EA Pushes Full Return to Office, Effectively Ends Remote Hiring

https://www.ign.com/articles/ea-pushes-full-return-to-office-effectively-ends-remote-hiring

by napolux • 1 year ago

37 49 1 year ago

ign.com

rzz3• 1 year ago

Another company I’ll never want to work for then.

DataDaemon• 1 year ago

- We need save climate! Less pollution! - Can I work from home? - That's not what I meant!

gedy• 1 year ago

My previous company had some "greenest employee" award for commute with most transit, etc - they told me I didn't qualify because I wfh... even though I didn't drive at all for work.

Fleetfantasy• 1 year ago

Probably the worst company I've interviewed for. Yet another reason to stay away

BoredPositron• 1 year ago

Indeed, it's even worse if you get acquired.

xingped3• 1 year ago

Agreed. I had a bizarre interview experience with them whereupon finishing the interview, the hiring manager emailed me once a week for about 4 or 5 weeks in a row asking if I was still interested. It was bizarre. How many times do I have to say yes? After the 4th or 5th time I just told them no, not any more.

blitzar3• 1 year ago

After the 4th or 5th time I just told them no, not any more.

I hope that is the point where they sent the offer.

burnt-resistor3• 1 year ago

Ghost jobs perhaps to test the market, inflate stats reported to regulators, and/or HR people justifying their jobs.

notepad0x902• 1 year ago

The problem is, they don't even let most people have actual offices at the office.

Even if productivity is better this way, isn't there an advantage to being able to hire people from a wider geography, access to a larger talent pool?

I read @paulg and other leadership type YC people support return to office as well. I recall startups competing for talent desperately. That was why silicon valley startups always had crazy perks. If talent was how my business disrupted and dominated, I would want the most access to talent and give them the best working conditions. Perhaps a subtle pivot in priority has happened? Tech companies no longer believe in a talent-centered strategy? Or there is an over abundance of talent?

I'm just trying to give people the benefit of doubt, that this isn't just cruel people unhappy at the sight of improved quality of life for others.

FinnLobsien5• 1 year ago

I don't think these things are really done because you get more done at an office.

I think it's more of a litmus test: If you care about your work enough that you're willing to come to the office every day (or even move cities/countries), then you'll be extremely engaged.

So by saying "you have to come to the office 5 days a week", you will only get people who are very engaged and will get a lot done—even if it's not because of the office.

I guarantee there's a Venn diagram of extremely engaged people who also prefer (or will exclusively do) remote work, which office-only companies will miss out on.

But when you're in a high talent-density area like NYC/SF maybe that's not a big concern.

So willingness to come to the office becomes a proxy metric for how much you care, which obviously influences your engagement.

notepad0x902• 1 year ago

I think it's more of a litmus test: If you care about your work enough that you're willing to come to the office every day (or even move cities/countries), then you'll be extremely engaged.

Sure, but what if there is another company closer to me (office), or offering hybrid or full remote work? I can about my work just the same elsewhere.

I think you're on the right track, but in my opinion, it is more about having reliable employees than employees who care or are engaged. Your actual performance and talent could be bad, but so long as you won't ask for too much pay and you won't leave any time soon, that is what these companies want more than talent. This is sort of what I was alluding to. disruptive startups would never think this way, but EA isn't that anymore. neither are google or facebook. they're no longer disruptive, they are complacent and spiraling into the IBM and AT&T like mediocrity.

PicassoCTs2• 1 year ago

Its a filter for bad negotiators. Throw 1.5h commute on top of 9-10h work and you filter for people who have no sense of self-preservation and thus will also suck at negotiation. 3 years in burnout, rinse and repeat.

Game-development already is a super-hostile work environment, where "talent" is regularly replaced by some starry eyed university-grad for cheap. If people are just ablative material and payment is all the captain crunch you can eat in the cafeteria, nobody at a cult gets to work remote.

benterix2• 1 year ago

If you care about your work enough that you're willing to come to the office every day (or even move cities/countries), then you'll be extremely engaged.

Or extremely stupid (if for the same money you get WFH without the need to move to another city or even country and waste I don't know how many hours commuting, and spending most of your life in a space that you can't really adapt to your needs).

Tade0• 1 year ago

The hypothesis I settled on is that they're cracking down on overwork, so people pulling two jobs in secret.

There's also the question of executives having a stake in the commercial real estate that's used for the office, but I think it's secondary, as they're too okay with firing people for that to be the main reason.

citrin_ru• 1 year ago

May be the problem with hiring from wider geography is that evaluation of a candidate performance is a difficult and largely unsolved problem. Hiring from a small area (like SV) an employer can rely on offline social networks (friend of my friend knows a candidate). Though I don’t understand why US companies so afraid to make a bad hire given that it is easy to fire someone who doesn’t perform well in the US.

FirmwareBurner2• 1 year ago

Though I don’t understand why US companies so afraid to make a bad hire given that it is easy to fire someone who doesn’t perform well in the US.

I assume because in the US employees can still sue for what they would consider wrongful termination, especially if the worker is part of a protected group, making firing a very expensive endeavor in the end.

fullshark• 1 year ago

It's not complicated, they don't trust remote workers except for a few exceptional individuals.

tra3• 1 year ago

Are there any companies making the news that are going in the opposite direction? Allowing more flexible “hybrid”, or even full remote?

I recently got an Amazon recruiter ping, but realized that they couldn’t pay me enough to commute into the city center. I’m not really looking, but if push came to shove, I would have to if the industry is really moving back to the office. Makes me real sad.

lm28469• 1 year ago

How do you want them to pump up real estate prices if people can work and live outside of city centers ? What are they going to do with all these gigantic towers ? Thinks about these poor mill/billionaires!

parineum3• 1 year ago

Who is "they"?

The companies bringing employees back to the office aren't typically the owners of these buildings not are they real estate investors.

burnt-resistor3• 1 year ago

Megacorps are making dumb, outdated, bureaucratic, inflexible, control-freak, paternalism fashionable again.

apple4ever• 1 year ago

Its because the leadership is always stuck in the past and never stops to ask "is this the right thing to do?"

burnt-resistor3• 1 year ago

Ethics are a quaint memory because leadership of private equity/publicly-traded companies are graded primarily only on profit maximization. And, leadership often pays MBB consultants to think for them, effectively outsourcing decision-making and creating a fall guy so they can blame someone else for screwing up.

disqard3• 1 year ago

The entire industry is plagued by oversupply right now.

These sorts of power plays are impossible in a resource-constrained setting.

Meanwhile, spare a thought for the poor devils graduating from CS degree programs right now.

TremendousJudge• 1 year ago

If you're graduating with a CS degree from a legit university you're much better positioned than if you did a 2 month bootcamp, which I expect are the first people to have trouble finding a job

disqard3• 1 year ago

I kinda hear you -- there's definitely gradations at work here -- but the sentiment you've expressed is also fast losing veracity. For instance:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43612448

supertrope• 1 year ago

Just tell more displaced coal miners and high schoolers to learn to code. That'll solve the problem.

kermatt• 1 year ago

"globally consistent, enterprise-wide work model" sounds dystopian.

EA Pushes Full Return to Office, Effectively Ends Remote Hiring

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