Electronic Arts – “Looking for VIsion”

Pros

Great Salary and good benefits. Great communication and technology sharing between studios (at the production-level), thanks to efforts of EA's Knowledge-Sharing and Central Tech groups. Good work-life balance.

Cons

Senior Management seems at a loss for how to move forward. We seem to be making one major course correction after another and each time, new companies are purchased and hundreds of existing employees are laid off. Case in point: EA's announcement that it would be laying off 1500 employees came on the same day that they we announced we were spending 300 million dollars to buy Playfish, a company making Facebook games. Among those laid off were employees of studios we'd only acquired a year or two ago. As a result there is a general atmosphere among the employees that they might be let go at any time with little warning, which has been horrible for morale.

Advice to Senior Management

Put some thought into the long-term roadmap, communicate it to the studios and then make it a reality. Put more effort into anticipating the direction the industry is moving in and stop trying to react to every tiny change in the marketplace.