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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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
This is the quote that burns me up: "[developers] relish flexibility".
This is supposed to imply that a salary-based schedule allows professionals a little flexibility in their work hours not like the poor blue-collar bastards that have to punch a clock.
Salary was supposed to mean that some weeks you work a little more, some weeks a little less, but in general you puting 40 hours a week. The entire concept of salary is meaningless if your continued employment depends upon you working 60+ hours a week.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
You know, sometimes things are wrong and need to be corrected. Even when lawyers are involved.
some links for the google deficient:
from http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/WageOrderIndustries.htm
order number 4. That's the one posted in our breakroom.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/IWCArticle4.html
Look under 1 A 3 (h) and (i)
Enjoy.
"Piter, too, is dead."
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.
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.
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?