A College Guide to EA 464
DesiVideoGamer writes "With all the recent news about EA, one of the professors at Carnegie Mellon University is giving a talk about EA after he visited the company for a semester. He also published a white paper about EA and what college grads should know about it. (pdf format) The paper talks a lot about the culture at EA and could indirectly explain the previous stories covered by Slashdot."
Hmm EA has been getting alot of bad press here (Score:2, Insightful)
The word that's missing in the account (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm EA has been getting alot of bad press here (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not saying it was a planned strategic move
Re:Hmm EA has been getting alot of bad press here (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll still agree that the perponderance of the evidence is against EA, and their lack of response is troubling. But notice that IBM hasn't been vocal in it's responses to SCO rants. So that's not proof.
Saw it coming in the eighties (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of people seem to be missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a CS grad, and most of my fellow CS grads, including myself, originally got into progtamming / CS because we wanted to do games.
Along the way there, EVERYONE knew that game developers worked long hours for little pay. Most of my friends then chose to follow another path. I wound up going into the Power Industry.
Even in spite of all the bad press EA has been getting (even though it's deserved), there are still tens of thousands of people who would sell their souls to work on an EA game.
No, that does not excuse the employee's mistreatment entirely. But you can't ignore that fact.
I've got one friend who ended up going into the Games Industry anyways, in spite of all the stories. Every once in a while we'll all get together and play the latest game he worked on. He gets bragging rights that none of the rest of us do. Everyone else writes business or industrial Apps. Nobody WE talk to gives a squirt of piss to see our latest creations, but everyone can't wait to see the newest game he churned out.
So in the end, I don't think it's fair to look at EA as this huge monolithic beast that's 100% evil, and all the poor poor employees as 100% victims. They knew what they were getting into when they applied (or at least they SHOULD'VE done their research). And now they're just getting what they should've expected.
Not everyone gets paid a huge salary and mega-benefits to work their dream jobs.
Re:A lot of people seem to be missing something... (Score:4, Insightful)
EA Sports... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've got enough Karma for now (Score:4)
In fact, you've almost convinced me to start pirating EA's games.
Re:I've got enough Karma for now (Score:4, Insightful)
People who think they can hurt software companies through piracy are stupid. All you're doing is expanding their marketshare for them, increasing the popularity of their product, and that increases their sales and profits.
Use your head. Boycott, don't pirate.
Re:EA Sports... (Score:4, Interesting)
But I don't feel like Im saving the world or even making a dent in any of these companies :)
Re:EA Sports... (Score:3, Insightful)
They still get money.... (Score:2)
Re:They still get money.... (Score:2, Insightful)
You look like nothing more than an opportunistic thief if you're willing to break the law and then justify it by saying "I'm trying to stick it to the man! If Blizzard wasn't such a bastard company, I would've bought the game instead of pirating it!" The bottom line is that if you don't want to support a company whose practices you don't approve of, don't use their products (which means, gasp, you have to suffer a bit because you
So much bad press about EA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So much bad press about EA (Score:2)
We're talking about Electronic Arts, right? (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, it may be a decent business-oriented class to follow a relatively successful biz to see the things they got right/wrong along the way. Like a case-study in business...and people can even choose which ones they wish to follow with courses in EA, IBM, MS, GOOG, and maybe one th
Re:We're talking about Electronic Arts, right? (Score:5, Funny)
The article summary could use work (Score:3, Funny)
I can see why EA approved this document... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We grind employees until they quit" becomes "mediocre performers are not tolerated".
"We force everyone to work insane hours whether they like it or not" becomes "employees work long hours because they love the company".
Re:I can see why EA approved this document... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I can see why EA approved this document... (Score:2)
Wow, that sounds so much like the propaganda of a communist country, it's scary. EA really reminds me of the USSR and North Korea here...
NewSpeak (Score:5, Funny)
Do you work for EA's Ministry of Truth?
Can't agree more... (Score:3, Interesting)
No matter what the behaviour of the previous slashdotters might have been, and I do mean whatever - they might has well have set their boss' office on fire - management and HR failed when they blatently lied to him and said everything was ok up until he got yanked in for his 'last straw'. (c.f. previous slashdot post which I am too lazy to get a link for)
People at EA work long hours, in large part because of their great passion for maki
I thought I'd surf at -1... (Score:4, Insightful)
1, they are huge and run a tight ship
2. most people there are pretty enthused about their job
and 3. EA fucking approved the goddamn article.
