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Geek Culture / Anyone work at EA in the UK?

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Nicholas Thompson
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Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 3rd Jan 2007 23:48
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Quote: "Which university did you go to?"

Essex, Colchester. The CS Degree then was next to useless. They took 3 years to teach java to what they claimed was advanced level - what a lie! We just about finished covering the JButton! Then in the final term we were expected to be C++ experts for the Robotics module even though they dropped the language 3 years before. The only module which provides some use to me today (3 years on) is the Introduction to MySQL which had a lecturer who didn't give a toss and ended up promising us we'd fail the module (or as good as, he lied about the contents of an exam by telling us that a topic WOULDN'T appear as he'd tested us on it for coursework, he claimed there was no point assessing twice... He made 50% of the paper on it). He also taught bugger all and I ended up teaching myself. I managed to get either a 2.1 or 1st in the module, but it was all (and I mean ALL) self taught. The rest of the degree is useless to me - I mean we were taught VRML! How old is that! The best tutorial we found (his notes and teaching style weren't great either) was about 10-15 year old!

This is why I think degree's are useless based on my experience - however my girlfriend did Law and that was a well run and informative course (at UEA), so maybe I just had a bad experience...

Still, in my opinion, for CS, by the time you finish a degree the stuff you learned is likely to be at least partly out of date if no obselete + a lot of uni's seem to teach people to take information by spoon feeding. There isn't enough emphasis on teaching people skills for the workplace.

As !hi! said - one of the few things it does is extend you over someone else... Sad but true that someone who is better at regurgitating information in a 2-3 hour period could get employed over you even if they aren't actually any good at programming (programming is far more oriented around problem solving and research than answering multiple choice or anything like that).

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adr
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 00:00 Edited at: 4th Jan 2007 00:05
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I'm not sure anyone's pointed this out, so I will.

Work Experience, in England and Wales (I belive) is a programme where students aged between 12 and 15 go to work somewhere for a week. This is not like a university/college placement. For a week, you will do the tasks no-one wants to do; photocopying, sweeping up, or if you're lucky, playing solitaire while your mentor frantically creates jobs for you.

So in summary, you learn nothing. This may explain VanB's comment, which confused Jeku. I worked in a store; 5x10 hour days, no pay. I learnt that the work experience programme is a waste of time.


Quote: "I learned more relevant info in the first couple weeks of work than I did the entire time I was at school."

I have to agree that degrees aren't very useful at a practical level. In my professional life, 68k assembly hasn't cropped up much yet. The time I spent using ingres and prolog was pretty much wasted. I don't believe I've been required to understand just how the heapsort algorithm works, nor have I been asked how to construct an ALU for a CPU.

I still value my time at university - as does my employer. University is probably more about learning how to learn, developing initiative, research techniques, and being a little bit more socially adequate.

That's not to say that my 15 year debt is a total waste. I have used discrete mathematics. I have used UML. I have used OO (certainly), but looking about how much my OO design has improved over the past 12 months leads me to believe there just isn't enough time (or commercial drive) at uni to really hone any specific skill. I was reviewing 12 month old code today and I just thought to myself "what were you thinking?"


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Jeku
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 00:55
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Quote: "however if they saw what that guy managed in such a "primitive" language then surely they'd see potential?"


Unfortunately potential isn't enough, especially when game companies receive thousands of resumes a month.

But I've seen people with no relevant background gets jobs as game designers/producers and do *awesome*. If somebody makes a kick-ass game in DBP and applies for a job in production, I'm sure it will be a great asset as such.

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Raven
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Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 4th Jan 2007 01:17
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Quote: "Raven, when did you work for them? I worked for EA UK Dev from 1995 to 1997 - maybe we bumped into each other then?"


EA US Development from 2000-2002, in South California.

Quote: "What games did you work on at EA Raven?"


Worked on a few things. Only thing I worked on from start to finish though was the CG for Zoids:Chaotic Century.

Well anyways on the point of getting an industry job. As far as EA is conserned (and most companies) you need Experience.
A minimum of 3years, more often 4years is preferred.

The reason that a degree (doesn't matter what most of the time) is required, is so that you have the "experience" required without actually working. However most places really like you to have a degree in some form of computer science.

A portfolio of good work is good, but more often HR will take someone with education and/or experience over someone talented.
Sorry, but that's just how the industry works. EA in particular are very strict about this fact.

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Jess T
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 03:33
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adr, You may not have been asked to build an ALU (which would be a rediculous thing to ask a software engineer anyay ), but the fact that you know how one works means you can write code to better use it and speed up your programs for that extra bit of kick.

