Second Tour of Duty

24 Apr 2008

I started my second tour of duty with EA this week. It feels great to be back. Honestly, when I look back at leaving, I have a hard time believing that I left.

It was definitely good to leave though. I needed to go out, see what was there, and get some perspective on every thing. Perspective has told me that EA is damn near the best place in the world to work. It comes with unbelievable perks.

Part of why I left was personality conflicts with my boss at the time. We just didn’t click. Part of it was the direction of the project, it just really wasn’t as exciting the third time around. They were moving to focus on things that, I myself as a fan of the series can say, honestly didn’t interest me.

Part of it was the counter culture within EA. I started to get sucked into the “I hate EA” mentality. I won’t let that happen again.

Part of it was that a lot of my friends were moving on from EA to other companies. There was both a sense of not wanting to miss out, as well as not wanting to be the only one left.

Part of it was that I had chased what felt like my impossible dream of working on a specific game franchise for what seemed like forever, and then caught it. What do you do once you’ve run out of goals? I’m still trying to figure that out, as I don’t really have any career oriented goals anymore.

And finally, part of it was just my gypsy soul. There is some broken part of me that loves change. A part of me that loves starting over and redefining who I am. A part of me that just craves the adventure into the unknown.

The job I wandered to was not as advertised to say the least. They didn’t want me, they wanted someone with my brain, but who was willing to become a mindless automaton that constantly did what they were told even when they knew that it was wrong. That just isn’t me. I’m too damn headstrong for that kind of nonsense.

The commute was a big factor too. I thought I could handle it, but 60+ minutes of travel each way is just too much. It extends an 8 hour workday into a 10+ hour workday. Effectively extending the work day by at least 20%.

Yesterday I got stuck in some crappy traffic on the way home, and I was still home in less than a half hour. People must have thought I was crazy because I was just laughing to myself about how happy I was to be stuck in traffic. I should say over how happy I was to be stuck in that traffic, rather than what would have been a good hour behind it if I was traveling from my last job.

It is good to have all of the perks back as well. This time around I am taking advantage of everything that EA has to offer. Milking the cow as they say. I took a paycut and sacrificed a weeks vacation each year to come back to EA; and I have to say, that for me, it was definitely worth it.

When I look at the whole situation I’m proud of myself. I was able to stand back, look at everything and admit that I made a mistake. More than that though, I acted and rectified the mistake. I think a lot of people would have just stayed; feeling trapped by their situation.