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More On Why It Stinks To Work At Zynga
bdking writes "If a recent internal survey and reviews left on glassdoor.com are to be believed, working at social games company Zynga isn't much fun. Zynga's competitive, metrics-driven culture may be scaring away potential acquisitions and forcing out employees seeking better work-life balance and less stress."
According to the article, PopCap turned down their offer and went with Electronic Arts instead, because they thought that working conditions would be better at EA. Yes, read that last part again: they would rather deal with the working conditions at EA than work for Zynga. That's pretty bad.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Companies display a big lack of management sklills when employees post things like:
*Stop asking if Mark is a good CEO on a company survey that people fill out over their company-issued computers. Everyone assumes it can be tracked.
* Expect to find yourself micromanaged by someone much less skilled than you, and who also has no skills in management.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Metrics can be used for comparison, it's just that most of them aren't good for measuring performance and that when you incentivize people to produce large scores for certain metrics, they'll start to cook the books.
For example, lines of code per hour is an absolutely terrible metric to measure performance. It does not take into account the type of problem or how difficult it may be to engineer a solution for that problem. Also, once it becomes apparent that people rewarded for producing a larger number of LoC per hour, they'll start to produce more lines of code, whether they're necessary or not, often to the detriment of readability.
There's nothing wrong with measuring things like this, and many software development methodologies use metrics such as LoC to provide feedback for the project, but in no way should they be used to evaluate employees. Many of the attributes that make up a good employee cannot be quantified by simple metrics. Metrics are just another tool. Using them correctly is necessary to get anything meaningful out of them.
You are confusing socialism with totalitarianism. There are democratic socialist countries. I prefer a market economy myself and I agree that government control of the economy inherently limits the potential freedom of its citizens, but so do oligarchies and cartels. It is possible to have a market economy under an authoritarian regime as well. The combination of a representative government and a market economy has the greatest potential to maximize freedom, but that depends on so many conditions its almost theoretical.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
I'm shocked, *shocked* that a job involving writing human Skinner boxes masquerading as games is less than spiritually satisfying.
I'm equally shocked that a company whose business revolves around getting money from people via human Skinner boxes masquerading as games might be a bunch of worthless dicks and not that much fun to work for.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
for distributing some javascript that ran in greasemonkey which clicked buttons in their game. Fuck Zynga.
You mean to suggest that if a socialist system (or any other for that matter) were used, stupid management would suddenly disappear?
Stalin's approach of shooting those who couldn't meet the required metrics at least ensured that management became smart enough to fiddle the metrics.
It *should* suck to work in that stupid place. If you're doing something that is a parasite on society to make a living at least at least you should have a miserable time doing it. Do something productive instead like, I dunno, deal heroin or something.
http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/chapter/2/
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
There's nothing wrong with measuring things like this, and many software development methodologies use metrics such as LoC to provide feedback for the project, but in no way should they be used to evaluate employees.
Evaluating software developers is hard. So, just as companies would like to use software generating tools to de-skill the programming positions, they'd also like to use metrics to de-skill some of those pesky high-paid management positions. Both attempts to substitute automation for human skill work about equally well ;-)
It's best when you write -2000 lines of code during the day.
Metrics are one of those things that sometimes set me off. The main problem is, you have to know what you're measuring. You're measuring number of lines produced per hour? That's fine. But do you know what you're measuring? You're measuring the number of lines produced per hour. You aren't measuring the quality of the code or the productivity of the programmer. The number of lines that a programmer produced may have some relation to the programmer's overall productivity, or it may not, so you are *not* measuring overall productivity with that metric.
Same goes for other metrics. Know what you're measuring. Don't rely too much on a metric to give you a value for something that it doesn't measure.
You're confusing socialism for The People's Republic of China and the scare stories about Russia in the 1980s as told by Americans to other Americans.
Places like Denmark, Finland, Sweden, France, and Germany are phenomenal when it comes to variety and choice in job.
Perhaps a bit of world travel and turning off Fox News would do you good.
A friend from church mentioned to me a while ago that Zynga had been trying to recruit his son, a 16 year-old junior in high school. That really made me wonder about the company. The kid's smart, no doubt about it, and a decent coder (his code is functional, but not particularly clean or maintainable -- pretty typical for a bright novice), but I can really only think of one reason why a company would want to hire a 16 year-old, put him up in an apartment in NYC and make him write code full-time: To exploit his willingness to work insane hours for peanuts until he burns out.
If they really thought he was brilliant and a great long-term hire, they'd offer him an internship and help pay for his college education in exchange for some work now and a lot more work after he gets some CS knowledge to go along with his coding skills.
