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Working as a Game Tester
DaytonCIM writes "SFGate.com has a great story on the real life of game testers. 'Life is not all fun and games, though. It's all games -- with little time left for sleeping or eating, at least during the busy months before Christmas. The longest week he has logged was 106 hours, and 60-hour-plus weeks are typical in deadline crunches, he said.'"
I myself log about 10+ hours a week on games - no pay. My roommate logs about 40+ hours a week - no pay - this on top of a full time job. (I know, I know....) Why are these people complaining again??? The rest of the world has long hours and probably less job satisfaction than these "game testers".
That pretty much describes testing software except that bugs are a hell of a lot harder to find than those needles.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Earl: joe bob, I think we dun found something.
Joe Bob: really? whut is it, Earl?
Earl: I think we dun found ourselves a grade-A asshole!
Joe Bob: Holy shit, Earl...you're right!
Compare being a full time employee on salary to being a temp they can cut loose whenever they feel like it. Which is more secure? fucker.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
What a coincidence, the game I'm working on (MotoGP2, Xbox) is days away from completion, so the subject of testers is one that's very close to my heart at the moment.
Most games testers are idiots.
There's a strange idea in the industry that you go from testing to design to producing. This is a very unhealthy thing to happen. It means that testers that are any good get snapped up as designers real quick. This is bad for two reasons. The first reason is that good testers often don't make good designers. The second is that taking away the good testers leaves you just with bad testers.
It's not uncommon to get bug reports as precise as "I was playing, and it crashed" back from testers. If you ask them what level/track the crash happened on, it takes them another two days to remember.
I would list some more, but I'm tired; it's 1:45am and I'm just about done working for today :)