Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Should 'Crunch' Overtime Be Optional? (forbes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Forbes:
Rockstar Games co-founder and VP Dan Hauser unleashed a storm of controversy when he casually stated in an interview with Vulture that "We were working 100-hour weeks" putting the finishing touches on Red Dead Redemption 2. Reaction was swift with many condemning the ubiquitous practice of crunch time in the video game industry in general and Rockstar's history of imposing harsh demands on its employees in particular... Hauser responded that he was talking about a senior writing team of four people working over a three-week period. This kind of intense short-term engagement was common for the team which had been working together for 12 years. Hauser went on to say that Rockstar doesn't "ask or expect anyone to work anything like this". Employees are given the option of working excessive overtime but doing so is a "choice" not a requirement.
A QA tester at Rockstar's Lincoln studio in the UK has taken to Reddit to answer questions and clarify misconceptions about overtime at Rockstar that have arisen in the wake of Hauser's comments.... He has no knowledge of working conditions at other Rockstar studios. The first thing the poster points out is that he and other QA testers (with the possible exception of salaried staff) are paid for their overtime work. He then writes "The other big thing is that this overtime is NOT optional, it is expected of us. If we are not able to work overtime on a certain day without a good reason, you have to make it up on another day. This usually means that if you want a full weekend off that you will have to work a double weekend to make up for it... We have been in crunch since October 9th 2017 which is before I started working here...."
[A] requirement to opt into weekly overtime shifts and more than a year of required crunch time ranging from 56 to 81.5 hours spent at work each week is a far, far cry from Hauser's claim that overtime is a "choice" offered to Rockstar's employees. The good news is that Rockstar has changed its overtime policies in response to the negative press engendered by Hauser's 100-hours comment [according to the verified Rock Star employed on Reddit]. Beginning next week "all overtime going forward will be entirely optional, so if we want to work the extra hours and earn the extra money (As well as make yourself look better for progression) then we can do, but there is no longer a rule making us do it."
The videogame correspondent for Forbes argues that this "crunch time is the norm" idea in the videogame industry "is unconscionable and untenable. No one, in any line of work, should be expected to sacrifice their family for their job. If people want to devote their life to their job, they should be able to do so but those who would rather work a standard work-week should also be able to do so without suffering adverse job-related consequences." But what do Slashdot's readers think?
Should 'crunch' overtime be optional?
A QA tester at Rockstar's Lincoln studio in the UK has taken to Reddit to answer questions and clarify misconceptions about overtime at Rockstar that have arisen in the wake of Hauser's comments.... He has no knowledge of working conditions at other Rockstar studios. The first thing the poster points out is that he and other QA testers (with the possible exception of salaried staff) are paid for their overtime work. He then writes "The other big thing is that this overtime is NOT optional, it is expected of us. If we are not able to work overtime on a certain day without a good reason, you have to make it up on another day. This usually means that if you want a full weekend off that you will have to work a double weekend to make up for it... We have been in crunch since October 9th 2017 which is before I started working here...."
[A] requirement to opt into weekly overtime shifts and more than a year of required crunch time ranging from 56 to 81.5 hours spent at work each week is a far, far cry from Hauser's claim that overtime is a "choice" offered to Rockstar's employees. The good news is that Rockstar has changed its overtime policies in response to the negative press engendered by Hauser's 100-hours comment [according to the verified Rock Star employed on Reddit]. Beginning next week "all overtime going forward will be entirely optional, so if we want to work the extra hours and earn the extra money (As well as make yourself look better for progression) then we can do, but there is no longer a rule making us do it."
The videogame correspondent for Forbes argues that this "crunch time is the norm" idea in the videogame industry "is unconscionable and untenable. No one, in any line of work, should be expected to sacrifice their family for their job. If people want to devote their life to their job, they should be able to do so but those who would rather work a standard work-week should also be able to do so without suffering adverse job-related consequences." But what do Slashdot's readers think?
Should 'crunch' overtime be optional?
Make excessive overtime illegal (or enforce existing laws). If you miss a deadline the scheduling manager is at fault.
Why isn't the question, why do so many people allow themselves to be abused by their employers in this way?
but but but programmink, and video gaymez!!!!111one
If people just mind their own business?
The R* employees make a good living building the best, highest selling entertainment products in the world. They don’t need you white knighting for them based on zero information about their jobs.
Developers cannot even make you average progress bar popup meet initial estimates, so why are developers so bad at estimating timelines?
Since no single employee is indentured to an individual employer, there is no mandatory 100 hour week... as long as you're free to leave the job.
Flip side: Can I advertise for adult workers who wish to sign on to work lots of overtime, part of the year? Of course.
