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EA Fires 5% of Its Staff
JorgeDeLaCancha writes "On the heels of the dispute between EA and Ubisoft, EA has recently announced the decision to fire five percent of their workforce, approximately 350 people. EA's recent announcement has nothing to do with game sales, but rather 'It's more reconciling the costs of learning new systems with what the needs of the new systems are.'"
So the guys who are already working like 100 hour weeks will have to do 105 now?
Put identity in the browser.
Good thing they're not as evil as that "Ubisoft" company.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
They have a lot of employees... no wonder they're able to churn out so many [re-]releases every year!
How do you really know this is a troll?
I mean, honestly. Isn't it at all possible that the heads of EA actually do wait 'till the end of the day, close the door to the executive boardroom, and let the goats loose and go to town?
I suggest (Score: 1, Implausible)
My friend was one of the people who was cut. He was given a nice severance package. He gets paid like normal until April. When April hits, he gets 1 months pay and gets to cash his vacation hours in. Also during the time between now and April, he still gets more vacation time.
:P
However, they said he would have to come back the next day to get his stuff from his cube. He wasnt allowed to get it that day. Also, the second he was let go, all his access to the building was removed. I suppose that is just a precaution if the employee goes nuts though.
EA lays off 5% of its staff. Big difference.
How do you know the poster of that didn't go off to live under a bridge and bash some heads in with a huge club after posting that?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
whip it good!
/couldn't resist
As the former executive in charge of goat hearding I cannot comment due to the NDA I signed when I was layed off.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Because, everyone knows the only person that lives under the bridge is the hobo who gives you the 4th bottle.
//need Zora's flippers first, though...
I'm glad that EA is making these cuts, I'm sure they're pretty strapped for cash, and this is the cause of their subpar titles.
*phew* I'm relieved.
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I mean, honestly. Isn't it at all possible that the heads of EA actually do wait 'till the end of the day, close the door to the executive boardroom, and let the goats loose and go to town?
Not since Sarbanes-Oxley.
May the Maths Be with you!
That is pretty good treatment. Salary for 3 months, then a 1 month bonus, then vacation pay, which is anywhere from 2-4 weeks. So approx. 5 months pay severance total. That's an excellent deal. Last time I was laid off, I got 2 paychecks and unused vacation time. And considering I had just come back from vacation two weeks before, wasn't much. And I was there 5 years. And it was a full half of the company that got laid off.
Um, there is a reason why HR designates a class of "re-hires." Laid-off employees are always allowed to return to their former employer. It's more a matter of whether they ever want to come back, depending on how they were treated. You might be surprised how often employers decide to outsource their staff and realize later that it was a bad decision. Heck, my former employer has already realized that. Management changes; people change. I could easily make a lot more money going back to them. But do I want to?
'It's more reconciling the costs of learning new systems with what the needs of the new systems are.'
I keep trying to read through this and understand what they are trying to say, but every time I do, my internal parser hits a run time error.
Could a grammar nazi out there please change the syntax from PR Babble to English?
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Lost some friends, too. Sucks.
It means that EA's CEO gets to keep his salary, bonuses and other perks intact.
"Fired" generally means that a person was terminated for some reason directly related to their work performance or some portion of their personal work-related activities, while "laid off" generally means that the termination was due to elements completely outside the person's control.
Unemployment benefits are generally available to the latter group with very little question (the employer makes the situation known to the state), while the qualifying for such benefits depends on specific circumstances in the former group's case (folks who get fired often have to go through a formal hearing process to determine whether or not UI benefits apply in their situation).
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The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
As one of the more junior guys on the Need for Speed team, it really wasn't surprising that my boyfriend was caught in this round of layoffs. However, I find it a bit ironic that they would lay anyone off on one of their most profitable teams -- Most Wanted was top of the charts in Britain during the Christmas season (beating out even FIFA) and pretty damn popular in Europe and North America. Cutting on the teams that were actually losing money/not making enough of a profit would've made more sense to me.
He's not too choked up over it, though. I think he's more stressed than he's letting on, but he's been looking at the bright side: they're paying him quite well for the next few months to play the very game that caused their profits to drop *cough*WoW*cough* while he searches for a new and hopefully better job. Given that EA made him work 80+ hours per week last summer, including at least one occasion when he slept at the office on a Sunday night, this is probably a good time for him to find a job with more reasonable hours. Working every weekend for more than half the dev cycle of a game just ain't cool.
They were liberated from the tyranny of working at EA.
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... from those who were laid off. The day I quit EA was one of the best days of my life.
That might very well be the case. However, goats are not donkeys.
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Just say no to irreversible processes!
That's not how it's always been.
When I was laid off by EA, all I got was two weeks plus vacation, and a month to exercise remaining stock options. And they didn't help me out with the losses incurred by selling my house too fast after buying it, even though I bought it on assurances from one of the bigwigs that the company was fine.
I will never work in games again, let alone EA, except perhaps as a contractor via a third party. (I actually did that last year -- and not only was the client EA, but the project was one I'd worked on as their employee!)
From what you describe, the severance packages seem to vary quit a bit. Your friend gets regular pay for the next 2 months followed by vacation pay-out. One of my friends got 3 months salary in a single lump-sum payment that came with his pink slip, and will get a 4th month in lump sum if he agrees to sign a departure agreement. He was just a junior slave and hadn't been there very long, so it's not like he got a better deal by virtue of his position or tenure. Getting escorted from the building is apparently standard practise. My friend was taken back to his office the same morning and they watched him pack.
Nobody seems to know how they selected the lucky 5%. It definitely wasn't seniority and probably wasn't job performance.
What's really hilarious is that my friend had already accepted a position at another company and was writing his letter of resignation when they called him into the office to serve him his layoff notice. Timing is everything - he basically won the lottery this time around.
Are you suggesting that every member of the executive board is a Freemason?