EA Spouse

Just for completeness, the situation in 2004 for those who have forgotten or were too young back then: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com

Unfortunately it's possible that they did indeed decide to work 70 hour weeks. I made that mistake early in my career. You're right that if they were pushing him to work these insane hours for months then it's time to politely part ways. Such abuse was common in the gamedev industry: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/

This is what pushed me over the edge. http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/

Regardless of gender, a game developer is not a great career unless you're high up in the company ladder. Too much stress, being forced to work crazy hours without extra pay starting months before deadlines, not great pay etc. Once the novelty wears off, it's a hard crunch. http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

Working in an area you're passionate about doesn't mean you have to work more, even if it's a startup. I know people who work in startups do great work, but no overtime, and finish what they have to finish on time. On the other hand, I have seen established companies which expect you do overtime with no overpay, because they pay you more than competitors already. While I'm not working in a startup, I turned down numerous job offers just because I love my job and money is not my primary motivation, like the author of the post. I also did my share of overtime and oft-glorified all-nighters for a long period of time. On the other hand, I'll argue that all-nighters are unnecessary most of the time, and a good indicator of mismanagement. Game developers love their job and I respect them with all my being, but they are exploited far too often. This still rings in my head from time to time: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

I wholeheartedly agree, crunch is damaging to any industry over extended periods of time. It doesn't matter if you're a game developer, web developer or architect, crunch affects everyone. It is an outdated way of thinking that the game industry has failed to let go of that the more people and effort you throw at a problem, the quicker it gets solved. The more hours you throw at a problem in my experience as a developer, you end up with more problems than you started off trying to solve. You lose focus, when you lose focus things that were once obvious are not in your peripheral vision and you make mistakes. It is akin to driving a vehicle tired, you are more likely to be in an accident. Sadly the gaming industry is notorious for this kind of behaviour of expected crunch. Yeah, you push yourself to get out a game, but then what? You start working on another new game or DLC for the current game and you find yourself working 80 hour weeks again, what was the benefit of those long hours other than keeping your job? It is a repeating cycle. People have been decrying the crunch in the gaming industry especially since the 90's and yet, nothing ever changes or improves. Someone writes a blog post or article, people unanimously agree things need to change and then it all blows over until the next article comes along. What's it going to take: a spate of sleep-deprived, stressed game developers taking their own lives? I accept the fact that avoiding crunch altogether is…

Kind of surprising it has taken this long for such little progress, video game workers have been abused by these mega corporations for decades [1]. [1] https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

Just get out of the game development industry and move to another software development type. It's much better on the other side. It was obviously bad in 2004 with public exposes, and it is still the same today: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html Game development will improve its working conditions when nobody wants to work for a game company, until then they will be underpaid and overworked compared other software development types. There is a crazy hot hiring market elsewhere in the industry, do your part by walking away.

Here is the source of the term: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

The FBI should keep an eye on hospitals for anyone showing up with burning bleeding eyes and a swelling itching brain, from looking at EA's source code! ;) Other symptoms include a tendency to participate in death marches, work from 9am to 10pm, abandon spouses and consider every day a crunch. https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

I think that whole thing came about because of EA Spouse, no? https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-28-ea-doesnt-get-enough…

It's a bit different in the gaming industry, no? ie: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

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

Just curious - is such toxic culture more common in game-dev companies? Some of us would remember the EA Spouse story [1] - one of the first such public disclosures. Have there been any studies done of the prevalence of such culture across different software dev teams? [1] https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

Game development has been pretty terrible to its staff for a long time; the famous ea_spouse post was in 2004! https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

Ya, that EA spouse thing totally didn't happen: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

That'd be Electronic Arts, who earned a bit of ... unsigned publicity thanks to the blog of "ea_spouse" (http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html) back in 2004, for instance.

This posts seems to resonate well with the "Electronic Arts Spouse"-post from 2004: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html (Poor management, poor planning, dropping productivity per hour worked as the workday is increased). It's nothing new of course, Ford pushed for 8 hour shifts, not out of the kindness of his heart. As for working "for free" -- that could be seen as poor labour laws. Norway has very strict rules regarding work hours (and compensation). Not that they're not broken -- but generally only managers (or others who realistically can set their own hours) are allowed effectively unlimited over time.

Could you link to the letters you're referring to? I'm only familiar with the original (http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html). EDIT: Never mind, found it in another thread.

I have no personal experience, so I'll defer to yours, but my impression comes from stories like this one: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

This reminds me of the EA spouse article [http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html] which was regarding conditions 8+ years ago at EA. I thought the games industry had progressed since then - obviously not.

This reminds me a lot of Erin Hoffman's infamous rant (http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html) about EA's abusive working conditions which resulted in three class-action lawsuits.

Have people already forgotten about the EA Spouse? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EA_Spouse http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

I'd like to hear more about this line from their job listings: http://www.quora.com/jobs "You should be ready to make this startup the primary focus of your life" That could mean a wide range of things - from social engagement and occasional dinners at work (as described in the post) to http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html or http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

If this is what you think, you have not worked long enough to know you are wrong. Read this: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html Lots of people have that environment but then get compensated a lot more to deal with it (unlike EA). Go ask folks you know who have been in the workforce for a decade, they will most assuredly tell you that the different between $100K and $110K is $0. Even the difference between $100K and like $140K is still fairly marginal when you compare it to the other things you may or may not be giving up. I mention a bunch of those things to consider in my post.

I'm assuming you've seen this, but if you haven't: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

Here's the update: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/1479.html

The husband of the EA wife founded http://gamewatch.org (a forum for open discussion of the gaming industry) The 2004 EA Spouse LiveJournal: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

This post reminds me of the seminal "EA Spouse" post (http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html). Together the two posts bookend the pitfalls of both startup and big company high tech employment.

Here - https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html