Boycott (Score 5, Interesting)

I stopped buying EA games a few years ago after bizarre experience interviewing with Maxis. I was going for a high end programming job and everyone I interviewed with posed a question that was clearly straight out of their current task list. I gave good answers to everything and everyone seemed happy and impressed. I even exchanged some followup emails with one developer about a particularly odd math algorithm he had been working on. They seemed eager to have me onboard. Then the HR dept stepped in. Clearly they were still chained to EA and disconnected from Maxis. She determined that I was a low level system admin and even though we had discussed salary in the 120-140 range she said because I was just a system admin they could only offer me 40k. Cue twilight-zone music. I tried to explain to her that I was a senior developer and had just spent two days interviewing with all of the other deveopers there. Apparently this pissed her off something awful. I tried to contact some of the people I had interviewed with and she had forbidden them to speak with me. Real nice. So I figured that if HR runs the shop, it must be hell to work for. I have never heard anything positive from any EA owned shop's employee. I joined the developer's boycott of EA at that point and chalked it up as a lesson learned. Despite the fact that the Battlefield series of games looks really pretty, I still won't support EA. They do dirty business and destroy small studios. I wish there were some way to support the developers who bleed for them without contributing the the hateful machine that the conglomerate has become. Just my $0.02