His parents refused to let him go... they didn't like the idea of turning a 16 year-old loose on his own in NYC, for some reason. I'm encouraging him to apply for a summer internship at Google. Most of those go to college students, but I think he's good enough to make the cut, and a summer internship will pay him well for a great learning opportunity without compromising his continuing formal education.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I agree. That's why I work in the US. No metric system here.
reduce this:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
def Function: return 42
If putting out a good, clean product is nowhere in the requirements for your software, why would you compensate the people enough to retain people competent enough to put out a good, clean product? Do you remember that slacker in your CS/IT classes? You know who I'm talking about, the one who never did any of the work in group projects but took all of the credit when it was time to present it to the class. The one who has the same degree you do, but couldn't code his way out of a cardboard box. They need jobs too! Sorry, but the Tech world has been somewhat insulated from the recession, and finding a job in CS/IT isn't that hard right now. If you're stuck at Zynga, there might be a reason.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
If my company paid me solely based on how many lines of code I can write in an hour, then I would spend half an hour writing a code generating program, and the rest of my career there justifying more hardware on which to run my program.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
LoC is lines of code? Damn, I thought it was Library of Congresses. I should slow down
rewriting history since 2109
Perhaps a bit of world travel and turning off Fox News would do you good.
He's living in the Capitalist's Free Market paradise. He can't afford those sorts of things.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The difference is that in capitalism you have the choice of not working for such a company
And this is the largest problem with those that religiously worship capitalism. Whether or not you have the "choice" to work for this company is irrelevant; the fact of the matter is that this bullshit should not be allowed, period. When you start to allow companies to act like total assholes because "people have a choice," then if they get successful, then all the other companies will start to emulate that. Look at what happened with retirement plans: Most companies used to offer pensions, which were great for workers. Then a few removed them and went to the far shittier 401k plan. This was deemed acceptable because "you have the choice to work for a company that provides a pension." Fast forward a few years, and now it's almost impossible to find a company that offers pensions to it's employees, unless they are a union job. So don't give me that bullshit about "choice of working".
You maybe haven't heard of Employment Tribunals then?
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
A dozen teenagers being exploited by an employer doesn't worry me much, it's normal for most industries.
And that's a fucking problem. The fact that people consider that "acceptable" is absolutely disgusting.
30% on government payroll, 20% on well-fare, 12% too disabled to work. These are stats for Norway, but similar to some of the countries quoted above. Phenomenal my ass, maybe if you greatest aspiration to live on well-fare. But for someone ambitious and determined America is still the place to be. And I'm saying it as a patriotic Russian with no great love for USA. This is the opinion shared by people as diverse as Linux (recently became a naturalized citizen) to president of SpaceX.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
As some times people end doing the work load of 2-3 people?
that you are a pointy-haired who feels that blaming your workers for your inability to properly budget time and expenses is a viable business strategy.
Should those 12% that are too disabled to work be abandoned to the winter and the wolves? Should the government shut down just so those 30% can hold their heads high while they starve, thankful that they aren't doing something so terrible as working for a government?
The things shared in common by Linus Torvalds and the founder of SpaceX is that they were both already economically mobile and had the money to move to a different country. The US is a great place to be if you are wealthy, as there are very few items or services that are denied to someone with means. As a personal opinion, I believe that extends to the US legal and political system as well. If you are poor, either because you were born in to poverty or you ended up in poverty, your prospects are very limited.
This isn't to say that I don't love my country, I certainly do, but I love the country that offers a level playing field where someone who is bright and creative can succeed through a combination of innovation and hard work. What I don't love is the country we have become, where monied interests are given every opportunity, and the poor are left to eek out whatever existence they can.
has an daily requirement of work? Every SCRUM I've worked with only cares that you finish your tasks at the end of the scrum. the number of hours you need to work to get there are not really anyone elses concern.
He said "socialist nations", not "nations with socialist elements". Even the U.S. has "socialist" elements.
And... this is part of what's wrong with healthcare in the US. You're probably working like that because all the other men in the medical fraternity got hazed even worse than you did.
Meanwhile, medical mistakes kill... how many people every year?
Meanwhile, the number of smart people who decide not to become MDs is... how many each year?
You work 12- hour days and you're complaining? I'm a resident physician and work 12 hours shifts everyday. Plus, I have to take call which translates into 30-hour shifts on occasion. My personal record is 32 hours awake in the hospital---and that's after Congress stepped in and created the work-hour limitations.
The medical industry is severly broken. You wouldn't let a truck driver operate his vehicle 12 hours straight, let alone 32. If he did and he had an accident he'd be imprisoned. Yet doctors do insane shifts. That is just plain ridiculous. You need to have your shifts limited to 8 hours in any 24 hour period and train a lot more doctors. The reason this isn't happening is your medical associations artificially limit supply of doctors to drive rates up for the elite specialists. Again ridiculous. How many people have died because a doctor has been too tired to do their job properly and has made a mistake. Do I dare ask you if you've ever made a fatal mistake due to fatigue, and how you live with it?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
As the SO of a resident I agree with you and sympathize with GP. The thing is that many med. students (later to become residents) are basically brainwashed. The attitude is that you WILL work every waking hour, or we'll find someone who will. And they're right.
It's not just supply and demand though. It's a culture problem. Sort of like an extended period of hazing for every wannabe doctor. I'm almost ok with the hours required in the game industry because those programmers can easily choose to do another programming job that's less insane. The hours of doctors kill folks though.