Read, you motherfuckers, READ!!!!!!!!!
Re:I thought I'd surf at -1... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I thought I'd surf at -1... (Score:2)
People don't RTFA? (Score:3)
75% fresh meat? (Score:2)
So, the paper says that EA is going to staff itself with 75% new grads - that figures, as nobody else will work there, what with the current situation.
Some of the statemetns are laughable, though - rigid meritocracy? EA is strong in its management of people? People work long hours out of dedication? And here I thought it'd be an expose, or at least somewhat cynical...
Telling Quote (Score:5, Interesting)
I have mod points to spare, so I'd rather have your discussion than your points.
I think one of the most insightful quotes in the whole read (which was absolutely fascinating by the way because of how neutral it tried to be) was this:
The video game business is very time sensitive; many titles are timed to ship in time for Christmas sales, sports titles are tied to the season opening of sports, and movie titles must release in time frames corresponding to the movies. Making an outstanding game, but delivering it late, is not as profitable as making an acceptable quality game on time. EAers talk about "maximum on-time quality."
I think that about sums up the business of making video games. Remember guys, they'd love a great game, but in the end, they don't really care as long as they get it out on time. Another interesting quote was:
"EA veterans say that the major reason games ship late is due to a lack of focus in the design vision: "games are usually late because the development team doesn't know what it is building."
While I'm all for encouraging small game developers and publishers to grow because more competition is good, I think this illustrates that there is a point when you become too large as a company to effectively produce games.
EA interview story.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been looking for work, and I ended up at the EA website. I'm available for the next year, and they had a one year contract position in my area of expertise, so I applied. I didn't hear back from them for about a month. Then I got a call from EA for a "phone interview." We start going throught the questions, and they don't apply to the position that I applied for. They were all, "what part of the game do you want to make," and my response was "I didn't apply for a game development job" every time (I also provided answers that were related to what I really applied for). I eventually asked if she was calling in response to the job that I applied to. She said that EA was calling all "new grads" to find out about them, and that she didn't know about the job that I had applied to. Thanks for wasting my time EA, I'm obviously not a serious candidate to you.
Factually False... (Score:5, Informative)
See: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AAPL
Considering the blatant lack of facts in such easy to check information, I'd take what the rest of the article says with a big grain of salt.
Re:Factually False... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Factually False... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Factually False... (Score:2)
Slashdot crowd sets reading record (Score:5, Funny)
Pausch or Personnel (Score:2, Interesting)
It is likely the staff are all paid on vario
Why EA? (Score:5, Insightful)
- dshaw
ea sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
I am so sick of hearing "Challenge Everything" when I start up B3. They only thing they know how to challenge is the paradigm of game making. And by challenge, I mean ruin.
When I read stories about how they treat their employees, who are fellow software developers, it makes me glad I am "evaluating" Burnout 3.
Re:ea sucks (Score:2)
I hear the employees play it all...
Oh-wait - nevermind
Rainer
Who's telling the truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Randy Pausch [cmu.edu]:
Who's telling the truth? You decide.
Personally, I think Randy Pausch is a putz, and I'm speaking both as someone who has seen him lecture at CMU and who has friends that were advised by him.
-c
Re:Who's telling the truth? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do I think this is a valuable document? Hell no. Its basically free and highly valuable advertising for EA on how to make more cogs for their machine. It might also be an attempt to address the disturbing questions being asked by potential hires in light of all this newfound bad publicity.
I happen to have interned at EA as an dev a few years ago and I know exactly what goes on there. The reasons for increasing college hires are obvious and have been mentioned already: why hire older folk with wives and lives when you can get smart, young, exploitable, eager-beaver new grads who will work until their eyeballs bleed for a spot on the credits? The fact that Randy and profs like him are trying to tailor academic programs towards what EA wants is icing on the cake and (to me) a disturbing trend. Many departments get donations from industrial affiliates; I would bet that EA's donatations to his program are handsome.
Re:Who's telling the truth? (Score:2)
I think the paper is extremely good and thought out given its intended goal.
I feel that the professor let his students down. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can well imagine that the student arriving at EA to the expectation that he will work 12/6 would feel blindsided. He does mention that there are "crunch times" before deadlines, but I would think that a little more elaboration on that topic would be appropriate for his students. The facts that crunch times seem to be scheduled even when projects are on track, that the extra hours are uncompensated by overtime pay, and that the ratio of "crunch time" to "down time" seems to be greater than one (based on admittedly biased, but believable comments here so far.)
