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    Electronic Arts Reviews

    Updated 20 July, 2017
    1,394 reviews

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    3.9
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    Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson
    Andrew Wilson
    412 Ratings
    Highest Rated CEO 2017

    1,394 Employee Reviews

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    Pros
    Cons

    • Pretty bad work/life balance when it's crunch time (in 69 reviews)

    • I would say that the worst thing would have been the very long hours that I had to work (in 77 reviews)

    More Pros and Cons

    1. "Good Balance"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Software Engineer in Vancouver, BC
      Current Employee - Software Engineer in Vancouver, BC
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Electronic Arts (More than a year)

      Pros

      Good balance of life and work at least in my department.

      Cons

      Need more growth opportunities in my department.

      Advice to Management

      Put people to work according to their strength.

    2. Helpful (1)

      "Associate Producer"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Associate Producer in Vancouver, BC
      Former Employee - Associate Producer in Vancouver, BC
      Doesn't Recommend
      Positive Outlook
      Disapproves of CEO

      I worked at Electronic Arts full-time (More than 3 years)

      Pros

      Excellent people doing great work on the ground level, many opportunities to learn and grow as a professional and make excellent friends.

      Cons

      Management is a complete nightmare, major promotions almost always moving the worst of the worst to the top. Every year there's a story about terrible anti consumer practices at EA, they're always top down decisions.
      The Senior EA leadership may be toxic as all hell, but Madden continues to sell so they'll continue to make money, but I wouldn't trust any new EA initiative to be anything other than a complete mess.

      Advice to Management

      At the brand level there's some great management teams, FIFA is an example of what the company could be but won't.

    3. "Nice place to work"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Associate Developer (Coop) in Vancouver, BC
      Former Employee - Associate Developer (Coop) in Vancouver, BC
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Electronic Arts (Less than a year)

      Pros

      - Excellent coworkers, they were professional, talented, and friendly
      - Beautiful campus and location
      - Work life balance was great, there wasn't significant pressure to work long hours

      Cons

      - Work got a bit mundane at times, wished I could do more interesting things
      - Projects and quarterly goal seemed to be very driven by what management wanted

      Advice to Management

      I'd have liked a little more freedom to choose what to be working on. It often felt that we were trying to hit monthly/quarterly targets for the sake of hitting the targets as opposed to because the targets were beneficial long term.

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    4. Helpful (2)

      "FIFA DevOps"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Systems Administrator in Burnaby, BC
      Current Employee - Systems Administrator in Burnaby, BC
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Electronic Arts full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Great people.
      Like the DevOps team is awesome, the software engineers are awesome, QA is awesome, and management is awesome. Great crew of people to work with.

      Cons

      They prefer hiring "temporary full time employees" (1 year contract) over hiring "regular full time employees".

      They won't give extensions longer than three months due to bc labour laws (the law states you automatically get converted into a regular full time employee if you are still working 3 months after your contract ends, and they want to avoid that).

      Advice to Management

      There is a lot of technical debt, and it takes a long time to get brought up to speed. This wouldn't be a problem if EA hired regular full time employees that stuck around for longer than a year but they prefer giving people 1 year contracts, which means turn over, new hires, and only a few people who actually have all the tribal knowledge and experience.

    5. Helpful (2)

      "Careful"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Software Engineer III in Vancouver, BC
      Former Employee - Software Engineer III in Vancouver, BC
      Doesn't Recommend
      Positive Outlook
      Disapproves of CEO

      Pros

      Near where I live, bonus at the end of the year, possible to work from home. Games can be cheap to buy.

      Cons

      If the management (who take 0 risks most of the time from fear), end up late on a software deliverable, they will seek out the weakest link in the development team and very aggressively apportion all blame. I've worked there twice, and I've been in meetings where "who is taking this one" has been discussed. You would not believe how this place works inside. It's full of cowards, be prepared to high five all the right people and you will get on fine. Speak up against bad decisions, or bad planning and you will be out the next time they need a scapegoat.

      Advice to Management

      You are not needed, why there are so many of you is a real mystery. You take little risk, do no work, and make people in fear of their jobs. Basically, you are hated at EA by the devs.

    6. "Nowhere near as bad as some make it out to be."

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Systems Administrator in Burnaby, BC
      Former Employee - Systems Administrator in Burnaby, BC
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Electronic Arts full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Dog-friendly.

      Great co-workers.

      EA has a recognized presence in the gaming industry.

      Cons

      It can be a struggle to get past "Temporary Full Time" into a proper "Regular Full Time" position.

      EA is stuck shaking off some old stigmas.

      Its "recognized presence" is often seen as money-hungry among gaming community.

      Advice to Management

      Grow the talent. Help TFT employees create a career with EA and guide them on the path to RFT.

    7. "Dev Ops Role - Boring"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Release Engineer in Burnaby, BC
      Former Employee - Release Engineer in Burnaby, BC
      Doesn't Recommend
      Neutral Outlook
      No opinion of CEO

      I worked at Electronic Arts part-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Lots of team collaboration and customer outreach.

      Cons

      No technical challenges; the equivalent of "button pushing".

    8. "Army of Two"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Montreal, QC
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Montreal, QC
      Doesn't Recommend
      Positive Outlook
      No opinion of CEO

      I worked at Electronic Arts (More than a year)

      Pros

      International opportunities, as well as training available world-wide.

      Cons

      Leadership in some studios is lacking.

    9. Helpful (2)

      "Talented teams but a very political environment"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Burnaby, BC
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Burnaby, BC
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Electronic Arts full-time (More than 8 years)

      Pros

      The first 6 years of my career at EA were absolutely phenomenal. Fantastic senior leadership, lots of growth opportunities, very exciting global projects to work on, highly engaged and talented teams to work with. The compensation package is very competitive with other tech companies, and the facilities are hands down the best in Vancouver region.

      Cons

      A culture and attitude of everyone-for-themselves exists that is really unfortunate, lots of political posturing happening between the EA Vancouver and EA Redwood Shores locations. Management is hit or miss, I had a few really inspiring leaders and some absolutely atrocious ones that ultimately created a toxic environment and caused many talented individuals to leave the company due to the cultural downward spiral.

      Advice to Management

      HR really needs to do more to help fix the pockets of toxic culture that exists in certain departments. During my tenure at EA I witnessed several high performing individuals leave the company because they had conflicts with their managers. Disappointingly, HR will typically side with the person who is most senior and let the incidents slide because they're afraid of losing them to a competitor. They should create a training course that encourages more empathetic behaviors in the workplace.

    10. "A great studio and fantastic teams."

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Software Engineer II in Montreal, QC
      Former Employee - Software Engineer II in Montreal, QC
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook

      I worked at Electronic Arts full-time

      Pros

      My time as an EA employee was a great experience in itself. I was mentored to speed by a great crew of engineers and our teams usually have been shielded from the clashes and storms by truly professional producers and leads.
      Most of the leads and producers were seniors with a very good understanding of the ins and outs of game development.

      Cons

      Some crunches during end of development have happened.
      With very few exceptions testers were not fully appreciated and integrated to the teams and left on the side during office meetings or when late evening dinners were shared.

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