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http://trenchescomic.com/comic...

And I'm sure the names 'dummy' and 'asshole' do apply to some of the customers. And whore, for that matter, in a literal sense.

So it was you

Sometimes the world gets more tolerant, sometimes less tolerant. The word is 'whore' and not even the Parent's Television Council thinks it needs to be censored.

And I'm sure the names 'dummy' and 'asshole' do apply to some of the customers. And whore, for that matter, in a literal sense.

There are no violent ex-cons or gang members in my neighborhood or at my place of work...

I was going to ask you how you know; it reminded me this story from Trenches comic

Seems entirely too coincidental.

Tangentially relevant: Transmission

While there are minimal physical costs in outsourcing development there is an immediate massive productivity hit precisely because developers are not interchangeable.

Take your scenario where the company outsources all of their development and IT staff after everyone joins a union. Let's use a game company as an example (because of the high desirability of working in the gaming field they typically have some of the poorest wages and conditions in software development, see the Trenches comic for more background). They've recently launched a brand new MMO. After all of the death marching to get it launched the staff gets fed up and starts a union. When management tries to replace them the MMO will crumble. Think back to what's it's like when you get a new job, or even just join a different project in a new part of your company. How long does it take you to really contribute? How many people are there to answer questions and help you figure out how everything works?

Now put yourself in the shoes of the scabs that were just hired to clean up this mess. All the developers are gone. Who's going to teach you how to create new content and integrate it into the game world? How will the new sysadmins repair and replace servers when they have no idea how the system is laid out? How long before stuff starts to break and players get fed up and stop shelling out cash? Will it be before or after you manage to figure everything out and keep the game running?

Now, maybe you'll be lucky and there'll be some documentation that was written before the strike. However it's been my experience that there is never enough documentation and what's there has a maddening habit of not being up to date. Especially in the type of shop that would drive its workers to unionize.

A properly timed strike at a software company would quickly bring management to their knees or put the company out of business.

Everything I know about testing, I learned from The Trenches.

Oh, and doing it myself, of course. Of course I test my code. Why? Who's asking?

Tales from the trenches has some horror stories as well.

The Trenches comic is off to a slow start, I can't decide if I like it or not, but the QA tales below it are worth a read, IMO. I especially like this one, because it's so true; In many projects where "ship it" becomes as much a battle cry as a new form of profanity, and not just in Game development...

Tales from the trenches has some horror stories as well.

The Trenches comic is off to a slow start, I can't decide if I like it or not, but the QA tales below it are worth a read, IMO. I especially like this one, because it's so true; In many projects where "ship it" becomes as much a battle cry as a new form of profanity, and not just in Game development...

Tales from the trenches has some horror stories as well.

The Trenches comic is off to a slow start, I can't decide if I like it or not, but the QA tales below it are worth a read, IMO. I especially like this one, because it's so true; In many projects where "ship it" becomes as much a battle cry as a new form of profanity, and not just in Game development...

The nightmarish working conditions at EA are legendary. Those "jokes" you've heard? Probably real-life anecdotes.

I find http://trenchescomic.com/ to be one of the best reads out there now. Not for the comics but for the anonymous stories.
Sure there's the potential people will start to exaggerate to make the story more interesting (who doesn't?) but I've heard enough anecdotally from the industry that truth is always stranger than fiction. And the earliest stories collected before the site was launched are nuts too. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. If it was honey and roses there wouldn't even be a debate.

If I do pursue the vidja games industry, it will definitely be from the commerce side. They'll call me the suit-with-a-heart-of-gold right up until John Riccitiello crushes my resolve. Then you soda-swilling fuckers are all fired after we ship. ;P

Some of the guys at PA + Scott Kurtz made an an entire comic about game testers. Rather entertaining so far. Also, the real-life stories are both funny and sad at the same time.

Office has a heck of a lot more code than Atari 2600 Space Invaders. And a heck of a lot more ways to interact with the user.

You are a troll. Why else would you compare Office, a suite of business software, with one of the simplest video games every written? That's as stupid as comparing the combined code complexity of GTA, GTAII, GTA3 and GTA: Vice City with that of notepad.

Office bugs aren't 'I press the left button and go right', they're 'I embed an Excel spreadsheet with 500,000 columns and when I change the font to 96-point Comic Sans the first column displays in the wrong font'.

You are a troll. Video game bugs aren't just "I press the left button and go right" either. See the link already provided below. Or there's this one. Or this...

Office has a heck of a lot more code than Atari 2600 Space Invaders. And a heck of a lot more ways to interact with the user.

You are a troll. Why else would you compare Office, a suite of business software, with one of the simplest video games every written? That's as stupid as comparing the combined code complexity of GTA, GTAII, GTA3 and GTA: Vice City with that of notepad.

Office bugs aren't 'I press the left button and go right', they're 'I embed an Excel spreadsheet with 500,000 columns and when I change the font to 96-point Comic Sans the first column displays in the wrong font'.

You are a troll. Video game bugs aren't just "I press the left button and go right" either. See the link already provided below. Or there's this one. Or this...

Office has a heck of a lot more code than Atari 2600 Space Invaders. And a heck of a lot more ways to interact with the user.

You are a troll. Why else would you compare Office, a suite of business software, with one of the simplest video games every written? That's as stupid as comparing the combined code complexity of GTA, GTAII, GTA3 and GTA: Vice City with that of notepad.

Office bugs aren't 'I press the left button and go right', they're 'I embed an Excel spreadsheet with 500,000 columns and when I change the font to 96-point Comic Sans the first column displays in the wrong font'.

You are a troll. Video game bugs aren't just "I press the left button and go right" either. See the link already provided below. Or there's this one. Or this...

player who had been killed by a specific weapon, after his armor had popped, had his death cam actually become the 1st person vision of the enemy who did the deed.