Electronic Arts

A big corporation with a global footprint. It can teach you how things function in an MNC world. It hosts a variety of teams and projects, from small scale (less than 20 people) to large scale (over a few hundred people). The experience varies based on the team you are part of, and ranges from good to terrible depending on your peers. For an average person, it's a good place to gain experience and move on, and that's how they have designed their culture - more temporary offerings. The job-related stress can vary from role to role and team to team. If you know how to get your work done, no one will bother you. Depending on the role, work-life balance will be hard to achieve. Also, some days, you'll have nothing much to do, and other days, there will be an unmanageable amount of work for you.

While some teams are highly functional and helpful (rare though), most are full of people with a corporate mindset. A good grasp of office politics is needed for long-term survival. Otherwise, no matter how hard you work for the company, you'll be just a name that will be forgotten.

Mostly all of the teams prefer hiring by referral. Their workplace is full of friends and family culture, and you'll realize over time that half of your team is somehow related to each other (lol).

Sadly, this is a very common phenomenon globally. As they say, it's more about who you know. Unless they are unable to find someone in their circle, the job posting is made public.

If you are hired as an outsider, there will be hardly any help for you. I have figured that there's one way to validate if your experience will be a misery or pleasure: If you're handed a bunch of external contact emails/phone numbers in your first ramp-up period, you are screwed. If you're told to walk to a person seated locally, you'll probably be in good hands – if that person likes you.

Only the people higher up in the hierarchy can rate your performance, and yes, there's a performance file in your name (mostly unknown to you).

Survival tips for newcomers:

• Make friends higher up in the hierarchy.
• Make sure your immediate manager and team leads are cool with you.
• Smile more often (hard for SEs).
• Despite the company's cultural tagline of "being bold," don't try anything bold unless you know what you are doing and can tackle the outcomes.
• Be prepared to deal with lower IQ people working as your seniors. There will be lots of them. You'll probably discover very soon that these people still exist here because of their strong connections within the company, hence, don't mess with them; they'll silently kill your dreams; they have powers.
• There will be a lot of new people on your team, and they will be mostly friendly because they're in the same boat as you. They also make good friends.
• If at any moment you get even a tiny sort of hint that you're finding it hard to fit in the team, start to look for a new job ASAP and don't wait for your contract to mature to do that. It's just easy to find a good job while you have one ongoing.
• Just doing adequate work is not enough. It will work, but you will make yourself replaceable. Make sure you socialize with your team members. I know it can be hard, but the ones who do, they survive for the long run.

Let all of your coworkers on the team contribute to your performance review; don't leave this job solely to people higher up in the hierarchy.

Hire skilled people in management. Most of them are just completely lost individuals looking to climb up the corporate ladder or move on to a better role elsewhere.

Any project's failure is dependent on the senior and experienced people on the team, not the new person who's just been there for one to two years. Sadly, the new people are axed all the time.

Make sure you ensure that every new hire gets similar resources for help and growth. Just hiring people and letting them deal with a corporation this big won't get you very far.