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Good Pay, Good Benefits, Mixed Work Reality

Software Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Electronic Arts for 6 years
June 25, 2020
Seattle, Washington
3.0
RecommendsNeutral OutlookNo CEO Opinion
Pros

Pay is super balanced when comparing across the games industry. It still lags a bit behind the software industry in general.

Benefits are generally really good (health, dental, PTO, vision, etc).

There is decent work-life balance compared to other game dev jobs (most of the time).

Cons

Middle management is overburdened and often overworked, taking on too many roles. This makes projects move slower and makes leaders in middle management less effective. This trickles down to the whole team.

Studio vs. corporate culture and communication is still shaky. Decisions are not well understood or effectively communicated down much of the time. There seem to be missing directives downwards for a lot of product/company decisions.

Advice to Management

Figure out the roles of your leaders. Are they mentors? Are they career guides? Are they managers? Are they discipline leaders?

These four segments "sometimes" overlap, but often are disjoint. Overburdening individuals with all four is a good way to overwork and burn out your best managers and leaders, plus reduce the quality and delivery of your products.

Likewise, demonstrate accountability up and down the decision-making chain. Right now, everything is over-glossed and obfuscated behind who or what made a decision.

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