Slashdot Asks: Should 'Crunch' Overtime Be Optional? (forbes.com) 289
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?
Illegal overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
Make excessive overtime illegal (or enforce existing laws). If you miss a deadline the scheduling manager is at fault.
Who is at fault? Bidder or SW developer? (Score:3, Insightful)
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"
Re:Illegal overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Crunch overtime shouldn't be optional. As soon as you allow anyone to do insane extra amounts of work, you create an environment where that becomes expected. And then, because there were no negative consequences from the poor planning, nobody learns, and the next time, it is even worse. Pretty soon, you end up in a situation where you're all-crunch, all the time.
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Re:Illegal overtime (Score:4, Insightful)
It usually is poor planning though. If the team regularly has to work extra hours then either the scheduling is faulty or the management is relying on all this "voluntary" overtime which is shortsighted. Sure you may want to do a good job, but that should be incentive for you to push back on unrealistic schedules rather than incentive for you to work twice as hard. You also need your direct management to push back against unrealistic project managers.
However, sometimes project managers are just stupid and will never learn. I've seen them with many years of never once having a project done in time and yet they continue to make unrealistic deadlines; a fault with upper management for keeping these people around perhaps.
For instance, I've been at a place where things were often sales driven - one lone guy goes and gets a contract signed and then engineering is told that we need to have the project done by the deadline or else there are contractual penalties. The sales guy doesn't get punished for this (and usually is excessively rewarded via commissions), so it keeps happening. And yes, we had sometimes paid very large penalties for being late. So after that company was bought out by a very much larger corporation, I overheard two of the project managers who were well known for having unrealistic deadlines complain that the new company was so slooow at planning things. After they left the lunch table the rest of us had a laugh at their expense since those guys rarely had a project come in on time with quality.
Now, speaking as a manager - don't start thinking of yourself as just a creator. Remember, you have to do a whole lot of stuff that's boring and tedious beyond the few hours a month being creative. You need to write documents, you need plans, you need to show up to meetings, you need testing, etc. Don't kill yourself and ruin your personal life over crap like that. If you work too long hours then your quality will suffer and you'll learn to hate your work.
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As a creator, it is your professional duty to understand the harmful effects of working excessive hours and avoid them. No, you're not Superman or some other sort of genetic freak. You are just one of many people who routinely fools themselves.
Ask yourself this: Your boss happily "lets" you work in a creative frenzy for as long as you will, but what happens when you need a month to recharge after, is he still in your corner giving you what you need or does everything you created become yesterday's news?
If y
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The ability to detect you're burning out is one of the first losses of cognitive ability when you're burning out.
Re: Illegal overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
Well said. This 100 hr/wk crap is throughout the consulting industry, not just gaming. I have done it a few weeks over the decade. I am done months of 70 hr/wk over that time. And I normally do 50 hr/wk. And no, I never got overtime pay.
What I noticed is that anything over 70 hr/wk is basically a waste of time (it varies person to person; for me it's ~60). Your productivity starts tanking after 35 hrs. Study after study has shown that people who regularly work 60 hours per week actually are LESS productive than those who work 40 hours per week. Studies have shown that 35 hrs/wk is even better (9-5 w/ 1hr lunch).
Most people know this! Yet we continue to have teams sleeping under tables, holding up ceilings with pizza boxes, and injecting caffeine all over the place.
It makes the ones in charge feel better. It tempers their stress and prevents them from losing it on the workers. "They are sleeping in tents. What more do you want from them?"
But all it really tells me is just how unqualified those middle managers are and how out of touch higher ups are with their operations. Best thing to do is leave. Standing up means you aren't a "team player" and appears less productive... even if you are more.
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You realize that the guys who actually leave at 5 PM every day are usually the first ones to get laid off, right? 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 know that's not a big deal at the moment because the economy is pretty good and there are other tech jobs out there, but when the job market goes to shit you really need to more conscious as to how your work ethic looks to other people.
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I hate to break it to you, but in the boss's view you're ALL expendable.
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Sure, but there always seems to be "that guy" in every organization with no social life who's willing to work any time to keep things running. You rarely see that guy get fired unless they do something REALLY stupid.
They are often revered as a minor workplace deity, and are usually safe unless the entire company goes bust.
