Crunch Tactics a Symptom of a Larger Problem?

An anonymous reader writes "One of the brave few: hot on the heels of the recent lawsuit filed against Vivendi Universal for back wages due to a developer who was allegedly asked to alter his timecard, Rob Fahey of gamesindustry.biz has taken the bold step of taking the position that the insane hours game developers are routinely asked to work are might not be in the industry's best interest, and in fact might be less profitable than planning projects well."

Comments

Re:It's like this for any programming project.

[JavaLord]

Then you plan for that and include it in the schedule. If it "always happens", then you'd better always include it in the schedule. There is no excuse for doing otherwise -- forty years of software engineering history gives us a pretty strong indication that the belief "maybe everything will go perfectly this time" is a horrible fallacy.

Think you could call my boss and have a talk with him? :) Maybe you could get him to schedule in some slashdot time also.