among ourselves about it, and we're making sure you know we're planning on talking about it so that your hopes are raised without any actual promises of anybody getting overtime pay.
We have resisted this in the past, not because we don't want to pay overtime,
Government regulators held a gun to our head and told us we couldn't even though we really, really wanted to.
but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology companies
OK, even you won't buy something that stupid. The truth is we knowingly broke the law because we thought it should not apply to us.
the kind of employees those companies attract and the kind of compensation packages their employees prefer
We hire young naive idealists and milk them for all they are worth. When they wise up, well, there's a sucker born every minute.
We consider our artists to be "creative" people and our engineers to be "skilled" professionals who relish flexibility
Clarification: by "flexibility" we don't mean that you will get to choose when to work -- it means that we know you value management's flexibility to choose for you.
but others use the outdated wage and hour laws to argue in favor of a workforce that is paid hourly like more traditional industries and conforming to set schedules.
We haven't figured out how to control project schedules. Learning how to do this is harder than getting the laws changed so we can put the onus for delivering poorly planned projects on you
OK, I'm not a huge fan of unions, but they're looking better every minute.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
For those who don't know - and for those that do, here's a refresher: Marx's Labor Theory of Value, though much critiqued in recent times, purports the value of product is a product of the various types of labor and resources that go into producing it. Typically, if one wants to lower the value of that product to make it more competitive, labor must be "squeezed". For more information, and a bit more lengthy description, click here. In relation to the issues of EA, as if EA were the only tech company with practices like these, it is obvious that programmers are the labor being squeezed. What makes the case interesting however is that as the economy becomes more competitive sections of labor that formerly considered themselves insulated from the squeeze are now feeling it. In many industries, the value of products reflects more the marketing costs than the actual production costs. I'm not sure about the specifics of EA games, but I'm willing to wager that they spend more money on marketing (NFL endorsements, advertising, packaging, etc.) than paying their developers and production staff. In the 1990's, we were warned about this happening. As more kids were guided into technology jobs - being told it's the way of the future - some bright individuals saw that eventually the high demand would bottom out. We still need programmers today, that's for sure, but just not at the incredible rate we did in say 1995. We have too many programmers for them to be a valuable labor commodity any more. Sorry, that's the truth. Next in line though to lose the value of their labor is likely to be the marketing guys. Not the football players or NFL execs, but the guys who decide which football players and what color to use on the damn box. Business schools are booming with students looking to fill these positions. Students enrolling in CS classes fortunately has leveled off, but students enrolling in business classes continues to climb. After all, you can't make much money doing CS, philosophy, psychology, or very many other disciplines. With marketing guys and business guys starting to be squeezed as well, unless something can be done to unite all labor, we will continue to see wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer individuals. In the US, the middle class is shrinking. Not because they are being paid less outright, but because there are fewer positions that pay what they should and the pay rates do not always reflect inflation and the pressing tax burden. Whether we like it or not, unless the labor movement can be revived, the average man will continue to see less value for his toil. EA is just one small example. In the immortal words of Malcolm X and many before him: "It's the chicken coming home to roost." Perhaps if the fortunate and privileged helped labor back in the past, their could it could have been a chickening coming home to roast instead.
The problem isn't if employees are exempt or not but about EA abusing them; it appears to be about EA not compensating their employees fairly and demanding insane work weeks.
Bill
Oh, come, come, come. Without a monster or two, it's hardly a quest... merely a gaggle of friends wandering about. - Owl
The problem isn't overtime. The problem is not getting paid for it. If workers were constantly getting paid 1.5x for each hour over 40 a week the higher ups in EA would be fixing their scheduling and manpower shortages in a hurry. As it stands they are under no obligation to pay any more for 35 hours a week than 95 hours a week so why not squeeze as many hours as they can?
The reward for working hard should be compsensation not more work. If the higher ups aren't willing to be liberial with "comp time" or project bonuses then expect some unhappy workers. Killing morale does not help the company at all.
True, and I tend to side with you on this one. But this is another case of an employer exploiting its workforce to a degree that's arguably criminal. Remember the genesis of labor unions was at a time where ungodly workdays and incredibly cruel punishment was seen as the norm, and often these people didn't have a choice, they were just happy to have a job. You'd think that the talent being hired at EA would be an exception, but the trap seems to be this idealism that game developers have about making games - the sort of rose-colored glasses mentality that comes from playing games all your life and getting to work on the next big one. EA's the big dog on the block, so it's no wonder they're recruiting people that will work themselves to the bone for them.
