Pros: An opportunity to work on major console titles and build your resume if you're interested in a career in AAA games. If you're not interested in this industry, there are plenty of other places where you'll find better compensation and work-life balance. Depending on the team, you can get a lot of responsibility architecting major systems for major games even if you're new to games or are an inexperienced dev. People are passionate about games and want to make them fun and polished. There are a lot of people with depth in their respective areas (eg graphics programming) to learn from. One of the few console developers that hires engineers straight out of school.

Cons: - Promotions are much less frequent than at any one of the fast-growing mobile or social gaming companies. - It can be hard to focus on professional growth when you're under frequent pressure to hit unrealistic deadlines. - It can be nerve-wracking when the company is underperforming. The company eliminated entire teams on many occasions in order to cut costs, sometimes waiting until just after they finished their last game. - Low morale due to bad financials/layoffs. - Marketing decided which projects get green-lit and sometimes made questionable decisions. They set unrealistic time tables, pushed for uninteresting games, or blocked titles that had a lot of creative momentum, based on their market analysis which was never transparent to the game teams. It also was never clear how or whether marketing was accountable for mediocre decisions.

Pros: As I went through the interview stages with EA, I had the same concerns that anyone interviewing with EA would: after many years of terrible reviews and being rated as the worst company to work for, how has the company changed? The answer from everyone was the same, but all in their own words, not some company line. Since Andrew Wilson took over as CEO, the poor culture is a thing of the past, and they've had no exposure to it (all were with the company for 1-3 years). I took them at their word and accepted an offer. The company structure is relatively flat, without tons of needless levels of management. Where at a typical large company you'd see a structure like: * IC * manager * sr. manager * director * sr. director * vp * svp * evp * c-level there are a few less levels of management here. This is a great thing, which allows decisions to be made faster without the typical management gridlock of slow-moving large companies. Working at EA has been a great experience so far. My colleagues are fun to work with, and the company is showing record numbers. I've had exposure to all levels of the company, up to and including the CTO. Management is supportive of my career growth, and I'm getting to work on some great games. I couldn't have hoped for a better experience, and my interviewers were right – the company has changed.

Cons: There's the traditional trade-off between a large company and a startup: small and agile with lots of risk and potential reward versus large, a bit slower (though not as slow as you might expect due to the management structure, as mentioned above), stable, and a guaranteed future. I've been with both large companies and startups, so I knew what to expect. As long as you do too, this isn't necessarily a con – it's just different.

Pros: Loads of learning involved in the job.

Cons: High performance is a must.