Sorry as I know this came up in another thread but someone at the NY Times must be reading this website:
The discussions about EA have been hot and heavy on different gaming and dev boards the last few weeks.
“Work FASTER McCullough post army! I need to get to 15,000 by summer!”
<Sorry for the derail. The story’s graphic jumped out at me. :oops:>
I though that graphic was the staff of CGM around deadline time.
“I want more stories about Trevor Tom and more witty reviews with subtly rearranged movie taglines and political catchphrases as titles and I want them NOW.” -Steve
I am totally saving that graphic for future posts because I can see so much comic potential.
The guy in that picture has some kind of fashion sense going on. His hair color, lipstick (or lip) color, shirt color, and both the whip handle color and whip color are all the same! Maybe he works as an interior decorator on the side.
And holy crap, I just noticed… even the colors of the buttons on the shirt match!
Interesting:
So the employee described by “EA Spouse” maked $60k per year. That’s not a ton, but it’s not trivial. I get the feeling, though, that it’s not high for seasoned tech folks.
EA Spouse must be tickled with him/her self though. It’s a pretty big victory that this has reached the mainstream press. Does this appear in the NYT in print anywhere?
Also, I’d REALLY love to see the employee opinion survey that EA puts out every two years.
It’s not trivial, unless you are living in Silicon Valley, which he is.
And for 84 hours a week, he’s making $13 an hour.
Game programming salaries tend to be on the low side, and $60k certainly isn’t enough to justify an 80 hr. work week. Think of it as working two $30k jobs back to back.
- Alan
The cost of living is so high in the Bay area that 60K is about the equivalent of $40K in many other cities, if you’re renting.
If you own a home, it’s the equivalent of about $25 to $30K in, say, Alabama.
I make $58k and it’s a nice 9-5, 40 hour salaried position. Tech support and system administration. Our programmers make more like 60-80 and they work the same, if not less, hours than I do. WTF are these guys thinking?
“unshakable enthusiam for the games he works on”
He must not actually play the games he works on. Zing
Granted, I haven’t worked for EA since Dec 2000 when they shut down the Baltimore office, and we weren’t working in the Silicon Valley, but I think we got paid pretty well. EA had great health care, a superb ESOP plan, and I was lucky enough to have stock options pre-split.
Yeah, crunch hours suck, but that’s the same everywhere, right? And they picked up the tab on crunch meals. We also got enough money from corporate to have decent parties (X-Mas, game wrap, etc).
One thing I did notice about Redwood Shores - they had a shitload of AP’s running around. Those folks were only one step above testers on the pay food chain, and without reading the NYT article (F their registration) I’d guess the person they are talking to is either a tester or a junior AP.
The dude with the whip does seem to have Bing’s chin - but he’s missing the Rolex.
-CJ
(who doesn’t remember his EA “designation” anymore)
It’s definetly not a tester. QA gets paid by the hour and earns overtime.
The class action suit was brought by an artist, and I think “EA_Spouse” is either an engineer or an AP.
EARS is still thick with AP Is, for what it’s worth :)
Isn’t that one of the complaints? That they used to give some good benefits, like comp time and so forth, but that dissappeared within the last few years?
CJ Martin, if it were so great why’d you leave? Just curious.
EA shut down the Baltimore office. I was offered a couple of other gigs within EA, but I didn’t want to move. In hindsight that was the right choice, as both of those other offices (EA VA and EA LV) are long gone now. Still wish I had those stock options.
After nine months or so trying to get a startup game company off the ground, I bailed and went back to my pre-game-biz-job. Needed to support my family.
-CJ
That’s one thing I hate about EA. They buout a company, then tear down any old vestiges of it. Like Origin Systems.
Like I said, I didn’t read the article. YMMV. In general though a lot of companies have been reducing benefits over the last several years - that’s not an EA issue. Or a game biz issue for that matter.
I just don’t get the Hate EA seems to get flung at it. Maybe I should have more of an axe to grind with them, but I can’t seem to get that worked up over it. It wasn’t a bad place to work, sure it had it’s share of nitwits and BS but so do all jobs. Hell, I work for the Federal Government now - talk about nitwits.
I was pretty old when I entered the game biz (mid 30’s) and had worked a bunch of different jobs. Guess that gave me perspective.
-CJ
The hate has to do with them being so huge, and gobbling up anything they possibly can, then stripping it of all humanity. Origin, Westwood, Maxis are just a few off the top of my head. Westwood Studios used ot be my favorite compnay :( now it’s a bitter shell of its former self.