Schizo Sierra

Joe Stratiff has a very interesting take on recent goings on at EA games.

One poster responded to his blog with this comment:

With the Silicon Valley meltdown, EA's apparently gone from bad to worse. Ive never worked there (and never will!), but the sweat shop stories now rival what Ive heard from Sierra Online vets long ago. Insane.

Now, I'd reply to this in the blog itself, but Joe has closed comments (after all, 443 comments each triggering an email, and you have to draw the line somewhere). So, given that I can't reply there, I'll ask here...

So just how long ago was this? I worked for Sierra for 3 years (up until Jan 2002), and I had a great time, with a great salary, and (being the lead) managed to control the working hours so that we scheduled 40 hour work weeks and kept to that with the occasional 2 week crunch. Morale was great, work product was great, and me & my team repeatedly shipped on time and on budget.

Sure, there was the occasional crunch, but I (as lead) tried to bear the brunt of it.

Must have been a different part of Sierra. Either that, or we were a special case and didn't know it. I guess that goes to show what you get if you put together a good match between lead engineer and producer - really good results.