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Comment by mattnewport | Hacker News Reader

You tend to hear the worst cases. For all the bad rep EA gets, like any big company a lot depends on your team and manager. I worked two separate 3-4 year stints on central tech teams and never had forced overtime (although there was some pressure / expectation at times) and things were reasonably sane. My time at Relic was also fairly positive with some long hours but mostly self imposed.

Game development is generally complex and has some special challenges but given those constraints isn't always worse than many typical software projects.

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I can vouch for this.

(Hi, Matt!)

I spent 17 years at EA among a number of teams and found the most challenging parts were the BigCo related issues; things like cultural mismatches between groups that have been ordered together, or politics. The working hours were standard for the most part, occasionally there would be a fire to put out but all the management I had was fair about compensating for any extra hours.

Working under a studio published by EA was very much the opposite experience. It was crunch till you drop, don't dare put the studio logo in the game or you'll be fired, shit-show rodeo from beginning to end.

Coworkers I had from other parts(Nascar, NFS/EA Seattle, etc) all had similar stories and of course there's the infamous easpouse.

In case anyone else needs to lookup the term easpouse, I assume it relates to this post: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

My direct experience is that the third parties doing work-for-hire gigs tend to get the worst of it, because they're disposable. When the publisher owns the studio there's some fiefdom management that takes place that allows the bosses to protect their employees in a sort of empire-building strategy. When it's a contract, oftentimes the studio management is suckered into taking a deal they can't deliver on. The publisher subsequently squeezes them dry, then buys up the remains of the dead husk to ship something for cheap and perhaps scoop up the best employees. A successful third-party more or less has to play hardball from the get-go and find a way to block this strategy.

The publishers have a weaker hand to play today, since it's easy to go to market with minimal marketing and distribution spend, but that has the side effect of making it more common to see tiny studios that run a sweatshop churning out bad products.

Hey Max!

Yep, it was the big company stuff that led me to leave EA on both occasions but I worked with many smart, competent people there (Max included) and learned a lot. I heard some horror stories and don't doubt that there was truth to them but I never personally experienced any of the really toxic games industry stuff that you hear about. To be honest I think I'd have just left if I had, there was never a time where finding another job was a major concern.

So weird that there are such huge differences in experience between comments.

Why do you think you weren’t part of those other groups of people who did have to work unpaid overtime every week? Were you in an area with lots of people for whom finding another job wasn’t a major concern?

I don't think it's that weird, I've heard horror stories about working at many big companies - Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Netflix... Typically there will be other people responding to the stories saying that they didn't have the same experience at those companies.

As I said in my original comment, a lot depends on your manager and your team. It probably also depends on your location (my experience was at the Vancouver studio) and when you were at the company.

While it does seem that some companies and industries might be worse than others depending on the culture, in general it looks to me like you're better off with the best manager / team in a 'bad' company than with the worst manager or team in a 'good' company and not everyone is going to have the same experience in the same company.

Being on a central technology team at EA I think meant less crunch than being on a game team with hard ship deadlines. Friends I know who worked on game teams at the same studio had more crunch periods but they also typically got more 'comp time' (an EA term for extra vacation time given after ship) and might also get bigger bonuses. I think they sometimes got more pressure to work overtime.

Thank you! I forwarded your responses to a friend who was interested too.

Hey, Max! We worked together across oceans a little bit when you were here. Just wanted to agree with your assessment. In the various teams/roles I've been in here over the last 6 years, from game team to core tech, I've gone through periods of a lot of overtime and no overtime. Even when I was doing some long hours (especially on my first title), I always felt fairly compensated and never felt forced to crunch. Having said that it really does depend on the team/manager/specific area of work - in the very same studio I knew others who were going through some serious crunch and subsequent burnout.

I wonder if some of the horror stories are partially attributable to technical folks being bad at interpersonal dynamics.

I can see crunch situations (ship deadline approaching, much work to be done) demanding a lot of communication skills between managers and developers for everyone to feel good.

If someone on either side drops the ball (being overly aggressive / under appreciating, failing to clearly communicate work-life limits and expectations), it ends very ugly.

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