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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.
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.
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
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.
(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.
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Even optional overtime can be mandatory de facto, as Hauser himself implied with his "make yourself look better" remark. If your colleagues are all pulling 100 hour shifts and you are not, guess who is not going to come out all that well in the next performance reviews? And one could argue that this is justified: if your team mates are working long days and weekends and you are not, you're only making it even harder for them, right? So it all comes back to corporate culture and norms. Some companies with a conscience - or hard-pressed to retain quality staff - are actively pushing a healthy work-life balance for that reason: if most people (and most notably the boss) work 100 hour weeks, the rest of the staff will feel obligated to follow suit. But if most people leave at 5 and the boss doesn't send emails during the weekend, everyone will feel comfortable working normal hours.
If overtime truly is to be optional, you will have to make sure that most people and especially management do not work long hours on a regular basis.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.