NYT on EA Games 651
The New York Times has a story investigating the EA Games accusations that we reported on before. They use the phrase "toiling like galley slaves" to describe EA's programmers, and note that EA has a formal policy of hiring young, naive people who are willing to work long hours for low pay.
Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that good? People often bitch that no one will hire you unless you have some industry experience, and how are you going to get that if no one hires you without it?
I knew it (Score:1, Interesting)
Chicken Run (Score:5, Interesting)
What happens when one of the chicken complains about the living condition, maybe by mean of fasting-protest (so that it doesn't grow fat enough in time)? Well, the owner will just find another chicken to replace this naughty one, because there are so many more chicken hatched and ready to grow.
What if this bad chuck told 999 of his mates to do the same? Well, in a farm of 3,000, the owner will simply replace these 1,000 bad apples as long as the rest still grow fast enough, and the 1,000 replacement grow even faster to make up time.
What about the free range chicken? Well, they have found a good owner, who has a consumer market that demands free running healthy lean chicken. With that demand that the owner cannot ignore, he's set to exercise his chicken, offer plenty of land for them to run about and feed them only the approved corns.
Employers need to measure passion for the job. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe this is just wild speculation. But perhaps managers need to be taught to recognise voluntary additional work as just that, and not to count on it in the future -- especially, not to work it into their business models and work flow charts.
glad I didn't get that job (Score:3, Interesting)
I was interviewed in Toronto for a position at the Vancouver (Burnaby) studio. I am glad I didn't get that job.
The reason why they recruit young grads is because we are naive. I was naive. Afterall, it was my dream job at the time, an illusion now shattered.
No room to complain (Score:1, Interesting)
re: long hours. So what? The author of this article obviously doesn't know that there are waiters and painters and salespeople working similar hours and making less than $30K with no benefits whatsoever.
Sounds like a case of hard work with good rewards. Obviously, this is a big problem.
Re:Surprise Surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually though, you're totally right. Sometimes I try to tell myself that later in life when I'm too old and tired to work like I do now, and in some middle management position, that I'll be greatful it's like that. At the same time, I have to wonder whether things are getting better, or worse, over time. Certainly we are now headed for four years at least of an employment market that wants labor to be as cheap as it can get, fie on the consequences.
Possibly offtopic (Score:4, Interesting)
I grew up on Origin & Westwood games so I'll use them as an example.
Wing Commander
Ultima
Crusader
Dune
Command And Conquer
EA chased out two creative minds like Chris Robert and Richard Garriot. Origin and Westwood have now gone the way of the dinosaurs.
Hey but now we have the all the Sims games/expansions we can fit down our throats. Theres no Samurais and ninjas in UO (wtf?), and there a new/redundant sports titled every year. Nothing really creative, but plenty more of the same.
Not to worry, if theres any money to be made from someone not in EA, EA/Vivendi will assimilate them and be sure to repeat the process.
I really hope somebody puts the screws to these publisher's for their behavior. Even if the development and enforcement of a Programmer's Union could lead to increase costs placed on the consumer end.
Somebody has to win one for Colonel Blair and the Avatar.
Predictions? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no denying the capitalistic desire to get more for less. Every Walmart shopper knows this desire. Should we even go so far as to say there's nothing wrong with it? Maybe. But we are talking about PEOPLE, not products... employees, not slaves... and we are talking about some pretty abusive and inhumane tactics that clearly involve intentional deception on the part of the employer.
In short, we clearly observe a situation where a company's management is willfully acting in an immoral way and I don't see where it matters one bit that it's a natural desire or that other people are also doing similar things. Wrong is still wrong no matter how frequently it occurs.
But the thing here is now there is an opportunity for the employees to make a change. If a large enough number of people formed a strike, there's no way they could retrain replacements fast enough. It would be huge bad P.R., a relatively newsworthy event and a wake-up call to any new hopefuls.
It's too early to predict an uprising, but I see great potential.
Re:Good (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Surprise Surprise (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:No room to complain (Score:3, Interesting)
The irony there is that if their worker abuse case is decided in favor of the employees, those options will likely be worthless. But they'll take it. I recently started a job with a local community college; they're starting to offer game creation courses. I was talking with a coworker who's interested in the field and when I mentioned EA to him, every time, his reply was "But you get to work on games!"
