Electronic Arts

10-year-old kids say "wow" when they find out.

If you look, you'll find knowledge beyond what you can find anywhere else.

If you're into games, aside from all the EA haters who are, much like Mac fanboys, very useless, it's a great place to build things that made our childhoods great, granted that time is gone.

It's a big company, a full-time job, and security for people with families, mortgagees, etc.

50-hour weeks are quite common, 80+ when finalizing.

EA is a machine that makes games, not meant for people.

People who have no business making some decisions are in charge of making those decisions, and some people with knowledge to make the decision have no real say in anything.

Entire projects can fail because of a few select individuals.

Projects are guided by the select few, and no other opinion is valued. Valve would be the exact opposite.

Without naming specific games, one of the recent big titles failed but could have been saved if people in charge were only to listen to people who were making the title. It wasn't fun to play from the get-go and didn't improve one bit.

There is no easy way to relate problems with management.

In all, it's overstressed enthronement with few compensations. If you're fine writing something less fun than games, like DB2 code, go work for IBM. You'll work less, be less stressed, and get paid more. There are also many smaller game companies around where you'll have much more say in what's actually being built.

I wouldn't consider leaving because of most of the above. The only thing that makes me think twice about staying longer is the finalizing (a month or two before the title ships). It's brutal every time, every darn time, and wouldn't people learn by now? Schedule better, give more time for the tasks that actually need to happen. Well, they would; people (in charge) are smart. So that leads me to think that it's actually planned, and pulling 80+ hours for two months is exactly what the studio wants and thinks it can get away with. And then act all surprised that great people leave, and the next project is suddenly without a lead or such.

What's good for the company may not directly relate to what's good for the people... and people are always better for the company.