It's got to be tough to be in his position -- appropriate jobs are hard to find for even the most qualified new graduates -- but presenting a balanced picture would be a good thing to do, IMHO.
Thad Beier
This paper is a concentrated piece of PR (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy wants to teach a master-level course tailored so that the graduates can go and apply for EA positions right away. So, this guy goes to EA and 'studies' its management culture for half a year. Then he writes a paper how tough-but-fair the company is.
If there is something fishy you will not learn it from this propaganda - quite opposite, it would make you think that the *real* reason why you end up hating your rude slave-driving overlords is that you are not talented and focused enough to measure up to the highest standards of this "ruthless meritocracy".
The value of this white paper should increase - if they print it on a soft foldable sheets.
Grads are "malleable" (Score:4, Insightful)
Pass that Kool-Aid baby!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Extreme Workforce Makeovers (Score:5, Interesting)
But clearly the most telling piece is that Electronic Arts wishes to increase their hiring rate of college graduates from 10% to 75% of all open positions.
On page 14, the reasons given for this radical makeover of the workforce are that the college grads are more "malleable" and "idealistic". These grads also "draw lower salaries", and continuously replacing older workers with young ones means they do not have to "invest heavily in contuing education."
I think most of us reading this can decide if hiring 75% of your workforce with no previous job expierience is an attempt to:
a) Improve the quality of your products while promoting a family-friendly corporate culture; or
b) Find fresh meat that doesn't have the prior experience to understand that they are being mistreated, and that they do not deserve it.
Too much complaining and it's off to India (Score:5, Insightful)
The only other way for them to start treating their employees in a reasonable manner is to start buying their competitors products and just stick to getting EA games off of Usenet.
Eventually, there will be enough of the old EA gurus around to pool together resources and start their own game company, then beat EA at their own game (pun intended).
Re:Too much complaining and it's off to India (Score:2)
Assuming they don't run into a wall of software patents and non-compete agreements.
I'm surprised no one has said this yet (Score:5, Interesting)
It's obviously another valuable perspective, but it should be interpreted with an eye to the rather extreme personality of the guy writing it. He's not your average academic (or average corporate manager, for that matter). He's closer to Philip Greenspun in personality, for those of you who know him.
Posted as AC, but I'm someone with firsthand experience working with Professor Pausch.
Re:I'm surprised no one has said this yet (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to defend the professor, but this statement can be said about virtually ANY "successful" (however you want to term this) professor with graduate students. Graduate students tend to be driven already. Couple that with a driven professor....
I have also noticed there is a difference (even with the same prof.) depending upon whether the student is a MS or PhD student. Of course, it is hardly a surpri
Overtime (Score:3, Interesting)
I know the concept is that as a sallaried position; your lean times are supposed to make up for your fat time. But that's not the case. If there is a lean time big enough to compensate for the over time, then the company is already in trouble.
The last sallaried position I had, part of my compenstation was supposed to be proffit sharing (at the discression of the manager/owner). Those proffits didn't even come close to what I could have earned working a minimum wage job for the overtime I put in.
The heart of the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
"Probably the most surprising thing I learned about EA is that its leaders, including its creative leaders, describe it as a packaged goods company like Proctor and Gamble or Nabisco."
This, in a nutshell, with extreme eloquence sums up EA's fundamental problem...and from the sounds of things it is very fundamental to them. There is no possible way that a company with this mentality can hope to run an MMORPG in particular...because a boxed product is the direct opposite of what an MMORPG is. A more appropriate conventional metaphor, or one which boomers would at least be more comfortable with, would be to think of an MMORPG as a virtual theme park or wildlife reserve. Expansion packs therefore, rather than being end products in themselves, should be thought of as visitor passes to previously roped off/undeveloped areas of the park. This analogy actually works very well with UO in particular...as using a client older than Age of Shadows for example after AoS's release meant that a person could not go to Malas or Ilshenar, for example.
If EA want to really break into the MMORPG space, (and they haven't substantially yet; UO is going downhill at a rate of knots, and The Sims Online is still well below target population) they're going to have to stop thinking purely in terms of being box-sellers, and start thinking in terms of being virtual park rangers. (or in the case of The Sims Online, even a virtual government)
An MMORPG is NOT something you can put in a box, throw out the door, and then heave a big sigh of relief because it's finished. They need continual maintenance, and if they are to do well they need continual maintenance by someone who actually has a clue about how to do it.