The only circumstance when this should be forbidden is when employees are falsely led to believe they have a choice, when after employment, they do not.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Either itâ(TM)s worth it because you have ownership in the company or you have some other incentive to do it (bonuses, overtime pay, whatever)
Or you say no and get another job
This is exceedingly simple and not news for nerds or stuff that matters at all
In my experience, people will always work 40-60 hours a week, regardless of how many hours they are forced to work. It's just that if you spend 16 hours at work because you have to you're only putting in 9-10 hours of actual work, with the rest being filled with various kinds of time-wasting activity. And if this is sustained over time then people will find ways of optimizing how to perform the time-wasting activity to get the actual work time down closer to 8 hours without making it look like they're doing so.
You can't change how the human brain works, and anything you do beyond 9-10 hours is going to be wasted time, one way or another.
I had a job a few years ago where they fell behind on a project that was approaching launch day. They wanted me (and the rest of my team) to put in overtime to make up for the dev team's poor planning.
I asked them how much extra that overtime would pay. They said "nothing, you're salaried." I told them in that case I choose not to put in extra hours. They said "you kind of have to." I said "I kind of don't," and quit the next day.
Four stones, four crates.
Zero stones, ZERO CRATES!
Or just threaten to.
Watch how quickly management backs off that mandatory overtime requirement.
"Crunch time" already is optional. Slavery was abolished a LONG time ago in the USA.
Perhaps you meant to say "Should there be no consequences for refusing overtime?"
Of course, if you were honest about what you meant to say and asked that, then you would hear a resounding "NO! You are responsible for your own choices."
Re: "unconscionable and untenable"... It may be unconscionable, but it's 100% tenable, as evidenced by the fact that this was also the custom for the gaming industry when I was in it personally 20+ years ago. After my first two senior engineer positions, I interviewed a few more places, had a conversation with a producer about "crunch time indicates failure of management" which was received extremely poorly, and I never worked in that industry again. I've also seen other friends' attitudes and health pretty much destroyed at other game companies. Like movies and other entertainment, there's always fresh young blood to refill the staff.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The problem is even when there is "optional" overtime, you either have people who look down on the "normal" situation of choosing not to do overtime. Such as when a project manager says, "I am doing 20+ hours of overtime each week, why aren't you?" Or you have a case where a few individuals flaunt it as if it is a badge of honor. In some cases when they don't need to do overtime, or when their overtime doesn't help productivity because they have been doing it for so long.
It's kind of a "all or none" type thing.
Meaning: It should be a walk in the park to enforce compensation and damages due to violation of standard workplace regulations in a civil lawsuit. And before you go on with "own choice" jadijada, please note that in 99.9% of all times we're not talking "Valve exclusive top tag team working out the last glitches on Half Life 2" or "small indie crew building the next Super Meat Boy" but "regular coding monkey working for some EA joint with managers that couldn't plan a software project if their life depended on it and don't give a flying f*ck about the teams health". To emphasize: Germany has very strict workplace rules and is very productive not in spite but because of those - so there is no reason this couldn't work in the US too. EA and the likes would have their ass handed to them in court.
And we all know that humanity would be better of if we took EA and all its entire bunch of asshole execs, wrapped them in barbed wire and shot them into the sun.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
yeah this is another thing. By the time the schedule is missed the bidder (or scheduling manager in your instance) is already bid 3 or more other programs. In some cases the project takes 2-10 years and by the time it is realized "it can't be done for what we bid it for" the bidder has long spent his bonus and gone off to other projects or even to other companies. This leads to the "Bidder is never at fault, the SW developers always"
More like "optional"
I don't even mean that they would lose concentration, even with perfect concentration all through those 100 hours how can the overtime be justified in QA. They massive turn over, so cost of training seems unlikely be the reason to get most out of a single employee and I doubt hand over can justify all those overtime bonuses in the UK.
Is it just that because the devs have to suffer the QA team has to be made to suffer so as not to discourage the devs?
Who can you blame BUT yourself? Especially IF/when you chose "salaried" vs. hourly?? You did THAT, to yourselves. Sometimes (most times) you HAVE to. Getting "stuck in that rut" IS the real issue.
* Want to do it RIGHT (& I too spent my life from 16-45 working for others MOSTLY either hourly (16-22) & later 'salaried')?
DO IT YOURSELF, go into business FOR YOURSELF.
(I did, it changed my LIFE but it took a lifetime to get there)
Wealthy don't spend THEIR OWN MONEY EITHER (Unless they need another "tax shield" & when you get THERE (I'm not, yet, lol)? You are TOO rich, lol!) - they either take LOANS (& default? A risk yes) OR get "Venture Capital" from those looking for TAX SHIELDS (a problem the REALLY wealthy hit is HIDING THEIR COINS/Dead Presidents).
Personally? I don't think the "RICH" like you "PEASANTS" (me too really, lol) WANT YOU KNOWING THAT LINE OF THOUGH THEY THEMSELVES USE - no more slaves that way!
&?