Maybe, just maybe, they get what they ask for.
Re:as always with the NYT (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a really interesting way to manage a company (though incredibly draining psychologically on the employees) and it explains a lot of the way Apple seems to work. Just look at the care that goes into the little details of the system. It ensures that while employees are being pushed, they are the ones pushing themselves and this passion shows up in their work. I don't know of many bosses that could pull off this sort of atmosphere without frustrating employees and making them quit.
In addition, after the release of 10.3, the OS development team took a serious break. Having used the OS for over a year now, for how much it has progressed so quickly, I can say that they really deserved the change of pace.
Re:No room to complain (Score:1, Interesting)
My call here is not to stick up for EA but for those to understand what someone in the military really goes through and how little they take home for it.
Labor Unions unappreciated (Score:5, Interesting)
And especially young people who don't have a clue, have no idea that if it wasn't for labor unions, things like 80 hour work weeks and no weekends would be common throughout most industries.
Obviously unions aren't perfect, and like any powerful entity, there are abuses and corruption, but the fact is that for the most part the game industry is not organized and as a result the workers are treated unfairly.
Re:No room to complain (Score:2, Interesting)
and in case you havn't noticed, their stock has more than quadrupled in the last 4 years.
so yeah, it must be rough working your ass off as a 'young programmer' making -video games-, for an incredibly sucessful, profitable, tech company in silicon valley these days....
very rough indeed.
Re:how is that different from other companies (Score:3, Interesting)
Stand your ground (Score:3, Interesting)
Not all people work long hours because of naivete (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow, I don't regret that at all. Now that I'm older, have a daughter and different priorities, I hate that young people are still willing to do that, because it makes me look like a less desirable employee.
The problem with EA, however, is not the way they work their employees with long hours, but the way they deceive people to get them and keep them before turnover finally claims them. If EA said: we're going to pay you $25k/yr base, but work you 100 hours a week, so you'll make $85k with overtime, then there would be no problem. (And, quite possibly, no people accepting jobs there)
And let's talk The Law (Score:3, Interesting)
Specifically:
In order to make all those huge profits EA is exploiting their employees and breaking the law. It just does not get any clearer than this.
Re:how is that different from other companies (Score:3, Interesting)
That's irrelevant. The developers here appear to be working the same hours doing things that actually make the company tick and they're making about 10% of what Mr. Probst is if you figure the top devs in this situation pull in a healthy $100k a year.
The point wasn't how much any individual worked, the point was that if you're working outrageous hours to make the company tick, you should get outrageous compensation. Otherwise, I'd have to say you're entirely justified in fighting back. In fact, I'll be happy if this makes some upper management goons lose their cushy jobs at EA. It's hard to stand on people's broken backs puffing your chest out when they start wiggling around to toss you off, and hopefully that's what's happening here. Few things about business make me happier than seeing an MBA-holding asshole go from outrageous pay to the street gutter to starve to death because nothing about business quite irritates me so much as some idiot without any real skills who took a bunch of "business" courses and figured out how to tie a tie pulling down insane amounts of "compensation" that should rightfully be going to the people doing the work.
Re:As an IT Guru (Score:5, Interesting)
How exactly did you do that, just curious? Some things I can guess:
A. You moved to a third world country. If you are living in the U.S. you are inherently at a disadvantage because the cost of living WILL price you out of the new global market. Maybe you have forgone health insurance and are living in rural America or maybe a slum?
B. You made the jump from worker to employer or at least self employed. This is the only real way to escape the impending race to the bottom in wages until the U.S. levels with China and India (finding a level is kind of tough when you are competing against a billion plus new workers). An especially good variation is you have jumped to an employer or at least an executive exploiting the cheap labor in China, India and Eastern Europe. Is that why you've been visiting there? That may work until the workers and executives in China an India acquire your skills, expertise and customers at which point you will be expendable to them. Its a key thing American executives are missing in their rush to cheap labor. Eventually those countries are going to figure out they don't need American executives raking in the 7 figure salaries and not doing much for it. They will also have better markets than the U.S. China is already rapidly approaching that. Their workers are seeing expanding prosperity while American real income is declining. China is a better market to enter now and the Chinese are better equipped to tap it than Americans.
