I have a stone in my shoe. The now-daily outcry of “abuse” of EA employees, which was instigated by the wife of an EA employee. It’s almost as annoying as being governor-less and finding “new lost” ballots on a daily basis, knowing that even if mine is found, it won’t count because of a registration snafu… I’ve had quite enough of the “EA Scandal”, especially when it’s not a scandal in the first place. Ah, Holiday cheer indeed!

Personally, I was OK with the EA Spouse thing when it started. She’s pissed off that her husband works a lot of hours and doesn’t get overtime, and somewhat justifiably. She vented, other people agreed, and that should have been it. However, it has snowballed into something annoying, as most whining episodes do, and is now a “movement” in my industry… one I don’t like one bit.

First and foremost, her husband is employed. Know what? That’s more than what I had for a year. That’s more than what 5-10% of our country has right now. The dude gets his salary on time, which is no small feat in the software business. Three out of my last four companies have missed paychecks on me over the last eight years – some were just late, some were lost, and some just bounced outright – so if you’re getting paid be happy about that.

Yes, EA is one of the largest gaming companies – and a rather successful one – but gaming is an ugly business in the tech field. There’s a low profit margin on their products and there’s little they can do about it. For every copy of a game that is sold, there’s got to be at least five that are were copied out there in the field. For some reason Geeks don’t like to pay for games – they resent it for some reason – and it shows in the bottom line.

Then there’s the notion of overtime. I’m sorry, but when your guy signed up for the job, he became an exempt employee and that means no overtime. Ever. It’s true for most engineers in full time positions across the field. Actually, it’s true for most white collar jobs, whether its technology, accounting, executive roles, admins, doctors, or whatever. And most of the other exempt jobs don’t have the benefits that software companies do. Medical, dental, education, hardware purchases, soda, etc. So get this notion the of “I deserve overtime” the hell out of your head. If you’re so concerned about overtime, have your husband get an hourly job at WalMart Target [WalMart has whiny employees too] and get out of my field.

Here’s the truth of it: software is hard to schedule. And software that has a non-tech related deadline is even harder to schedule. EA has that problem in a huge way: they ship their sports software before the start of the sporting season. Other titles are gaited by Christmas and other holidays. So you have a fixed calendar (and non-technically related) deadline and a product that’s extremely hard to schedule. There’s bound to be some mistakes and since the deadline can’t change, they have to be made up by hard work.

Long hours comes with the job. It always has. I can recall 12-20 hour days for six months at a time when shooting for a 1.0 release when working for Symantec way back in the day. Even though managers are getting better at scheduling with each year and each project, long hours will probably always be part of the job.

Dear EA Spouse: You’ve had your fifteen minutes and you’ve waved your crying towel long enough – either respect the demands that your husband’s career require or let him get a new (and probably lower paying) career.