Quote JIM MORRISON: "You're ALL SLAVES" (wageslaves hypnotized by lines of BULLSHIT making you the worst slaves - MIND slaves).
APK
P.S.=> Why do you REALLY *think* the WEALTHY are wealthy? They take THAT VERY RISK & profit (+ imo @ least, more importantly FREE UP THEIR LIVES (& you can't "buy more life" really - not yet @ least) to a large extent - yes, they "delegate authority" to others (a risk since micro-mgt. becomes nigh impossible UNLESS YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE LIVING) but they choose well (Or they wouldn't BE wealthy) & keep an eye on things @ the 1,000 ft. level vs. ripoff - guys, do NOT LIVE TO WORK (work, to LIVE - IT WORKS pun intended)... apk
I'm of the opinion overtime should always be optional. Management should staff for the expected workload, not expect everyone on staff to do the job of 2 people. But management doesn't like that, that raises their costs and lowers their profits. And they have the upper hand in bargaining, because they can replace any individual employee. That's why we formed unions, so that the collective power of the employer was matched by the collective power of the employees.
Overtime pay also evened the playing field. Employers could overwork their employees only at a progressively higher and higher cost. That made it cheaper to simply staff appropriately rather than demand 60- and 80-hour weeks regularly. Salaried status removed that balance.
I'm of the mind that labor law should be changed to state that the salary offer for a salaried employee was an offer for a standard 40-hour week on average and that a requirement from the employer to work more than that on a regular basis constituted a change in the terms of employment that would require paying the employee in proportion to the extra hours worked (eg. a 60-hour week is 150% of the original agreement's demand so the employer is required to pay 150% of the original agreement's salary offer). "Regular basis" could be defined by weekly work time over a given period, eg. requiring more than 40 hours per week for 6 weeks in any 12-week period or 13 weeks in any 52-week period would constitute "regular basis" for that period. Employers would then have to balance the cost of overworking their existing staff vs. the cost of adding staff sufficient for the workload.
Adults are talking
(1) Fail at planning.
(2) Ask the impossible of your employees at the last minute.
(3) Have competitors who suck just as bad as you at management.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> Should 'Crunch' Overtime Be Optional?
No.
It should be forbidden.
In a previous job I've successfully argued against a sustained crunch time. I was the technical lead of the team (based in Australia, salaried) The (US-based) manager came out with "you need to work 60-hour weeks for the indefinite future".
I pushed back, pointing out that that was counter-productive and would result in negative work that would offset any initial gains from the longer working hours. I said that we would be willing to do it for a couple of weeks to meet the current deadline, but anything beyond that would cause problems in the team in addition to having no benefit.
Somehow I managed to turn things around to the extent that the manager didn't just grudgingly accept, but actually stated that he agreed with me. I don't know how he reconciled that with his previous statements, but that wasn't my concern.
I received a lot of surprised congratulations from the team members, including my local manager (who was probably the best manager I've ever had).
...that's the key right there.
"I see you declined to work the last two weekends. You're perfectly in your rights to do so, but given that other people have shown more commitment, I'm gonna have to give you a below average rating this quarter. As you know this will affect your end of year bonus and your chances for that senior position." ...two exhausting years later...
"Hello...You're reaching out to me because our former employee is interviewing with you? Yes I remember them. They weren't really a team player if you know what I mean. Not willing to really put in the extra effort to make a really polished product."
Thereâ(TM)s some interesting research on this. Not just developers... virtually all time or cost estimates are lowball.
Basically it boils down to bidders knowing that theyâ(TM)re more likely to get the contract by bidding low (or please the boss by guessing low) and slipped targets later arenâ(TM)t catastrophic. IIRC the UK government measured the average overrun and just adds that value to every estimate.
Because nodbody they know has built what they are building. If someone did, they would just copy it. That's the thing non-programmers don't understand - software is effortless to copy (right click, copy & paste). So compared to other fields, software development runs into new problems more often that most other "building" projects (IT or otherwise).
More importantly, it's usually not the developers who make the schedule.
See subject: I haven't had to work for ANYONE else BUT myself since 2007 (though I occasionally do consulting IF pay's right & it's interesting work (mostly server migrations & custom DB ware for it)).
* Proof ENOUGH? You betcha.
(I got LUCKY & was SURROUNDED my ENTIRE LIFE by really "world-class" folks from academia to athletics in my life + THE WORKPLACE who TAUGHT ME things - & yes, I had some 'breaks' from family (making GOOD on a debt LONG owed (almost 40 yrs.)).
APK
P.S.=> What I told you is FAR from 'crazy' - it works but DEMANDS risk & balls (which the former lessens on a SOLID IDEA) - WHY again, do you THINK the WEALTHY use that very same method I extolled?? apk
See subject & "got the world, locked up, inside a PLASTIC BOX" https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - 20th Century FOX The DooRs
* :)
"No tears, no fears, no clocks... since her mind left school it NEVER hesitates"
APK
P.S.=> You WISH you were me (& you CAN be w/ hard work, an open MIND & EARS + EYES + yes, Luck)... apk
I personally have worked at companies where just about everyone was a developer and nobody could estimate how long anything takes.
