Electronic Arts

Office space and amenities: it was nicely organized, although they had some issues with the AC. Fruits were restocked daily, and there were coffee machines, tea, vending machines, and gaming rooms.

Most people were friendly and open to socializing. Fellow SEs were always willing to lend a hand when I was stuck on something.

There are plenty of people who have worked here for many years, so there's generally deep internal knowledge.

The work I did was diverse: I worked on tools, on backend and UI features, implemented minor to medium complexity features, and did bug fixing.

The interview was not too difficult, and they did move quickly with the whole process.

The benefits package was competitive: the salary offered was (probably) a bit higher than at other places. Benefits included credits for physical games, yearly reimbursement for sports and digital games, bonuses and RSUs, a paid O'Reilly Media subscription, and private medical insurance.

I got to work on one of the FIFA game modes.

You can be moved to other teams quite easily, if they're in need of assistance or if you request it from your manager.

• Did not meet the team lead or any software engineer from my future team during the interview process, just the manager and product manager, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into from a technical point of view.

• Work-life balance was one of the top issues people complained about in every survey. Leadership has only made some half-assed attempts at addressing the symptoms, but not the underlying issues (e.g., trying to cram in too many features every year).

• Agile is used to apply pressure to developers: daily standups were usually half-hour long status updates and were used to apply public pressure to people who lagged behind. Sprints were there just to have deadlines every two weeks. Tasks were estimated down to the hour, and estimates were pushed as low as they could go, which didn't leave room for learning, experimenting, or making mistakes.

• Firefighting mode lasts for at least three-quarters of the year or even longer, depending on what kind of work you're assigned in the last quarter of the development cycle.

• There's a tendency, and some peer pressure, for people to be workaholics and spend extra unpaid hours to finish tasks and meet deadlines, especially bad when we first transitioned to WFH at the start of the pandemic.

• Micromanagement, rigidity, and resistance to adapt to remote work: people were expected to report their in & out times and all breaks on Slack. Managers cared more about you being physically present at your desk between 10 to 19 than you delivering results. There was resistance to using asynchronous communication as opposed to meetings for everything. Around deadlines, standups got even more bloated.

• The approach to work was very much churn & burn: managers were trying to squeeze as much productivity out of you as possible, and you always had to look busy. As such, quieter times didn't feel restful. You're just expected to produce output for eight hours straight; there's no company time allocated for learning or other activities (other than meetings). Your reward for working ahead is being assigned other people's tasks.

• There was little to no documentation, and the onboarding process was sorely lacking. Most knowledge was internal, so you were dependent on teammates if you were stuck on something related to game logic or the many internal tools.

• Very little room to grow my technical skills: very few useful technical trainings/workshops. You've got a subscription to O'Reilly Media, but learning is done on your own time. Never felt that my managers made an effort to truly understand my needs and help me to develop my skills, even after my repeatedly asking to work on more complex and varied tasks. My team lead was very territorial and hostile towards new people, and uninterested in guiding and supporting my growth. I got better at working within their development framework, but not at much else.

• As an SE1, you'll mostly be fixing bugs and implementing tasks from technical solutions pre-written by senior engineers. You'll rarely get some freedom to develop features your own way from scratch.

Overall, given the ratio of stress endured & lack of technical growth versus the overall compensation package, I can't really recommend this job. You'd be better off someplace else. If you really want to try it or you negotiate an exceptionally good compensation package, sure, go ahead, and cash out after one to three years. But be warned that you'll be making work your life here.