Actually, you're quite confused about two very, very different terms here -- which might be understandable as European political systems are impressively more complex and varied than the "Two Parties - plus various nutjobs" system that seems prevalent in the United States (from a European point of view).
You have to understand the fundamental difference between socialist -- which is the political system that Karl Marx described as the dictatorship of the masses to break the hold of the few over production -- and social democrat, which realizes that dictatorships are bad, but also that having more should mean that you can also do more for those that have less.
Further more, there are conservative central parties -- that mostly believe that social responsibility is a worthwhile goal, but should flow from moral responsibility and incentives instead of direct governmental pressure. Then there are right-wing conservatives, that are mostly like the central conservative parties as far as their social approach is concerned, but put more pressure on morals, up to reaching semi-tacit demands for more socio-moral homogeneity. In themselves, these conservative parties are not actually economically more conservative. At best, they are more open towards working WITH big companies to reach a particular goal instead of AGAINST them.
But mostly, the economic outlook depends more on whether you adhere to the more liberal wing of your chosen political stream, or the more social/rightist (as in rights of the people, not right as in right vs left).
In Europe (and especially Germany from which I hail), you can be a liberal conservative, a social democrat, a liberal, a conservative, a green, a leftist, a socialist, a communist, a liberal-economist, a rights-liberal, a rights-conservative, an extreme leftist (note: != socialist or communist), a green, a leftist green, a liberal green, a conservative green, a liberal social democrat with ecological interests (a.k.a. green); and so on. Ohh, and you can of course be a neo-fascist, if that's to your liking.
And the best: Depending on where you live in Europe, all these streams (except for maybe the neo-fascists and extreme leftists) are represented by parties that have between 10-25% of the popular vote with actual voices in the respective parliaments -- and sometimes governments.
Compared to the US-System, Europe is a melting pot of political ideals, where you can be in a conservative party which collectively tries to keep Nuclear Reactors running while allowing gay marriage, wanting minimum wage, and trying to introduce religious lessons in school. The same applies to leftists, liberals, greens, etc. to the same degree.
Isn't having a (non-exclusively) plurality vote system great?
In my admittedly not all-encompassing experience, it's often the pesky high-paid middle managers who like to run the company by the numbers. I've had a few very large corporations as a client, and I found the upper management to be suprisingly level-headed (although rather stubborn as well, and not always that smart). They appreciate jacks of all trades and guys who can get things done. But middle managers hate that; they prefer 3 lumps of warm meat of type A B and C over one guy who can actually deliver something of value, as long as A, B and C cover the job description for positions A, B and C, and those positions are adequately descriped in the 700 page project document, and all due contracting and procurement processes have been followed. Middle managers are very good at managing resources... but they are very poor managers of people; there's a difference.
Running a company by the numbers is a middle manager's game, not something imposed by the executives. And often the executives are as much a prisoner of it as the peons; I have often heard their laments on the inability of the organisation to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time. Sergei Brin recently complained that Google is now too big and bureaucratic to be truly innovative; this is a sympton of the same ailment. Sadly, getting around middle management, eliminating it, or at least eliminating the risk-averse MBA shopkeeper mentality has proven to be very hard.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I've seen metrics for customer support and IT that include number of tickets closed as a metric. Having them reopened by a disgruntled customer because the problem wasn't solved means you get to close it again and get your metrics even higher. As soon as there are metrics people will work to maximize the metrics rather than maximize their productivity or increased revenue. Sort of the workplace equivalent to "teaching to the test".
In the US we measure productive in terms of gallons of code.
All this and nobody complained about the obvious: Having to get your hands dirty working that plow and driving the tractor all day, getting up with the chickens, not to mention shoveling S#!T all day to clean up after the animals.. Farm Work Is Tough! No wonder they don't like working there!!
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
> It is possible to have a market economy under an authoritarian regime as well.
Taiwan and South Korea in the 80s. Seems to have worked very well for them.
Also, to some extent, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and modern pseudo-communist China.
But it still does not excuse the totalitarianism.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
I think you either need to talk to more people or get more experience yourself before pretending
Because obviously my work experience is limited, and I've never worked with small tech start ups, nor IT/Enterprise Computing nor with defense contractors, or with any type of company, small or large for that matter. I have no clue on how to run a business, I have never been an hourly paid contractor in at-risk projects with aggressive schedules, and have no experience giving or receiving orders.
It's like... you know me, and you can attest as verifiable fact that I need to get more experience on the subject I had. You implied so, you said so, so you have to be right, right, right? Yes, si, pretty please, with a cherry on top?
you know more about this topic than the above poster
Who, the anonymous coward with no listed credentials? Or you somehow knows who this AC is and you can vouch for his experience? Or is that actually you, now acting like a sad sock puppet?
or a very large number of the readers.
Whom? How many? For someone (you == AC) claiming a lot of experience, I would have expected a more verifiable and quantifiable antecedent to substantiate your appeal to authority. Thanks for trying.