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EA's Summer Interns Weigh In
MTV's games site has a piece looking at what it means to be a summer intern at EA. The article explores the experiences of three interns who did far more than fetching coffee. From the article: "Gwynne Olson-Wheeler ... showed some of her intern work in a cubicle that wasn't hers -- she was spending her final weeks of the summer working on a different floor, on EA's under-wraps 'Simpsons' game. Meeting with her there would give away too many secrets. So instead she zapped some graphics work she did earlier in the season for 'Sims 2 Pets' onto her iPod and plugged into a computer at a less-sensitive area. The room where she set up was darkened by dropped blinds, most of them dotted with spent ammunition from the floor's many Nerf gun battles. On the walls, signs addressed the staff of another under-wraps EA game: 'Welcome Sims 3 team.'"
This article doesn't seem to highlight the same soul-crushing work ethic that other articles on EA has in the past.
What gives? Is this an HR ploy to keep resumes coming in from fresh college blood?
Wow! Didn't realize universities had a "Masochism" major. Would an internship at the "Head On" testing lab count? Or even working at a recording studio doing nothing but cataloging Michael Bolton albums?
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
Now "ex-summer-intern at EA"...
Sounds suspiciously like a Clinton/Monica like internship.
That would kind of defeat the point of working for a programming company where you do nothing concerning your job. It may be one thing when you're interning for a law degree where sometimes there's just nothing that an intern can do, but I hold programming at a different level.
:P
My pipe dream, of course
EA's Summer Interns Weigh In ...at 300 pounds!
Well, that's what I expected. It's not like they ever let you out for exercise, unless you consider the giant corporate hamster wheels.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
How about also teaching civics and Constitutional law to politicians (who spy on their citizens), ethics to CEOs (hello, HP?), and so on?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Interns should be especially weary of the Network Use Policies: no plugging in devices without prior approval....she could be taking down the company with that iPod hard drive...load it up with everything you got and sell it to RockStar
i support the right to offend.
This is the true story
...start getting real
Of 137 students
Picked to live in some cubicles for a summer
And have their lives... what lives?
To find out what happens
When people stop being polite
And...
(the four who survived our reeducation facilities)
Game... blouses.
eh?
when Push Comes to Shove
"The top schools EA pulls from are Ringling College and USC. No interns come from the so-called gaming trade schools like Full Sail and Digipen, because McCreary and her team prefer the depth of education offered at more established colleges."
Look up discrimination.
For people who want to work for your company but happened to have chosen the wrong school, possibly because it was the school that they can afford, how do you suggest that they get the proper work experience?
You hire interns as cheap slaves. But you better not treat them as such if you plan to use them as recruits. You get to see if they know their stuff for a month or two, you get to find out if you can work with them, wouldn't you want those that you can use to want to come back?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
OK, so they were talking about a chili-hamburger eating contest, but I think the quote aptly describes working at EA.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
"We swear we're not teh evil anymore! Please come work here! ... Everyone floats down here woo ha ha ha!"
stuff |
So... is it true they have a Boss-key in Excel which instantly teleports them back into WoW?
I interned with EA Tiburon this past summer, I worked as a Software Engineer on the Tiger Woods PGA Tour team for the PS3 and Xbox360.
First off, noone was working insane hours. It's a misconception that people have that you get worked to death. I didn't see anyone on the team working like that and I sure as hell didn't work like that.
Yes, they liked me there, before some smartass posts "Well, you didn't work late because your code sucked."
I was the build engineer for Tiger Woods PGA Tour and I also implemented some features into Tiger Woods 2007 (I haven't seen the credits yet, but they told me I'd be in them).
Next up, one of the interns was from Digipen (and he can drink as fast as I can). There's no discrimination against people from trade schools. Hell, the guy who replaced me as Build Engineer when I left graduated from Full Sail. However, in general, the people coming out of those trade schools have no business competing with people who have degrees from major universities (when asked what schools to go to, Will Wright responded GeorgiaTech, USC, and Carnegie Melon on multiple occasions). I, personally, am from GeorgiaTech and will be graduating in the Spring with a bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and a Bachelors in Computer Science. This isn't to say those schools aren't valuable, but you get what you put into them: they graduate everyone. Again, this is a generalization, this isn't always the case.
I loved working at EA and I'm definitely staying in the game industry. Despite the fact that all of the armchair engineers on various forums (you know who you are) are constantly ragging on <i>something</i>, it's still fun. I still love the fact that everyone who said "oh you're going to work for the slave drivers at EA" when I was leaving have eyes glazed over after hearing the great work experience it actually was.
Chris Burke is right, when he posted the two main reasons for an engineer internship as being cheap labor and an extended interview. This is the case everywhere. However, that doesn't mean they overwork you or treat you like crap. I was a part of the team when I was there, or at least felt that way, and loved going to work every morning (ok, sorta true, I hate waking up in the morning). The hours were flexible, I went to work in a tshirt, shorts, and sandals on many occasions, and I had a PS3 and an Xbox 360 at my desk. How awesome is that?
Flame away.
If you always think like an expert, you'll always be a beginner.
Another explanation might be that many companies prefer students who have graduated rather than students still going to school. For one, the game release schedule doesn't always perfectly work into the summer - if you've got a game being released in September, you may need a guy who can work forty hours a week for three months before that. What's more, you may need someone who works fifty hours a week the few weeks before the release date to cover the final ground, just like everyone else at the company does, and if you're trying to balance class time against work time, you can often find yourself lacking for space in your schedule even more than the average programmer grunt.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.