I think that I've been "that guy" in a few places that I've worked at, until I came to the sudden realization that's just not worth it. Extra work often just even more busy work. Sometimes
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I haven't been that guy, but I've cleaned up after him more than once.
Does he pull the long hours because he's actually crap and instead of doing things once and doing them right wears out ctrl-c and ctrl-v duplicating lumps of code everywhere? And then when he needs to make a change he has to do it in 79 places and he misses one and muffs two others...
Or does doing the long hours tire him out so that he doesn't actually think about what he's doing?
I've been that guy (Score:2)
Let me tell you something. You can ALWAYS find another job. You can NEVER replace time lost with your family.
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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
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> You realize that the guys who actually leave at 5 PM every day are usually the first ones to get laid off, right? 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.
When I was younger I used to think that as well. But reality and watching many companies I've worked at go through rounds of layoffs just doesn't bear that out. Some companies will lay the 5pm guys/girls off first, but those companies are actually doing thos
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In a situation where management simply have no idea how to measure worker productivity and worth, you have a whole host of issues. The managers are just going to fire the people they personally like the least, which in some instances will mean the people who leave first, but are just as likely to be the ugly people, the less social people, or simply the people with less relatives in upper management.
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No, everyone should have flexibility in when they work. But that's not the same thing as flexibility in how long they work.
If you allow workers to work longer hours, three things tend to happen:
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This is only a problem as long as you do extra work for free. If you get 150% overtime it's cheaper for the manager to have three people working 100% than two people 150% so it never becomes a lasting pattern. A salaried position is in 99% of the cases an advantage for the employer because if it looks like you have too little to do they'll find a way to give you more work and more responsibility, they'll push until you push back. I agree with the European model, only management and especially independent po
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Salary is only about half the cost of an employee. It's signifcantly cheaper to work two people 60 hours a week than three people 40 hours a week... even if the 60 hours a week people are being paid for 70.
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That just ends up causing people to work unpaid overtime.
I've been in a situation in which overtime beyond 60 hours a week was basically "illegal". I was working with Boeing on military contracts and the contract language limited such overtime. The result was rules against paying for that overtime. It resulted in my typical 90 hour weeks (I was young and loved what I was doing) having a large amount of unpaid time.
The work was exciting and I was certainly emotionally involved in my creations. I wouldn't hav
Re: Illegal overtime (Score:3)
You should have been paid anyway.
Money is the key item for accountants.
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Make excessive overtime illegal (or enforce existing laws). If you miss a deadline the scheduling manager is at fault.
Better still, form a un- oops, I mean an Engineers Association - to collectively bargain as is workers' rights under long-established law. Management seems to be building crunch time into the regular schedule here, rather than leading an occasional sprint to finish a project that has been delated by unusual circumstances.
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Not everything is scalable. It is not like rockstar could just hire a million developers, and make RDR2 in a weekend.
There is no possibility of getting into the video game industry without knowing that you will likely be spending 100 weeks at any job you get.
I am not in a position to say whether this is necessary or not, but I am open to the very real possibility that that is a possibility.
Re:Illegal overtime (Score:4, Informative)
It's absolutely possible to work 100 hours per week in the UK. In my industry (film VFX and post-production) it's routine and required during crunch time. Which frequently seems to last the final 3 months of a feature film project, or final month of an advert project.
Any UK company can incorporate an 'opt-out' [www.gov.uk] of the 48-hour EU working time directive into their contract of employment. You don't have to sign it but - if you don't sign - you don't get the job. There's nothing voluntary about it.
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It's absolutely possible to work 100 hours per week in the UK. [...] Any UK company can incorporate an
'opt-out' [www.gov.uk] of the 48-hour EU working time directive into their contract of employment. You don't have to sign it but - if you don't sign - you don't get the job. There's nothing voluntary about it.
Even if an employee opts out, the maximum working time is still limited by mandatory breaks: 11 hours rest per day (usually at night), 20 minutes break per working day of six hours or more, and an additional 24 hours per week (or 48 per two weeks). This means that one cannot legally work more than 24 x 7 - 24 - (11 + 1/3) x 6 hours = 76 hours per week.
Most can opt-out, but not boats. How stupid! (Score:2)
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.
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Isn't fishing about the most dangerous job? Some jobs, being overtired means making mistakes that you have to waste time tomorrow fixing, other jobs, people die.