C. Maybe you've acquired skills that are still in demand and you skills haven't been overwhelmed with low cost workers that have them. All I can say is hope it last. There aren't many skills you can have someone else can't develop too. When manufacturing workers started losing their jobs to China, IT workers scoffed because they were in the bubble and in demand. Well now their jobs are going their too. So now biotech workers scoff about their skills, well guess what they are going too now. Lawyers and doctors, harder but a lot of non courtroom legal work is going and doctors in India are increasingly marketing a plane ticket and an operation. Maybe you have skills in an area that requires your physical presence in the U.S. well more H-1B's can nail you there too. Any skills you have someone in China and India can acquire too and they will work for a lot less than you.
As other's responding to your post have suggested what you are calling global competition can also be called class warfare. Trade barriers, poor communications and cost of shipping goods(when longshoreman had to load and unload ships) hamstrung capitalists in most of the 20th century. It resulted in rising wages, wider prosperity and expensive labor in the U.S., Western Europe and later Japan. Dropping of trade barrier, ubiquitous cheap communications and container shipping have given them the upper hand again. The end result is they are pushing workers back to where they were at the beginning of the 20th century. 80 hour work weeks for a subsistence wage, no job security(layoff 1/3rd of your workers just to keep the other 2/3rds focused and not demanding more wages or luxuries like health care), age discrimination.
In the U.S. the fact a pro business and anti labor party now completely dominates government is currently dooming American workers to return to where they were in the early 20th century, they just wont be working in factories, they will be in cube farms shackled to computers....... exactly like EA. It doesn't look as bad but in most of the ways its the same. 80 hour work weeks for long periods destroys people mentally, physically and spiritually, whether its at a computer or in a factory, take if from someone who knows. If you are going it for your own business you might survive and prosper. If you are working for some dick who is making 100X what you are and who would just as soon shit on you as look at your life is going to suck.
Re:So why the US don't follow Canada's steps... (Score:2, Interesting)
Realistically, most firms who've shipped work overseas have regretted the quality of work. The fact that so many other firms still consider doing it is indicative of a couple of nasty social problems, as I see it. Firstly, executives these days give too much weight to the opinions of accountants and too little to the people with common sense. Secondly, there's just an overwhelming lack of respect for technical workers here in the United States. That comes from so many different things I wouldn't even know where to begin.
Reasons to Boycott EA games (Score:3, Interesting)
2.) The classic Electronic Arts as we know it has been gone for a long long time. EA is just a rich marketing force slaving over all the little companies.
3.) EA has a very microsoft-ish marketing tactics. EA has tried hard many times to lock in sports association licenses so that non-EA sports games can't use authentic players. Luckily they failed.
4.) Competitors have to sell at lower cost to keep up with EA's monopoly. Like ESPN NFL costing 1/2 has much as Madden. EA has already created a deadend market where innovation and good product can't beat them alone.
Re:how is that different from other companies (Score:3, Interesting)
Doing a job that involves brainwork doesn't make you better- but in some cases it makes your contribution to the company more valuable.
A tech worker who keep an entire office of computers running provides a far larger contribution to their company than a mcdonalds worker who pulls trays out of a fryer when it beeps.
Further, jobs that involve brainwork generally have a higher level of responsibility than those that don't. Getting paid more means that it's your ass when things break.
There are many ways to work hard, and brainwork can be just as taxing and stressful as physical work.
Corel (Score:1, Interesting)
Tell that to a friend of mine who said the same when he signed up with Corel back in 1998. Their salaries were lower than all other tech companies here in Ottawa, but people recognized the name Corel, so they gladly worked for them. He worked constantly 60-80 hours a week, rarely getting paid for the extra hous. He was laid off in the big turn a couple of years back... now he's in telemarketing.
You'll see the same turn in the video game industry in a couple of years when India and China has picked up on how to make good games. I'd rather hang onto coding those boring Java/SQL database applications than facing that downturn. Game programmers aren't good at coding applications and therefor won't get much of a chance on the few remaining IT jobs here.
Re:Whose fault (Score:2, Interesting)