Even for single-player games however, this type of thinking is creatively barren and disastrously toxic. It might work fine for the annual regurgitation of a football game, (like Madden, and what Unreal Tournament sadly seems to be in danger of becoming) since football does not fundamentally change over time, (although on that score UT has absolutely no excuse) but with virtually any other genre, all it will ensure is that rehashes and regurgitations of the same tired old formulas get trucked out the door every year...Innovation comes to a standstill. I truly hope that for EA's sake they have in mind to change this philosophy, because they're signing their own commercial death certificate if they don't. Sure, it makes good commercial sense to go with the tried and true, (at least for maybe the first couple of sequels as far as games go) but there should I think be a dual approach. While you're assuring that the bills get paid today, you should also be focussed on staking out as much new creative territory as possible...because that's the only way to make sure that the bills also get paid tomorrow. Trying to get EA to put an emphasis on creativity is futile...They're a company, and their primary interest is to generate as high a margin as possible. But I wish we could encourage the company somehow to at least be halfway intelligent and forward-thinking when it comes to making money as well.
The way to hurt EA? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the likes of the NBA, NFL etc cancelled their contracts with EA over this I am sure EA would have to make drastic changes.
StarTux
Re:The way to hurt EA? (Score:3, Informative)
Inaccurate Retail Income (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why communism is just as needed today (Score:3, Interesting)
The solutions to these problems are the same as ever. A temporary solution is the creation of a welfare state, a la Scandinavia, where the "national mission" is to make life fun and enjoyable for everyone by collecting enough in taxes and spending it generously (and smartly) on welfare. A better solution, the one which unfortunately was indefinitely postponed, but is inevitable anyway, is abandonment of all private property, which is the only way to destroy the alienation of people from the fruits of their labour, which is the only way to make people free.
Don't despair, it will come. We blew the chance we had in the USSR, but it will come "real soon now". Don't lose hope.
P.S. I intentionally didn't try to explain why it will come, because that's a wholly different (and very long) discussion.
Yeah...that'll work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps this is how it SHOULD work. However, many people are martyred without result. Companies still have poor work environments -- they just go through the slave traders more. Does it hurt their pockets having to shuffle through employees? Sure. Does it hurt enough to admit they're wrong? I'm assuming you don't make it that far up in the corporate ladder without a boatload of pride...and it's a giant pill to swallow to admit being wrong.
Capitalism (read GREED) has its place...but the well-being of its peons are rarely in its best interest.
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, comparing having to work long hours in front of a computer screen in order to get a large paycheck to forced labor in the form of slavery is just absurd and insulting. You don't like your job, there is nothing stopping you from quitting and looking for a new job. That is not the case with slavery. Learn to appreciate the freedoms you have instead of whining everytime your boss asks you to sit at a desk
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:3, Insightful)
How is you new job in burger-flipping going for you? I understand you had no trouble switching from salting the fries at that chicken joint.
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
Want to be a slave to economic and management forces? Work for someone. Want independence? Become an entrepreneur. It really is that simple.
The only problem I see is certain people needing a crutch in life and crying when things turn sour. You should be thankful you had a steady hand-ho
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
Or are you one of those people who feels the fact that you were born to a middle class American family gives you a right to a 6 digit salary?
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:3)
And from your logic and a lot of other peoples' logic, you seem to be saying that this is OK. It's not OK for a company to abuse people. It should either not hire them, it should fire them in
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, you answered your own question. That's how capitalism works. If the marketplace starts demanding employer-friendly companies, that's what EA's going to have to do.
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2, Interesting)
Join a Union! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that is how capitalism works, and poor treatment of workers shouldn't be tolerated (by the consumers, or by the workers). But if you need a job, and jobs are hard to find, what do you do?
Back in the Old Days(TM) there were groups called Unions, groups of workers who decided they had been fucked by the bosses for long enough, and it was time to get some fairness.
People in my country fought [ballarat.com] and died [netconnect.com.au] for a fair go in the workplace, but recent government policy involving workplace agreements and enterprise bargaining have severely damaged the rights of workers.
If they are treating their employees poorly who cares?
That kind of attitude is exactly why those in power are able to continue exploiting people in the third world (and the second, and the first).
Re:Join a Union! (Score:2)
So you're an IT worker, and you got layed off. Get another job or start your own company. Don't know how? Learn, thousands of people do each year.