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I'm pretty sure surgery, demolition, and construction qualify as jobs where fatigue induced mistakes can be fatal.
For that matter, any job where you drive home after work can lead to fatigue induced fatalities for the employee and bystanders.
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And all those jobs should have limits on how long of a day those workers are putting in. What those limits should be, I'm unsure of.
As for driving tired, that's the most scary driving I've done and there was one job I had where the hours were too long and it was too far away that by the end of the week, I was usually falling asleep at the wheel. Luckily that job didn't last.
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And same in Korea: http://www.koreanlaborlaw.com/... [koreanlaborlaw.com]
In the end, it's not the laws that will protect you. If you don't like overtime, quit and find a better career.
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Yeah, I am fine with overtime (I myself worked about 70 hrs/week on average last year, not just "crunch time"). I was method-acting for those for whom overtime really reduces their quality of life.
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It works for my current phase of "life". I don't plan to work 70 hrs/week for the rest of my life (which makes it easier for my method-acting).
Re: Illegal overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
Double pay on overtime to ensure that if it's ordered then it bounces the cost. Triple if it's on weekends.
Re: Illegal overtime (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: Illegal overtime (Score:2)
It canâ(TM)t be emphasised enough that share holdings in no way shape or form makes one an âoeowner.â This is an economic myth that mainstream economists continue to perpetuate as a veiled view of reality. There is a reason the law calls shareholders, âoeresidual claimantsâ or in other words, bottom of the ladder.
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Maybe it's a pencil?
Re: Illegal overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
Farmers are self employed though. Self employed people often are regularly working very long hours, to complain to the boss they look in the mirror.
For real overtime, you DO get paid for this, you get paid for the overtime hours more than normal hours. Many employees want this. However if it's continual then something's wrong. Something's wrong with the company too since they lose so much money this way versus hiring extra help at the standard rate.
However there are people who are salaried who say they do overtime, I suspect they're just confused about the terms. For salaried workers there's no real laws in many states about how long you can or can't work. Typically most companies won't explicitly ask salaried workers to work over 40 hours a week, but many employees will do so anyway can claim "it's expected of us" even if there was no order to do this or the policy says otherwise. A temporary crunch time is perhaps normal; fix the dead-in-the-water bug before the customer pulls the plug for example. But again when it's ongoing then it means something is wrong with the company. There are people in Silicon Valley who say crunch time is "normal" but I think they're mistaken and should be checking the laws in this regard, or raise concerns with upper management.
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I'm in Virginia, a right to work state.
At a local shipyard the trades are union and hourly and get overtime. Some of the engineers, particularly those who do not directly supervise others, are salary, but are paid straight time overtime, unlike the trades, which get time and a half. They should not be confused with managers who are salary and get no overtime. Just to make the point that there are indeed places where salaried people get overtime pay. Where I work we get no overtime, but do get holiday pay i
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I think much of this is because the younger workers don't realize what the work is really like. Games are glamorized, and the industry itself doesn't show much of the inner workings unless it's scrubbed clean. Ie, a lot of the "inside the making of..." will show people in cubicles who don't speak, and then show the celebrities doing voice overs, the toys on people's desks, and interviews from execs and leads.
Essentially, it is not (Score:3)
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.
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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.
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There was a time and a place in the history of industrialization where many of your talking points were realistic, virtually unavoidable scenarios to be feared by the working man. Just as today, unionization of workers can still be beneficial for tradesmen, but it is not essential for safe working conditions and reasonable pay and benefits.
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they were exploitation of a desperate group.
That was the GPP's point. Software developers are not a "desperate group".
Comparing what we do to mining coal is absurd. I can go out my office door, and find several other job offers within a 10 minute walk.
I don't work many 80 hours weeks anymore, but I did it plenty of times when I was a youngling. I learned a lot, I was well compensated, and if I didn't like it, I had other options.
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Well, for Rockstar Games, most of those workers aren't really software developers. Much of the work in crunch time is art, testing, creating objects, retesting, fixing bugs, retesting, database management, etc.
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You don't think that being forced to work 80+ hours a week as a software developer could have negative effects on someones health?
No it doesn't, because as soon as you become old enough for long hours to start affecting your health, you get canned.