Because nothing ever works as expected. Let's say you find a library that does 85% of the work. So you think it will take 2 days to plug it into your pipeline. Then, you realize that under certain circumstances the library has a performance bottleneck so you need to write some caching code to front-end the library. That new code takes a day to write, but figuring out the right approach took two days of proof-of-concepting.
The reality is that scope is rarely fully defined for programming tasks. The scope typically grows as initial ideas are not sufficient to solve a problem.
I used to work IT administration and support, I am pretty sure I was let go from one job because I wouldn't regularly put in the 60 to 90 hours everyone else was doing. While also being on a call rotation and checking system alert emails at night at least twice a week with no late start the next day. Weird thing is when they let me go they promised me a good reference and said I just wasn't keeping pace. I no longer work in IT.
No one, in any line of work, should be expected to sacrifice their family for their job.
"Crunch time" is an intentional policy decision in pursuit of maintaining a cheap labor force. It's obvious companies are getting more labor than they're paying for. What's more subtle is they're also selecting cheaper workers through the same policy. Creating job obligations that require sacrifice of family obligations selects for people with fewer family obligations and people willing to give away labor to maintain employment. People with no spouse, kids, family functions to attend, no savings to live on between jobs, etc. Young workers and foreign workers tend to fit that profile - generally recognized as the cheapest groups to hire. The policy attempts to ensure that they eventually self-select to free up the position for someone cheaper/younger. This raises fewer red flags than firing everyone who gets married.
As an ex-gamer, I understand crunch-time. Although I am single, others have families.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Rockstar's "optional" overtime bullshit is going to do nothing but lure naive developers into a false sense of security. Come lay-off time, guess who get's the axe first? They are keeping track and won't disregard your overtime hours when it comes time to make those decisions.
It's not like Rockstar has control over the situation either. If people don't work overtime, then software ships late and people get fired anyway. Who do ya think they'll fire first? The ones who worked the MOST overtime? Don't bet on it...
I've shipped 30+ AAA games. Staff are paid bonuses OR vacation in lieu of time. In my experience time off is generally half, bonuses are wildly variable, but never near the value of the overtime. QA and some contracted staff may earn overtime pay, they are 10% or less of headcount.
Don't work overtime, you don't have to. I always make sure my team goes home on time because fried people are no good to me. Developers need to ask around which studios don't crunch.
Here is the deal. It depends on the management of the organization. I don't write software but do IT support with incompetent IT project managers. My job in their eyes was to make them look good for their bonus and if I didn't do that ... then I needed to be fired so someone other ass kicker would. If you have experience RUN and give them the finger.
If you don't have experience as I had a gap back in 2013 back in the Great fucking Recession of 2009 I sucked up. I gained weight, lost a marriage, grew gray hair and they got rid of me anyway for not being a team player. I learned not to be a pushover from the experience as a business only concern is it's customers NOT YOU. It is YOUR job to take care of you. Not your employer who NEVER has your interests at heart.
It is a very different world from our grandparents. Look out for you as your employer will take advantage for you or find a young mellinial who will for a fraction of the cost. Look after you and find a good employer. If you want to move up and you are young then go ahead and get some experience, but if you have it then you have more leverage than they do.
http://saveie6.com/
Developers act as if that has never happened before EVERY time.
Gee, If I cannot literally cut and paste 100% of my work into the current project it's going to take a bit longer.
This defense has more than "code smell" floating in the punch bowl. It's just a big turd.
Lol, fuck your "crunch" overtime.
If you expect people to work overtime as a normal thing or insist on "crunch" overtime, then your company is broken.
That's one of the the things I like about the current place I'm working at...they have a company ethic that says overtime is not normal or expected, and they also state that if overtime is an accepted part of the work flow or company culture, then the company is broken. And they're right.
I wouldn't work one minute of overtime ("crunch" or not) unless a) I wanted to and b) they paid me triple time for it.
If you dumbfucks can't plan a project without it running into my off hours, then you'd should get better planners, coders, or managers. But don't think for one moment that I'm going to piss away my life so you dickheads can ship your glitzy bullshit product on time.
Remember, kids- no one on their deathbed ever wished that they'd spent more time at the office.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
this is correct. That's more or less where /.ers are. You put in your 40, occasionally 50 and that's that. But at the higher end in fields where the person is doing it because they want to/obsess over it (video games, high end STEM fields and the like) most of those folks are really putting in that much work.
Just ask John Carmack how much he works in the lead up to a new game/engine. It's a lot.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Because they're smart individuals that know what's best for their lives. Programming excessive and long hours is not going to be one of them.
I don't get how people worry so much about what their employer expects.
Its okay if someone wants to work on a treadmill and earn the most their skills can bring at the cost of high expectations. I did that in this field for twenty years.
Then, a life changing incident I changed my values. Now I work for a lower rate and the demands are much less. Work doesn't control my life.
We all have the prerogative to choose which side of that fence to be on. Whichever choice people make, I am happy that they can pursue happiness.
But to choose a high stress job and then complain about the stress makes no sense. Asking the government to step and make the choice for us doesn't seem like an ideal solution.
Out on sea, sailors are expected to work 7 days a week. They put in a lot of hours, but if they love it then it's worth it. Are tech workers really better than people who work for a living?
Irrelevant "what about" bullshit.
I work 84 hour weeks (7 12s) as my standard shift, and I'm fine with that. The thing one does is to follow it with a chunk of off time to compensate. I'm actually much happier to have my work time focused on work and larger contiguous chunks of work-free time to focus on not-work. I am not a parent or involved in a long term romantic relationship, and I don't see that every job everywhere needs to be exclusively scheduled so as to be agreeable to those who are. Three people filling two continuous positions in a 2 months on - one month off scheme can work quite nicely. For jobs where there's crunch time, the way to prevent those who are adverse to breaking from their standard work week from being comparatively penalized is to give the crunchers a chunk of off time so that the total time worked is the same for all.
NASA engineers are undoubtedly top tier engineers. More often than not they don't make time estimates.
In contrast, Automotive engineers are on time most of the time.
So it seems new territory is a major contributor to imprecise estimates.
I don't believe it. Maybe some really have that work capacity, but most do not. I do believe that they were spending 100 hours a week in the office, or in front of the computer. But that does not necessarily imply 100 hours a week of work. This is BS.
The real issue is insurance
That's why they don't hire more workers.
I was in the U.S. Navy, when we got to shore I was compensated with extra time off quite often.
It shouldn't exist.
If you're nearing the end of a project and the only way to complete it is if your employees work 100+ hours weeks, that's a failure on management's part. You failed to manage your time and resources, you failed to set customer expectations properly. Own up to it and take responsibility instead of making other people work themselves to death for your mistakes.
There was a time long ago when worked 80+ hours weeks for a long period of time, and it was terrible. I'm never doing that again; sometimes I'm willing to put in 50-60 hours for a project I care a lot about, but if you ask me to put in 40, the answer will be no, and if you tell me I have to, you'll be getting a resignation.
To be fair, I don't work in the gaming industry, mostly because I know the working conditions are awful compared to the rest of the software world.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
But if it didn't no products would ever ship.
I just read that and I see only a few professions aren't allowed to work more than 48 hours. Including:
Any worker on ships or boats
What the heck? If you're stuck ok a fishing boat for two weeks with nothing better to do than work, not allowed. You have to sit there don't nothing. Most anyone ELSE can work as much as they want, but not someone who has absolutely nothing better to do.
If I have 10 well above engineers working 80+ hours on a well defined, well segmented project how many average programmers would I need to do the same job? My guess is, for many projects, you just can't do it. Some things just don't scale. Now imagine a project that has a two year deadline. If you slip the deadline hardware or the market will have moved and you will be forever trying to catch a moving target. For games or some hardware dependent products it's the only way a company will complete the project
I've sent my family away on vacation and had my dog live with me in my cubical. You get in the mindset that "I started this, I'm going to finish it". Often your moral and self worth is so beaten down you actually can't look for another job even if you had the time. I've noticed that companies that have 4+ months of crunch time often have a huge employee turn over after the project completes.
My advice, do it once. Learn as much as you can. Don't trust a work your managers say and then quit. Walk away. Don't worry about the promise of time off for the over time you worked or a share in the profit of the product. It will never happen. Quit, take what you learned, keep the friends you made at the time and find another job.
**Ross Video survivor 2000
it's simply 'chronically understaffed'. Perhaps its deliberately understaffed, but an actual crunch time might last a week or two. After a year you can't call it crunch time and expect anyone to take you seriously. At that point you just suck at project management.
Over here in Sweden it's illegal to give the employee more than 200 hours of overtime per year, or average more than 48 hours/week over a 4 week period. Overtime is paid 2.5x normal salary (3x on weekends or after 20:00). There is a minimum 11-hour sleep and 36-hour weekend so i think the most you could order an employee is 87 hours of work in a single week. If you would somehow do a single 100-hour week, it would cost you giving the employee an extra month's salary and you would be forced to give him or her 28 hours paid leave the next week as well as having 0 minutes overtime the next 3 weeks...
Competent leaders do not need scams like "crunch time". They have the experience to know with a reasonable certainty how long tasks will take, and know their team well enough to know how they will perform. Of course, managers with no experience in a particular field will lack this experience, but if they are otherwise competent then they will know they need advice.
I've worked for a bunch of firms, some of them startups, and I have come to see managerial panics and emergencies as a sign of bigger badder issues. I have yet to work for a firm with good experienced management and a good plan that ended up needing "crunch time".
That was probably his opening negotiation stance. Throw something outrageous to begin with like "indefinite future" so that you countered back "a couple of weeks". That he so easily agreed means he got want he wanted and made you feel like you avoided a fate that was much worse and your team members were grateful.
If he opened up saying "for the next 2 weeks I want you to do 60 hours/week", he may not have got such a result and if he did you wouldn't feel like you won out of that deal.
Because your type cannot fathom the truth.
I once bid for a project where I was the only supplier - and lost! The reason was because I told the truth: it will take 2 years to get enough experience to have a stable machine learning model. They didn't believe me, the only guy with 20 years of exp. under my belt. So they went for their internal expert's (a newly grad hired into the first job) "solution", which should only take 3 months as they liked to point out.
Recently they launched. Exactly 2 years in and at at least double the cost. And half the quality of what I had ready 2 years ago.
It shouldn't be 'optional' but rather discouraged. Contracts should include a maximum number of overtime hours over which people are simply forced to stop working.
"Employees are given the option of working excessive overtime but doing so is a "choice" not a requirement."
I remember my first day with a particular company on a 9 to 5 job. As 5pm was nearing no one started shuffling on their seat and when it struck everyone went on looking busy. I started scratching my head and waited... 5:30pm... 6:00pm... 6:30pm... 7:00pm... Only at 7:30pm someone started packing up to leave and it was only at 8:30pm that most of the office was empty. Having previously been used to an office environment where everyone left on time I found it really hard to figure out the best time to leave.
I hate crunch as much as the next person but it's not as simple as you're making it
Ads have to be purchased months in advance, promises have to be made to stores (Walmart, Gamestop, Best Buy, etc...) those companies have shelves that need to be full of product. They only have so much space so you have to promise them your product will be available to fill their shelf on a certain date. They also have limited promotional space so you have to schedule your posters, cardboard stands, flags and whatever other promotional stuff you're going to have with them and promise on a certain date.
TV stations have limited time for ads so if you want commercials to run you also need to book them months in advance.
Even on the internet while you can post an ad whenever you want if you want your add to be on the front of some popular site you need to book it in advance otherwise someone else might have already booked that time period.
All that is to say that game teams are asked well in advance "when will your game be done" and the team says "We'll have it done by October 23th 2018". At that point, marketing, PR, and sales will all make promises to 100s of different companies for the game.
Now, 6 months before the deadline the team realizes they aren't going to hit the deadline and all the promises the company has made will be broken or money wasted. Those other companies expecting a product will not be happy to do business again with your game company as you've proven yourself to no be able to keep your promises.
So, what do you do? You crunch to meet the deadline you promised.
I don't have a solution. One solution might be "better planning" but that's easier said that done. How many of you had a deadline when you were a student and ended up having to crunch to get your paper written, homework done, test study etc. Planners aren't any more perfect than you.
In any case, I'm not defending crunch. I'm join pointing out the solutions are not as simple as many seem to think
What really typically happens in these scenarios, is the CEO/board/etc says "No forced OT!", and "voluntary".
Then, they tell senior management -- in private, that OT must be forced. Those senior managers also tell your manager, in private, that OT must be forced. For them, and for you.
Hence the chain of "we didn't even know!" is setup, whilst at the same time getting what they want. Possession and consumption, of tasty cake!
This is the sort of thing that has been done, likely back to Roman times. In some corps, it's even undocumented overtime. People working 80 or 60 hours for 40.
It needs to all be illegal.
I've worked in areas where management has received a nice surprise. I've worked those hours, under duress (but without complaint, I was young).. then been laid off after project, as a thanks! Well, talked to all those laid off -- and reported to the labour board. Where I am? Salary or hourly, the result is the same. Anything over 44 hours = overtime.
We all received tens of thousands in back pay. And even better? Directors of corps can't escape by shuttering the doors via bankruptcy, they're on hook 100% for employee wage backearnings. So instead of "making a statement", escaping payment and closing the doors (to re-open under a new name) via limited liability that a corp provides, they were screwed either way.
This is the way to do things. Prevent bull, and prevent escape once caught.
If you are a top-level executive and you are paid a six-digit salary (not barely six-digit, starting with a 1, you know what I mean), then part of that salary is the expectation that you will sacrifice your private life for the sake of the company if needed.
Bad managers (i.e. statistically speaking half of them) believe they can have the same expectation towards people who earn a fraction of their salary.
Good managers understand that one reason they get this salary is that it is their job to make things work with the resources available.
"Crunch" time is almost always an excuse for bad planning, over-eager resource and deadline estimates made but not owed up to by management and, frankly speaking, what the guys really mean when they start the talk is "I need you to work additional to save my ass, because I promised something I couldn't deliver".
The worst is when crunch time is a fixed part of the plan from the start.
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All that said, there can be real need for crunch time. If not mismanagement but an externally caused crisis happened. If circumstances changed. If a serious problem with everything is discovered too late.
My profession is Information Security. If there is a serious incident, I would expect that certain key people drop everything and come in. And I would strongly recommend the managers above them to give these people massive rewards for doing so. Not just monetary. Pulling someone away from their family on the weekend can only be compensated for by giving them extra free days (paid, for you Americans as that is apparently not self-evident over there).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Management should be fired since they have obviously failed. Somehow, that does not seem to happen.
Two strikes and you are out. There need to be consequences for such cock ups. The need is to encourage pessimistic planning - and if higher management whinges, it should be their job on the line as well.
Also crunch time overtime should be very highly paid. Again: there needs to be a strong incentive to avoid it. If it happens, it needs to HURT the reputation of the managers who allowed it to happen.
All overtime should be optional, otherwise it's not overtime, it's just time.
...Beginning next week "all overtime going forward will be entirely optional, so if we want to work the extra hours and earn the extra money (As well as make yourself look better for progression)...
Here's an idea: you get considered for "progression" when you do the work you were hired to do, doing it well and during the agreed upon work week.
DNA, the splice of life.
...How the management deals with crunch time is.
Crunch time is not a recent invention.. It just means that nearing the end of a project, you have to put some extra time to actually nail all the little things that have to fit together. In the IT consulting industry it's pretty common and some people actually enjoy this. I'm one of those people.
In fact, I find it professionally fulfilling when you spend the last week of a project crunching time to make sure every little details left are a done deal. Client is happy, I'm happy. It doesn't last that long too.. One project I was working on lasted for around 6 months, it was a solution integration for around 35k users. Crunch time lasted a week only.
If your company relies on crunch time or if your company forces people to continually work extra hours, then this is a problem.. I wouldn't say "crunch time" is the problem though: the approach make these two very different things.
Burnout is the result of abusive workplace environment, not the result of working more than 40 hours a week.
They'll find someone who is.
After all, there's a whole bunch of people waiting outside for the chance, so you don't want to just walk away from that, do you?
Sound familiar to anyone else?
Prease 2b lrnink 2 engrish. Ur parse fairure.
Why is this even a question?
I'm a sailor. I'm NOT at sea 7 days a week. what the fuck is wrong with your scenario.
I've worked a number of jobs that had expected or mandatory overtime.
When I worked power plant construction, we routinely put in lots of overtime, and were paid very well for it.We worked rotating shifts so you got anywhere between 48 and 120 hours off between shifts. Of course, if they didn't pay and give us some time off they wouldn't had any engineers to build, test, and operate it during construction and startup. We lived on our OT and per diem and banked our salaries.
Later, I worked in plant inspection and while we had not paid OT we got compensatory time off.
As a consultant, I had a target of 2000 billable a year, which was done by long hours during projects followed by weeks on the beach.
In all cases, I was well paid, there were enough breaks to prevent burnout and the work was interesting. Consulting tended too burn people out with the travel and hours so we had a 25% annual turnover rate.
Finance and law are notorious for working new hires long hours and expect many of them will leave; it's a way of getting cheap (relatively) labor and finding out who will stick around and meets their performance standards. As a result, they are always churning through staff.
In the end, some, people will put up with it or even enjoy it while many others will; burn out and leave; adding to a companies hiring costs. For companies that require specialized skills that are harder to find or lots of experience with a particular job that can be a problem and drive wages up.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
That's rich. NASA engineers used to be ok. Now they just write specs.
This is not a case of ambiguous language. The company seems to be officially stating that not only was there a culture of "you must work overtime", but it was an official rule and Hauser simply lied to everyone about this rule existing.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Does your doctor work 100 hour weeks, how about your lawyer, the engineer designing the bridge you will be driving over, or the high rise you will be working in, or the pilot flying the plane you are traveling in? Ask the surgeon if he as performed 99 hours of surgery before he cuts you open for a 'simple one hour surgery. Or the pilot of a plane if he is putting in 100 hours of flying that week?
In all cases, the answer will be no but probably not even close to 100 hrs. But this is expected of software engineers, especially in the gaming industry. Treat them like digital garment workers. Wringing every last ounce out of them. Why should management care about their health, employee burnout, or work-life balance? If you don't like it, they say, "Just quit". They will just find the next naive inexperienced developer to fill the role.
There really is a simple solution to this all. Pay all software engineers by the hour. Overtime paid at time and a half. When the dev costs suddenly triple, management will take notice and stop this insane practice.
Let me tell you something. You can ALWAYS find another job. You can NEVER replace time lost with your family.
