Okay, this really pisses me off
Spouse of an EA Employee describes working conditions.
According to this article, EA employees routinely go through a "pre-crunch" time, working 8 hour days 6 days a week, at the start of a project, presumably to prevent the need for a major crunch time in the months before gold.
Then this pre-crunch is increased to 12 hour days 6 days a week. This increase takes place AFTER the pre-crunch was supposed to end.
Then they go into the real crunch, consisting of 12 hour days 7 days a week, for the end time of the project.
84 hour weeks burn employees down. No days off just makes things horrible.
Oh, and it gets worse.
EA no longer gives "comp" time. This is time given to employees as a sort of free vacation after the product is finished, sort of as a thanks to them for working so hard.
Oh, and unlike normal crunch times which are enacted in order to bring a project that is behind up to speed, the products in question at EA aren't behind. This is standard operating procedure.
Here's the kicker: No overtime.
You see, according to a state law, CA "specialty" employees do not have to be payed overtime, including software engineers. However, this does NOT apply to the entertainment industry, and Video Game Development can easily be considered an entertainment industry. As the whole point of the industry is to ENTERTAIN PEOPLE!
And, even if the video game buisness is not exempt, there's still the fact that you have to be paid over $90,000 a year to be considered exempt. Most EA employees are not in that bracket.
This is the industry I want to go into. I want to make games for a living. But if my choices were to be making games with mandatory 48, 70, or 84 hour weeks, or writing databases during 40 hour weeks, I'd rather do the latter. This is a horrible practice that they are undergoing. I'm so glad that they are getting sued for this.
Oh, and Halo 2 rocks.
According to this article, EA employees routinely go through a "pre-crunch" time, working 8 hour days 6 days a week, at the start of a project, presumably to prevent the need for a major crunch time in the months before gold.
Then this pre-crunch is increased to 12 hour days 6 days a week. This increase takes place AFTER the pre-crunch was supposed to end.
Then they go into the real crunch, consisting of 12 hour days 7 days a week, for the end time of the project.
84 hour weeks burn employees down. No days off just makes things horrible.
Oh, and it gets worse.
EA no longer gives "comp" time. This is time given to employees as a sort of free vacation after the product is finished, sort of as a thanks to them for working so hard.
Oh, and unlike normal crunch times which are enacted in order to bring a project that is behind up to speed, the products in question at EA aren't behind. This is standard operating procedure.
Here's the kicker: No overtime.
You see, according to a state law, CA "specialty" employees do not have to be payed overtime, including software engineers. However, this does NOT apply to the entertainment industry, and Video Game Development can easily be considered an entertainment industry. As the whole point of the industry is to ENTERTAIN PEOPLE!
And, even if the video game buisness is not exempt, there's still the fact that you have to be paid over $90,000 a year to be considered exempt. Most EA employees are not in that bracket.
This is the industry I want to go into. I want to make games for a living. But if my choices were to be making games with mandatory 48, 70, or 84 hour weeks, or writing databases during 40 hour weeks, I'd rather do the latter. This is a horrible practice that they are undergoing. I'm so glad that they are getting sued for this.
Oh, and Halo 2 rocks.
posted by Wraithy at 11/11/2004 07:57:00 PM
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