A spouse of an Electronic Arts employee has written a LiveJournal entry on the inexcusable labour practises over at the game development/publishing giant. It seems Electronic Arts, a company that is definately not strapped for cash, are overworking their employees with extended and artificial crunch time schedules (with 'real' crunch times averaging eighty-five hours a week), and providing no compensation or sick leave. Amazingly, EA are looking into getting the end-of-project holiday benefit removed...
"EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?"
(Another Electronic Arts employee, who has left the company, has written about his experience at EA on his Livejournal).
Slashdot has it covered, and the original Livejournal post is at the following link....
And another article on the subject of crunch time, inspired by ea_spouse's post is at http://enginesofmischief.com/blogs/ramblings/archives/2004/11/11/643