Electronic Arts Reviews

Pros

Large organisation with lots of opportunities
Projects are generally reasonably resourced
Most of the upper managerment are enthusiastic about the product

Cons

Projects and studios closed at the drop of a hat, as new management come in (every 12 months), and think that they have some amazing new insight into how to run the company, only to head off to obliterate some other company when they (inevitably) fail.

Advice to Senior Management

For anyone studio head or down, stick to your guns, fight for your team, and try not to succumb to the whim of the day from above. You know games development, you have your skills, and let your studio live or die by your success, not from some overriding imperative (if possible).

Pros

Good work environment.good place to learn work and satisfy able allowances.

Cons

Very less pay to freshers, a fresher to get into a good position and a decent package takes about 4-5 years

Pros

good salary, relaxed people, big company

Cons

the management is non-technical. growing a management career at EA is a question of hazard and luck.

Advice to Senior Management

EA should promote also technical persons into Development director/manager group.

Pros

Good benefits.
Fast pace and can be a good place to learn.
Great place to work if you love games.

Cons

Not much room to move up or grow
Lower pay.
Frequent reorg and layoffs
Too much politics making it hard to get things done fast

Advice to Senior Management

recognize talent and use them to do what they are good at.
communicate better as a company.
need startup mentality to be able to change the company and move fast

Pros

1. Good Management. Easy to take days off for any reason, and you may work late or on holiday to make up the work hours or you don't get pay for off-days.
2. Good benefit package.
3. Good info/tech shared and good training.
4. Good communication environment. Work/Life balanced.

Cons

1. Salary is just fair.
2. Each product has a deadline for sure, but usually EA doesn't postpone the deadline to polish the product perfect.
3. Company definitely needs creative Game designer...

Advice to Senior Management

1. The company could be more creative.
2. The company buys other company, but make sure you keep the managers/game designers if possible. At least, learn something from them, like management/ core value.

Pros

looks good on the resume
free meals depending on crunch time and team budget

Cons

no consistant free meals or any other perks unless you are top tier management
super high costing on-site daycare
very poor-to-zero EA University class options or support to learn new things
bad higher management leading to poor middle management with company goals
very slow to change anything
behind the times in mostly everything, with bigger egos than creativity ratio with most game design teams

Advice to Senior Management

Morale is low in most every studio because upper management keeps trodding down a path of bad decision making. This impacts performance and creativity and inspiration down to the lowest positions, so the corruption is deep. Overall, you just don't have good designs with your games which leads to bad systems (lol agile) and even worse QA.

Pros

Great campus and sports facilities. Food is available throughout the day, with free snacks. A place t tackle interesting projects backed by a company that means business.

Cons

Turnover of staff is high. It's not unheard of to sack an entire team then rehire them a few weeks later when the management realizes they did need them after all.
Company tries to promote they have a good work life balance, but in truth they expect long hours and on a fairly regular basis.
Don't forget this company is there to make profit. All other aspirations are secondary.

Advice to Senior Management

Quality comes as a cost. That cost comes from having sufficient staff to meet workload and have time to do a proper job.

Pros

People are fun, easy going, friendly and cool
Managers are experienced, fun and great to work with
Best benefits package in the entire games industry
PTO system is non-confrontational (online form you fill out; manager clicks yes or no; you are rarely denied vacation as long as you have time accrued)
Company shutdown at Christmas through New Years = about 2 or more weeks Christmas vacation, fully paid, every year.
Salary is competitive
Large networks
EA Want Ads is wayyy better than Craigslist!
TGIF - free beer, chilled drinks and snacks where lots of people mingle, play ping pong, generally have a good time
Company Christmas parties are amazing!

Cons

Skill-wise does not give much room to grow; not challenging enough
Company is too afraid to take risks; will end up doing the same games and same mistakes over and over again.
Frequent lay-offs, especially around Christmas.

Advice to Senior Management

There are lots of talented people who are wasted in the company and not given a chance to achieve their full potential. And there are some untalented people who got in somehow and are able to secure their jobs yet do practically nothing.

Pros

Great managers, oportunity to work on AAA products. Lots of interesting work and solid support systems.

Cons

Easy to get lost in the masses and end up being treated like a dispensable commodity. Once heard a Senior Development Director say something like the following, "Unreal Engineers are a dime a dozen." What he meant was that qualified gaming engineers with unreal experience were easy to find and hire. Which isn't supported by the amount of time and effort it took them to hire qualified unreal engineers. My impression was that he didn't see the value of the engineers already on staff, he saw them as a commodity to be bought and discarded when he no longer had a use for them.

Advice to Senior Management

For gaming studios EA's managers are definately above average, but their corporate leadership could benefit from deeper contact with the rest of the staff.

Pros

Good benefits package, best health plan around. They have employee perks that are nice, if you have time to engage.

Cons

Expect very long working hours, expect work overload. Work/life balance is a challenge. Appear understaffed, HR impact to employees is more administrative, than advocate.

Advice to Senior Management

Make managers more accountable for their behavior.