Personally, I don't have an industry job yet, but my Uni knowledge has come in handy already with my Nintendo DS work (alot of it is about doing things as fast and as right from the begining).

I think these comments on Uni degree's being worthless are a bit over-exaggerated. The knowledge, logic skills, and ability to teach yourself are invaluable tools that you'll keep throughout your working life and hopefully hone them even more to get yourself a better job

Admittedly your point about how they don't have time to teach anything but basics is true. However, that's where initiative and self-learning comes into play - They teach you the basics, give you a platform to come back to, meanwhile, you go out and research the next step.
At my uni, for every single one of my programming-based classes (had 4 so far in 2 years), the difference between me getting a High Distinction, and my mates getting a Credit (just better than a Pass) has been the fact that I researched it more and learnt on my own. It's simply what's expected of you.

At any rate, that's my personal experience, and no-doubt life turns out differently for all of us!

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Miguel Melo
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 09:57
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Quote: "Quote: "Raven, when did you work for them? I worked for EA UK Dev from 1995 to 1997 - maybe we bumped into each other then?"

EA US Development from 2000-2002, in South California."


I guess that'll be a no, then...

I have vague plans for World Domination
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Nicholas Thompson
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 10:51
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Jess - I understand what you're saying in that a degree is entirely different from school... No spoon feeding at Uni! However, in the UK they've just trippled uni fee's and they're thinking of completely uncapping them which could easily allow uni's to tripple them again (potentially taking them over £10,000 (about AUS$24,700) a year).

For me, that level of money should buy you one-on-one teaching and certainly should give more than the basics. £30,000 is a LOT for just a certificate saying you stuck at something for 3 years... I mean think of how many Microsoft, Java or Cisco qualifications you could get for that - and those would make you MASTER'S of your trade, not jacks of many (A phrase in the UK (possible internationnally) is Jack Of All Trades, Master Of None).

I also agree that everyone's life is different... For me, Uni did two things for me:
1) teach me how to teach myself stuff as they Uni certainly couldn't do it!
2) provide me with a certificate which employers seem to value more than genuine talent and knowledge.

Not wanting to drag this thread into politics - but the main problem with the UK is that thanks to governments initiatives, a degree has become an Entry Level qualification and if you dont have on then you stand very little chance of doing well in life... The fact that they're mostly meaningless is beside the point.

Fortunately for me, I did me degree while fee's were "only" £1,100 a year... This still leaves me with over £10K debt once you factor in living costs, etc which is probably going to take me about 15-20 years to pay off. My sister is on the new £3K a year fee's and could easily finish with over £20K debt. That's serious money and, for me with the experience I had at uni, I couldn't justify spending that much on a certificate. I'd rather go the MCAD/Cisco route...

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AlexI
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 13:39 Edited at: 4th Jan 2007 13:40
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Quote: "1) provide me with a certificate which employers seem to value more than genuine talent and knowledge"
well it looks like i will have to go to university in the future although thats like 3 and half years away and then get
Quote: "taught bugger all "
and have big debts grim future

what things did you guys take for college?


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Nicholas Thompson
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 13:49
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For A Level I took Maths (chose Mechanics I&II and Pure I&II), Physics, Computer Science and General Studies.

It all depends what you want to do... A degree isn't "the answer". Its quite possible a company requiring a Microsoft Developer might want someone with an MCAD over someone with a degree. That'll also about 1/10th the price!

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AlexI
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 14:13 Edited at: 4th Jan 2007 14:33
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off topic, im going to start learning how Torque works now, i got torque ages ago,but never understand how it works, so i have got a book on it now, gets slighlty closer to learning C++


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AlexI
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 14:33 Edited at: 4th Jan 2007 14:33
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what difference does ram make to a server?


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Nicholas Thompson
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Posted: 4th Jan 2007 16:01
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allows it to cache more stuff.. Example in MySQL you can enable the QCache and when a select is run the results get stored in the QCache - next time that query is run, it just grabs the results from the table (however when an update or insert in applied to any of those tables in the select, those cached items get flushed out). This can have a HUGE impact on server load (in terms of reduction).

It could also allow you to have more instances of Apache threads/forks running which is useful if you get hundreds of simultaneous users.

If you're running Linux - type in "free -m" and you should see something like:


Note: Just because that server says I have 43Mb free out of 1769 doesn't necessarily mean I need more RAM, note the cached column - There is about 1.3Gb of cached data in RAM right now. If more free ram is needed then the OS will flush out the least used stuff in the cache and use it for the new thing instead. This is something that Linux does but windows tends not to. Linux believes free ram is wasted RAM - its there to be used. Windows does cache to an extent but its usually nowhere near as neat and tidy with it (or at least the apps themselves aren't).

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