Hacker News Reader

Comment by vvanders | Hacker News Reader

Just so you know, this is the knife edge that leads you down to crunch.

Literally every time I had a 3-4mo 80-100hour crunch it always started out with "we're going to push for a week or two" which just transitioned into "just one more week" for the next 3 months.

Also, shame for celebrating a crunch. You may have enjoyed it but there's a high likelyhood someone else went along just to not "rock the boat". I don't care who you are putting in more hours puts stress on other parts of your life.

I just don't understand how that industry has their head up their ass from top to bottom for such a long time. There's some interesting problems in that space but after my 6 years I'd never go back.

View on HN

Shame for celebrating a crunch? I'm talking 50 hours a week instead of 40 for a period of a few weeks. It is possible for a company and project to need that extra work and not turn into a sweatshop afterwards. I am 100% against the crunch that is par for the course in so many studios, but I am also disappointed by an attitude that work is always just work and god forbid it ever intrude on life outside.

I worked for five years at early and late stage startups before transitioning to games, and I cannot recall there ever being a time when extra work was not needed to get over the finish line.

If a union ends up being the only way chronic overwork can be addressed in the industry at large, so be it. Perhaps the real solution though is a legislative one, as suggested below.

Did you compensate your people for the extra work? Because otherwise it had certainly best not be intruding on life outside of work.

> I worked for five years at early and late stage startups before transitioning to games, and I cannot recall there ever being a time when extra work was not needed to get over the finish line.

I worked at such company too. It had zero to do with need for overtime and and a lot to do with people wanting to work this way. E.g. unwillingness to prioritize, unwillingness to negotiate, wish to be seen like the one who stays late and thus finding work to stay late when not needed. Overtime is not seen as failure of organization, so the organization does not learn how to do it. People staying late are seen as heros and people managing projects so that overtime is not needed are not rewarded, so latter leave and former create culture.

To large extend, people who stay in such companies don't believe it is possible to make deadline without overtime, so they are not even trying.

It's trivial to never have overtime if you either 1) have no deadlines or 2) have a project so unoriginal you can plan its schedule to the hour.

Show me any project with dynamic requirements that has some sort of deadline, be it time or money running out, and I guarantee there has been some extra work at some point.

I am not saying it is trivial. I am saying it is not rewarded. It takes skill and willingness and some companies are not motivated to do it. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to not cruck when you decide you don't do that, period.

Prioritization, negotiation and saying no. Estimates large enough that they have buffers. You don't need on hour predictability. It is precisely when you have dynamic requirements when you are supposed to use tools like that.

After crunch, there are typically many bugs and convoluted code. It just adds to overall time in long term. Pretty much all studies found crunch to not be effective. It is not about achieving more.

> but I am also disappointed by an attitude that work is always just work and god forbid it ever intrude on life outside.

Fuck yeah it's "just work".

I want my employees and coworkers to be happy, healthy and well actualized so that when they're at work they're focused and giving it 100%. Plenty of hard business data there shows that when you make sure someone's time outside of work is well respected they'll perform much better on the job.

Burnout and turnover can have a brutal impact on an company/organization's ability to execute, the list goes on. You're also self-selecting for a workforce that has the flexibility, which means your viewpoint is a lot less diverse.

This is the same crunch bullshit I got fed before in that industry.

I've got a kid, wife, friends, and hobbies that I place very high value on. Can I do a few weeks of extra hours? No problem.

Yup, but that's a place of privilege that lets you do that.

What if you were a single dad?

What if you had an elder family member to take care of?

What if you were living paycheck to paycheck and had a second job to be able to make rent?

I've found some of the best teams I was on had a diverse set of people who bring their unique perspectives into the fold. Otherwise you could end up with a racist soap dispenser[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PlUf30rvyA

You can imagine me to be as privileged as you wish if it helps your argument.

> What if you were a single dad? > What if you had an elder family member to take care of?

As I mentioned above, family takes priority. If your team is so immature that they feel resentful when another member can't work those two extra hours a day because their Dad is sick, you've got another set of problems.

> What if you were living paycheck to paycheck and had a second job to be able to make rent?

This is a bit of a stretch. We are limiting the scope of our discussion to workers in the game industry. If you need two jobs to make rent in this scenario, find a way to cut expenses.

Yeah, but how many people do you work with that have those types of commitments? How many people didn't participate in that crunch at all?

I'll hazard that the answer is low, because the industry self-selects for people who are willing to take abuse for 'prestige'. They take pride in it, just the same way you did.

> This is a bit of a stretch. We are limiting the scope of our discussion to workers in the game industry.

Yes, yes we are. My first job in the industry was $35k/hr as a dev and I've seen worse salaries for design or art.

Let me pose a question to you. How would you live in Seattle, on $35k/yr in a way that one accident/major expense wouldn't put you in a situation where you're living paycheck to paycheck? Keep in mind an average 1br apartment is ~$1800/mo[1] so you're going to be well over 50% income : housing ratio.

For that reason you have people who work second jobs or have other commitments to be able to make their rent.

[1] https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/wa/se...

Let me reiterate, I am not advocating crunch. I am saying that it is a reasonable expectation for a high performing salaried position that a few weeks of extra hours over the course of a year is completely reasonable.

And $35k for a dev job? When was this, and if it was anytime even remotely recent why on earth did you accept? A new QA hire at my last job would've made more than that.

You don't live in Seattle proper if you are making $35k. Live in a suburb on the line. Don't have a car payment if you can avoid it. And to pull that income : housing ratio down get roommates. I have done this.

And frankly this is a pretty silly argument to make in a discussion around why game developers should unionize.

Shame for you telling other people how they should feel.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com