Corporate culture problem at EA? - News and Siteseeing

An "EA spouse" is the first to share complaints.

To put some of this in perspective, I myself consider some figures. If EA truly believes that it needs to push its employees this hard -- I actually believe that they don't, and that it is a skewed operations perspective alone that results in the severity of their crunching, coupled with a certain expected amount of the inefficiency involved in running an enterprise as large as theirs -- the solution therefore should be to hire more engineers, or artists, or designers, as the case may be. Never should it be an option to punish one's workforce with ninety hour weeks; in any other industry the company in question would find itself sued out of business so fast its stock wouldn't even have time to tank. In its first weekend, Madden 2005 grossed $65 million. EA's annual revenue is approximately $2.5 billion. This company is not strapped for cash; their labor practices are inexcusable.
The interesting thing about this is an assumption that most of the employees seem to be operating under. Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal.

Then, a former EA programmer who identifies himself by name, shares a similar tale, also on Livejournal.

I chaulk it up to personality conflict with my supervisor -- he was a work-a-holic who chose the company over his wife and kids. He worked insane hours 7 days a week. I refused to do that and prioritize my wife and daughter over work. That never sat well with him.
My wife believes that I was terminated because they feared I'd lead a revolt. My supervisor repeatedly told me to work long hours to be an example, and I replyed that that was immoral and setting the wrong example...
All in all, I'm now happy I was fired. I've actually shucked the stress I was under (and I was under contract because of the move package so leaving wasn't an option, and I didn't want to -- I wanted to fix things from within.) I've been able to spend lots of quality time with my wife and daughter and repair those relationships from the "EA smashing" they received.

Still, two entries on the same blog site, posted on the same day? With no prior entries?

Mobygames has an entry for Joe, but at Midway and Infogrames. Of course, his two Maxis titles were cancelled, so he wouldn't get credit for those. Interesting stuff though. Given what I know of the industry in general, it would hardly surprise me - game developers work insane hours.