Nothing in this life is garaunteed, but if you are willing to "think", as opposed to simply occupying space and resourc
Re:Join a Union! (Score:2)
Precisely. That's the free market at work right there. What most people advocating the "the market will correct all ills" approach forget is that conditions are also controlled by the market.
Right now, the market (in jobs) is such that EA can afford to act like this. Thus the market cannot correct the behaviour, as it is the market itself that allows it to continue.
Globalism kills Unions (Score:2)
Re:Globalism kills Unions (Score:2)
I don't see how voluntary birth-restriction would work, so would you favor a China-style one family one child?
Ask youself: is your solution really going to be better than the present?
Yes and no (Score:3, Interesting)
And, yes, reducing the number of people who have no place in society will improve society. People are most dangerous when they're poor, desparate and have nothing to do with themselves. This is where you get guys willing to crash planes into buildings from.
I'd love to see Chinese style forced birth control,
Re:Join a Union! (Score:2)
I agree with you though, a union is the best choice currently. I just think that it's a scary thing for people to think about in the current enviro
You don't get the hostility? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mmmmmm....libertarianism at it's best.
How about the fact that they are breaking the law by improperly classifying employees as exempt and therefore not paying them their due overtime? Is that acceptable to you?
How about the fact that this is getting so much press because in the free market - people also have free speech. No one's talking about burning down EA's headquarters - but we are talking about taking action. Boycotts, Letters to editors, Letters to company chiefs. It always pains me to see someone give the free market argument yet completely miss the free speech one.
You say if the company is treating their employees poorly that their employees should act. It appears that that's exactly what's happening.
Re:You don't get the hostility? (Score:2, Informative)
If they are breaking the law, why are you advocating 'underground' fighting methods. Get them prosecuted.
Then the issue can be resolved, i.e. the laws can be repealed, or enforced. Why go to mob-rule tactics immediately?
Or are they not breaking the law, and
Re:You don't get the hostility? (Score:2)
Then the issue can be resolved, i.e. the laws can be repealed, or enforced. Why go to mob-rule tactics immediately?
Or are they not breaking the law, and that was just an excercise in rhetoric?
When the laws were written by your industry's own lobbyists, it's unlikely that you've broken them at all.
Re:You don't get the hostility? (Score:2)
Wow, is that really your final argument? We stole democracy so nyaah nyaah?
Re:You don't get the hostility? (Score:2)
Mob rule tactics? What do you think capitalism and representative rule government is? What do you think anything is? If a single person or entity pisses off everyone else, the group stops them. Mob rule tactics? I'm
Re:You don't get the hostility? (Score:2)
And no one is stopping them. But why should that effect anyone's buying habits (other than the fact that if they cannot keep quality employees, the quality of their products will fall)? Why should the /. community (most of whom are not current, past, or future employees of EA) obsess about it?
In short, why should I as a consumer care whether or not the guy who made my product likes all aspects of his job?
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:4, Insightful)
However, there are cases where the customers do care, and in those cases, I imagine that the customers want both a good product and the people who make it to be treated well. They don't care if EA makes money or not. I know that an individual company's profits or lack thereof don't concern me at all (sure in the larger sense, in which I want a healthy economy and game industry they do, but on an individual company by company level they don't).
I don't really care if a company is making money or not. I want a good product at a low price, and I want it made under decent working conditions. Those things are hard to do and still stay in buisness? Too bad. No one ever said the demands of a customer are reasonable.
I mean, on a flamebait level I could say something like, "Boy those Nazis sure make good stuff. I heard they kill lots of people, but hey, that's not my concern," but that comparison does bring up the old point of "Do the ends justify the means?" Everyone has their own line that they think company practices may or may not cross and it is up to each of us to decide where that line is.
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow, I think many Slashdotters would love the policies of Margaret Thatcher [wikipedia.org]. Hell, she's not quite dead yet, and she's newly widowed - why not marry the wizened old bastard?
Electronic Arts, like all other companies, is comprised of people. If their creation can behave in an utterly inhumane manner, operating only to increase some arbitrary numbers in a computer system somewhere, then what's the point? Why bother with any niceties whatsoever, as nobody else seems to do? Kick the employees when they're down, exploit their enthusiasm and just hope the latest product gets finished before they burn out and find some sort of work elsewhere. And, if they start demanding more reasonable hours, or even paid overtime, then just sack them or outsource the work to some even more badly exploited sods the other side of the world...
