Review

“Working in EA as the Software Engineer”

Anonymous Employee (Current Employee)

I have been working at Electronic Arts
Pros – If you wanna work with gamedev professionals that are locating all over the world—that's it.
Cons – Some development tools that in use are too much imperfect. Mostly it's useless to suggest tools if you are not a leader of the project.

“Great technical problems”

Anonymous Employee (Current Employee)

I have been working at Electronic Arts full-time for more than a year
Pros – Latest and greatest technology used that will make a difference. Stability
Cons – Support functions are not that strong.
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

“Nice place to work and learn”

Project Manager (Former Employee)

Hyderābād (India)

I worked at Electronic Arts full-time for more than a year
Pros – fun and exciting stuff place to work and learn GDLC
Cons – low career visibility, low transparency, big chain of command
Advice to Senior Management – none at the moment
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

“Experience varies depending on the studio, but if you join the right studio you could be working on interesting problems”

Senior Software Engineer (Current Employee)

I have been working at Electronic Arts full-time for more than 7 years
Pros – Benefits are not bad.

If you get lucky and work under the right person career prospects are not bad too and you may get to do interesting work and work on quality AAA games

 There are also a huge amount of resources and smart people so even if you eventually leave it's a huge learning opportunity.
Cons – The company is being run by producers who a lot of times are too heavy on micro-management and are wannaby designers rather than actual doing production work.

Marketing also has too much of a say in how your game should be made. All that means is people who actually make the game usually have very little influence to the final outcome

Lack of clear direction in the company means reactive policies (oh let's make wii games! crap it's over let's make facebook game! crap not doing well as well let's make mobile games!).
Advice to Senior Management – Hcace some good senior management and focus on establishing a clear vision for the company.
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

“I had fun working on interesting problems, but a lot of differing agendas make internal problems hard to fix.”

Development Director (Former Employee)

I worked at Electronic Arts full-time for more than 7 years
Pros – There are a ton of professional, intelligent, reasonable people working among EA's ranks. I found many of them inspiring and learned a lot from peers as well as supervisors.
Cons – "Label" politics get in the way of sharing benefits of knowledge and innovation across the company. Being a glom of studio acquisitions, they let the game studio rule when, as a company, there are bigger things to chase than just one game at a time.
Advice to Senior Management – They talk a lot about their strategy, but they have to walk the walk!
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

“An amazing learning experience!”

Project Lead (Current Employee)

Montreal, QC (Canada)

I have been working at Electronic Arts full-time for more than 3 years
Pros – Excellent support structure from my managers. Learning and knowledge sharing tools are available. Teams are mature and structured.
Cons – Pay is not as high as other companies in the software industry.
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

“Great experience, learned a lot and worked with some very smart people.”

Senior Marketing Manager (Former Employee)

Redwood City, CA

I worked at Electronic Arts full-time for more than 3 years
Pros – Great perks, fun products and environment, good peers.
Cons – Pay scale is lower than traditional ranges, advancement can be difficult, politics can be difficult to navigate for those not interested in that type of environment, re-organizations occur too frequently.
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

“Not terrible”

DEvelopment Director (Current Employee)

San Francisco, CA

I have been working at Electronic Arts full-time for more than a year
Pros – Creativity flourishes and products are fun
Cons – Work life balance is awful
Advice to Senior Management – Figure a way to make product without killing everyone
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

“EA Sports”

Software Engineer II (Former Employee)

Vancouver, BC (Canada)

I worked at Electronic Arts as a contractor for less than a year
Pros – good location, good benefits, promotions to global locations
Cons – Not balance between work and life
Advice to Senior Management – Every years, this team will rehire tons of contractors and retrain them and let them to be familiar tools and workflow.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

“Fairly good stability for the game industry.”

Assistant Designer (Former Employee)

Orlando, FL

I worked at Electronic Arts full-time for more than 8 years
Pros – The benefits are good, and I got more vacation time and paid holidays than most other people I know. The culture was fun, and I enjoyed the game I was working on.
Cons – The salary is lower than what you would get at most other places with the same experience and responsibility. The culture and bonuses will vary based on the game team you are associated with. Some teams will have to deal with much more stress than others.

Also, even though the benefits are very good, they are significantly scaled down from what they were a few years ago. They no longer offer sabbatical, and some of the smaller benefits were eliminated entirely.
Advice to Senior Management – I worked with a variety of managers while there and some were better than others. The best managers I had were the ones that would focus on the people they were managing and doing everything possible to allow them to do their job.
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend