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?
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.
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
You're free to leave the factory, no one has to work with unsafe machinery!
You're free to leave the mine, no one has to work in unbreathable conditions!
You're free to leave the town, no one has to spend all their money at the company store!
You're free to leave the sweatshop, no one has to work as a child laborer!
Isn't it great not being indentured, we don't need any working protections as a result.
I agree to a point. I think we're talking about sprints here versus sustained time and output. We have slightly more than 100 years of worker productivity studies. In general, 40 hours weeks yield sustainable output. 60 hour weeks don't net you 40 hours of product. In week 1, you maybe get ~50 hours of work output for a 60 hour work week. In week 2, that number drops. Eventually, your worker isn't producing 40 hours of work in his 60 hours. Fatigue means that your exhausted worker won't even produce 40 hours of work when his hours are reduced. There will be a lag/recovery time.
It's hard to find good data for 100 hour weeks. The limited data I could find suggests that negative work for 80 hour weeks, as in you'd have been better off just working 40 hour weeks FROM THE START (because mistakes cost more time than the extra work produced) creeps in around week 4.
I know, I'm a pussy and the only person who admits to being "average" when work hours are discussed. I've stood on bare concrete for 100 hours a week for weeks on end, and I couldn't figure out how to calculate a basic angle. Neither could the other Ph.D or CS degree holder around me. I've watched a man week of time just fucking die in a single afternoon because one of our "superstar" engineer/scientists completely botched a tool build hand-off by verbally describing his trainwreck of g-code testing as opposed to writing a 5 sentence description of what was working and what was shit.
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.
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.
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...
My socialistic and liberal scary opinion is ... only the owners or investors should get salaried! I guarantee you profit sharing or mass hiring would ensue as in the past only the owners had a salary. Today's system is only non managers get OT so business changed job titles to get around it. In France or Spain this is illegal!
If you work alot you should have skin in the game as an owner. If no after 40 you leave. If work is not done hire more. Ooops no qualified workers?! Pay fucking more. Salaries are the same in 2000 as today! Rent which was $300 a month is $1000 a month today but the workers get paid the same. Rediculious! Enough is enough.
http://saveie6.com/
If the boss man doesn't see you slaving away in your cube while he's walking out, it means that you're likely expendable in his mind.
I worked for a company with office sin Japan. Everyone there was in the office when the boss came in, noone left before he did. They performed by a large margin the most hours per week in the entire company. They also had the worst productivity per capita (not even per performed hour).
We ended up forbidding the regional manager to show his face in the office before 9AM or after 5PM. If he wanted to work longer, he had to do so from home. People started spending less hours in the office, productivity went up and so did employee satisfaction.