Screw the welfare state. If workers want to live, they should work for it. Screw free healthcare, screw any kind of regulation on how employers treat their employees - if they're so unhappy, they can go elsewhere, even if conditions there are just as bad - all brought on by the unending, mindless competition and lower costs demanded by the holy, almighty dollar. No need to be decent people, no need for random acts of kindness - after all, there's no such thing as society. All that counts is money.
Why should a company treat its employees well? Because it is an institution created by human beings.
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you don't give a flying fuck as you push your cart around in Wal-Mart, but as someone who works in a technical industry I find this highly interesting. The labor market for educated and technical people is in the process of a major deterioration in this country and this is just one more symptom of America's slide toward the kind of economic system that existed in India- where you have a few rich people, and everyone else is poor and destitute. (They have a small middle class now, which grows at the expense of our own.)
If the game is good I'll buy it, if it's not I won't.
If the game is good I'll buy it, unless I see it was made by Electronic Arts. The leverage afforded to workers is mostly gone, and the only force affecting EA anymore is the power of consumers- which is largely ineffective anyway.
If the employees are treated poorly they should quit. That's how capitalism works, if all the good employees quit, or start demanding more and more money to make up for the poor working environment then EA will see that it's policies are not best for the bottom line and they will change.
Take off your rose colored glasses. Capitalism works that way only under certain conditions which are largely disappearing- labor and management need to have equity. If one gets an upper hand this idealized scenario breaks down.
Now that several billion desperate people have been dumped into our labor markets (added to the millions of geeks who have always wanted to program games), if the employees of EA quit for being worked 80 hours a week for X dollars they'll be replaced instantly by more desperate geeks worked 120 hours a week for X>>1 dollars. Or better yet, Chinese prisoners. It's getting to the point where almost everything I have was made in a Chinese prison.
Slave labour (Score:5, Interesting)
I have exactly the same problem. Although I am not a poor man, I still cannot afford to spend $100 on a shirt made here in Australia under Australian working conditions. That is, if I could even find such a piece of apparel.
That's not even counting the toaster, the modem, the TV ... the list goes on.
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
But just as equally, the conditions upon which traditional labor and management structures are built upon are changing. There's a lot more competition in today's global marketplace, and a lot more market to be had. Technology frees the worker from having to be chained to one loca
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
s/drive/lawyers
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:5, Insightful)
Regular life in the real world disagrees with you. EA does have an ethical imperative to treat their workers fairly, humanely, and to put the lives of the employees before business. Only libertarians and high school juniors think that capitalism means, "Do whatever it takes to get money, and let the course of business take its toll." (Libertarianism is, by the way, the carrying out of fascism by other means; the one thing libertarianism precisely does not grant is liberty.)
The employees shouldn't have to quit if they're being if they're being treated poorly; government agencies, unions, and consumers should take proactive measures to stop the poor treatment. That may involve monetary fines, forced arbitration between an employees' union and the company, and if warranted criminal proceedings being taken against the company's officers. No, that isn't very laissez faire, but neither is real life.
Coders != Management (Score:2)
Assuming it's the leaf node employees who are getting the shaft, they have a problem.
If you imagine all of them quitting on Day N and moving across the street to NiceCo where they'll work 40-hour weeks or get comp. time then NiceCo becomes the new dominant game company.
Trouble is, the leaf node employees need skills besides coding to run a company. So they can't all leave en-mass, they have to trickle ou
You don't get it (Score:2)
These other people care more than you do. They know it. They also know they're smarter than you. They're so smart, they have it all figured out. Because they're better than you, they have the perogative to straighten out problems -- problems in other peoples' lives -- problems no one asked them to fix.
You just do what you're told. You're lucky your betters haven't put you in jail yet. Maybe tomorrow they will; today is self-admiration day.
Re:I don't get the hostility (Score:2)
Both child labor and forcing people to work insane hours of unpaid overtime are against the law. The law is there to protect the weak (i.e. children and programmers with a family to support and a mortgage to pay) against the bullying of third- and first- world sweatshop owners.
In the first world laws against Child labor were enacted just a few short decades before laws against unpaid forced overtime were. Think about that be
Re:BitTorrent, just in case: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Coralisedm just in case (Score:2, Funny)
New and improved without karma whoring!
Re:EA's shitty games (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:EA's shitty games (Score:2)
Actually you're right (Score:2)