This is a step that's long overdue, it was a matter of time before some company pushed idealistic people like these game developers (or music industry interns, film students, etc) past their limits and undercompensated them for it. Argue what you want about how you would handle the situation, but I prefer to live in a country whose laws allow me to push back on an employer I feel is treating me badly rather than slink away and declare some kind of moral victory. EA would have continued this nonsense had we not seen the snowball effect from ea_spouse and others airing their grievances. They are well within their rights to do so and we shouldn't criticize them for it.
Maybe it might be beneficial for some of us and/or all of us to give investor relations at EA a call. Maybe ask them how this negative press is going to effect their sales and the current stock prices. and wouldn't you know they have a website. http://investor.ea.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=88189&p=iro l-contact
enjoy,
Lothar
snatch the pebble from my hand grasshopper........
Geez, I' ve got to get some work done, but this caught my eye and I just can't let this PR piece go uncommented:
...through carefully crafted PR "leaks"
...there are things we just need to fix. And the solutions dont apply to just our studios the people who market, sell, distribute and support the great games that our Studios create, all share a demanding workload.
...blah blah blah...
The last few weeks of reading blogs and the media about EA culture and work practices have not been easy. I know personally how hard it is when so much of the news seems negative.
Yeah, cause it means that HR has to put in our full 40 hours just to answer all the emails from you and the boss about how we're not keeping a better lid on this stuff.
We have purposefully not responded to web logs and the media because the best way to communicate is directly with you, our team members.
As much as I dont like whats been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth: the work is getting harder, the tasks are more complex and the hours needed to accomplish them have become a burden. We havent yet cracked the code on how to fully minimize the crunches in the development and production process.
Okay, lets stop right here. This is a company with vast resources and development history. They can't get one guy to go back and look at the last few years and tell them how many man-hours it's going to take to develop the next game? I'm not talking down to the minute - they're clearly under-staffed by about 40-70% if the reports are true. You can't get me a WAG within 10% and hire-up? I call bullshit in the biggest way. Only the most incompetent manager would underestimate time this badly when they have a known track record.
Classic avoidance of the issue by peer pressure. "Everybody else is working overtime, it's the industry standard...get used to it." It's the standard because nobody is willing stand up and put a stop to the pre-industrial-revolution working conditions.
Three weeks ago we issued our bi-annual Talk Back Survey and more than 80 percent of you participated much higher than the norm for a company our size. That tells me you care and are committed to making EA better.
Human nature predicts that the majority of people will only speak up when they are dissatified, and want change. If things are going well, there's no need to cause a commotion. Looking at the turn out in elections is a prime example of this phenominon.
In the next 30 days well have the survey results and we will share them openly with you by the middle of January.
What, no raw data? Thirty days is a long time to tally the multiple choice - how bout a sneak preview?
Your feedback in the Talk Back Survey will help us make changes in the coming year, but were not waiting some changes are already in the works in the Studios. Here are just a few:
Nothing but some techincal changes here. Good, but unless you're going to admit that such a large company is randomly re-developing things so badly as to waste hoards of man-hours, I'm going to say that this is band-aid stuff that'll (maybe) take an hour off the typical workweek if you keep the product the same. In reality, it will just allow more work to be done in the existing time, and expectations of output to rise. With all the productivity software out there, we should be working 12 hour weeks, based on what was done thirty years ago.
We are looking at reclassifying some jobs to overtime eligible in the new Fiscal Year.
Sounds good, but this is just consideration...not the actual reclassification. They'll probably decide what they have is good.
We have resisted this in the past, not because we dont want to pay overtime, but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You want both a high paying job and no extra hours, don't you? What make you feel you've earned it?
Well it's not the extra hours per se. It's the fact that the workers aren't being paid for those hours.
Yes, the EA workers should quit. Their not working 40 hours for $60k, their working two 40 hour jobs for $30k.
So that guy doesn't make 100x what our worst producers do, but here's what does happen:
:)
1. He makes ~2-2.5x what the low producer does
2. He gets selected for the interesting problems (And gets to say - I don't want to work on that project.)
3. He is highly regarded by his peers for being sharp - in many cases that's worth more than money. (At least to geeks it can be.)
4. Management gives much greater latitude in terms of work hours - because they know that they can count on that person when the chips are down.
Finally, it's important to note that many times our techies are led down the primrose path of believing that technical prowess is the most important measure of achievement.
As a result I know a couple of really sharp developers in our organization who are treated scornfully by management. These people are brilliant, but their attitude and approach make them distasteful to everyone else who "doesn't get it" because they are "stupid" and management people are "idiots."
People skills are critical to success, unless you're a genius on the order of John Carmack. People skills are directly related to compensation - far more than technical skills - this is why people think that their bosses are morons and all management types are idiots. The world measures on a different scale than geeks do. Unions won't fix that.
Thanks for inviting me to post more on slashdot!
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?