It's a sign of bad management and development. Then again, only an idiot would work much of it. Life exists *outside* the office, not in it.
...for the poor planning by technically illiterate managers or the absurd promises made by salespeople chasing commissions through the time honored practice of lying?
That's just crazy talk.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Optional under an union contract with clear rules only!
Quit my very first serious job after the MsC exactly because it wasn't optional, and didn't pay any overtime with shenanigans. The local Deloitte shop puts newcomers on a 2-month low-pay, "training" contract that mostly comprised 3-week actual training and 7 weeks of "peak" work in a finantial client.
I asked if the 50-70h weeks would last a lot longer before signing a full contract, and they said it would be at least 3 more months of peak work. I told them "bu-bye" and took a 3 month break afterwards which is still the talk of every interview as they think I was fired (which, to the eyes of most employers, is an effective dismissal for not accepting the work conditions, but whatever).
They also used shenanigans like a "no schedule salary fee" (~100 Euro), in order to prevent counting hours and avoid overtime pay. From colleagues that stayed in other projects, this was mostly the norm but I do believe I was unlucky on the client/project to a degree.
guarantees that you are producing crappy product.
Well, because Slashdotters on the whole aren't very smart, we get asked the softball question: should this be happening?
Winner of the Softball Question of All Time Derby: Should every day be ice cream day?
Note: If you're being asked, it's by a children's book written at a grade-two reading level, intimating a terrible adult truth in a toddler-safe 1/4 teaspoon dose: that 90% of unintended consequences are entirely foreseeable, but for the thick and eternal haze of ice cream psychology.
Hardball question: is there any way to enforce an "optional" crunch time industry-wide workplace policy where your crunch time record doesn't serve as a plausibly deniable tie breaker at your next promotion (and every promotion opportunity thereafter?)
This discussion, as posed, doesn't even have the virtue of the childhood reader, which is at least intimating something dark about the universal will to consume ice cream.
But now that we live in a world where software can be patched and users are the new QA staff there is zero reason to have crunch in the game industry.
It is not not the progress bar that takes time. It is the unstated and unsupported special cases surrounding that progress bar in the special snowflake ux designers imagination that requires a day of extra work after the how was completed to spec.
to engage in poor planning. I can help you plan better, if you want. I cannot help you overcome your lack of planning, or lack of appropriate staffing. I've noticed over the years that some entire industries fail to plan as a way of working. So I avoid those industries and now this nonsense is optional for real.
Or, conversely, if you don't, you'll be the one "yanked" in the periodic rank and yank, stack eval, annual contribution review, or whatever they do to manage their work force.
You know, Joe just isn't a team player.
It's done when it's done. Not a arbitrary deadline.
The fix already exists, there is a federal minimum amount one must be paid to be salaried. Below this amount, you are paid by the hour.
It is $48,000 a year salary. Raise this to 2x what a Silicon Valley engineer makes and then there's none of this pretense that overtime is free.
And pay them the non-overtime wage rate? Then you save the company money and no staff are working ridiculously long hours.
Former Healthcare IT Director here....this is typical of upper (C-level) management. I can't tell you how many times I've pulled all nighters with my teams to pull off some deadline an out of touch upper manager promised someone. It's one thing if it's really important, but most of the it's poor planning or egos. The way to tell is if the hourly guys get pulled in, then it's important. In healthcare salaried IT engineers are are viewed as indentured servants. Keep your certs up and flee as soon as you start seeing this crap!
This is a different problem. Intentionally underestimating to win contracts is one thing. Not being able to estimate very well at all is another.
I've always wondered about studies focusing on Office drone work and diminishing returns. I think anyone that's honest with themselves knows it's very difficult to do hard problem solving for even 8 hours a day, let alone longer. Perhaps a few brilliant minds can but it seems rare according to research.
The brain needs rest, so many discoveries come during showers, baths or walks. It's time employers stop being bean counters and recognize a relaxed mind is also a working mind.
I do think one can get away with menial or physical labor jobs during longer days. I've done both and I have done 12 hour all days (when I was younger). But to code for 12 hour days? Often you just come back to your work the next day and spend the first half of the day fixing mistakes and wondering what the hell you just did.
Unless the SW developer IS the bidder. That kind of thing is insane. I don't know why anyone signs contracts like that.
At the end of my PhD the university wanted to patent something, and they wanted some example code they could publish to make it easy for others to try out our technique in their application. Great. I volunteered my code but told them it could use a little neatening up. As I was leaving I didn't feel much like doing it for them gratis. So they hired a professional development house to do it. $20k bought a developer for a month. He failed. They kept the $20k. I took a look at what he produced, which was a mess, and did it myself over a weekend. I did not get paid.
That contract should have been for work delivered. If the developer didn't think he could complete the project in the time quoted, he should have upped the estimate.