Re:Essentially, it is not (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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One of my former jobs was at a videogame company. My manager noticed I was leaving at 5 every day and told me I needed to work more or I'd never get very far in the company. I was the one who was actually on schedule. One of the other programmers literally slept under his desk, going home every few days to shower. Shitty programmer, though. The long hours were spent debugging his own crummy code and getting it to just barely run. He was constantly behind. But, he's the one who got commendations from manage
It's a waste of time (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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 hour
At the lower end of the work spectrum (Score:2)
Just ask John Carmack how much he works in the lead up to a new game/engine. It's a lot.
"Unconscionable and Untenable" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Like movies and other entertainment, there's always fresh young blood to refill the staff.
This. I had a friend who wanted to be a comic book artist when he grew up. He actually made it and did some comics but the work/life balance was extremely poor. Essentially there was a line around the block of people who wanted to do that and if you were tired go away and they will have you replaced immediately. The long line of willing people also kept the pay down. That he left that for IT might say something. The only jobs that I've seen that are both high pay *and* have tons of capable people will
It should be illegal. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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I beg to differ. Here's why
Worked at a power plant once where we had a piece of German equipment fail. Actually it was two pieces. Repairs would take a couple of weeks and it was under warranty. It was decided by the German company that they would send two teams. One from Germany and the other from their U.S. subsidiary. The equipment was in a radioloically contaminated area and required dress out to access.
Every day both groups would arrive on time and dress out to work the job. Lunch was at none. At 11:45
What's the point? (Score:2)
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?
Overtime and salaried status (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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No, because it just leads to paying to solve the problem, instead of staffing to solve the problem.
Its essentially a hierarchy where problems are not solved unless they are mandatory avoided by law, or people do proper cost benefit analyze or similar things to avoid problems.
If 50% increase in workload is just a 100% wage increase, nobody will object to that because nobody will do a cost benefit analyze. Or compare workload to workforce. Or the company has many layers, so management of crunch time departmen
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For hourly employees, yes time-and-a-half for work over 40 hours a week. Salaried is a different equation because you're (supposedly) being paid for the job, not the hours you put in like hourly are. So, the basic offer is $X for a job that involves 40 hours a week worth of effort on average. The thing that hits the employer here is that since the pay is for the job, not the hours, they don't get to pay you less just because you didn't put in the expected hours that week. So if they offered $8K/month ($96K/
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It's more complicated than that, and it's not always about profits. I work in a non-profit industry, which is under contract the the U.S. Government. Things like benefits and such are contractually set, and sometimes so is manpower, not costs but number, because different rules apply for companies with different numbers of employees.
Also as stated before its always cheaper to pay two individuals time and a half than to hire a third person and pay three individuals the same amount in salary, because there is
Formula for success (Score:5, Insightful)
(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.
Successfully argued against sustained crunch time (Score:2)
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 beyo
Crunch time is how you maintain a cheap workforce (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Some People Have Families (Score:2)
RUN .. .don't walk (Score:3)
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.
Your company is BROKEN (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Follow it with off time (Score:2)
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No offense dude, but did you ever think that you're not in a long term romantic relationship because you haven't given yourself enough free time to actually HAVE one?
I've successfully pulled off holding together a relationship while working 60 hours a week, but 84? Hell no. I would be too tired to go outside and do anything after a week like that.
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About working 100 hours a week (Score:2)
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Crunch time works (Score:2)
Thats not actually 'crunch time' (Score:2)
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.
Bad practice (Score:2)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Sack the planner if he's ever done it before (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
You crunch to meet the deadline you promised?
The people doing the crunch are almost never the same as the people promising the deadline.
I've tried not having a work/life balance before. It's kinda ok for a bit of you're doing it for yourself. But if I'm working for someone else, no the hell way I'm sacrificing my work/life balance to meet a deadline I had no input into scheduling.
If it harms me career, sobe it, I'd rather have less of a career and actually enjoy my life than churn and burn for what?
management perspective (Score:3)
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).
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I work in Germany and Austria.
There's a shortage of CISOs. I've had several offers from headhunters, and my company has been asked more than once if we can at least temporarily provide an external CISO. I've developed a CISO training program to coach potential candidates inside the companies because it's difficult and costly to find candidates on the job market.
If you are in this sphere and are in the area or want to move, we should talk - tom@lemuria.org
D!ck move (Score:2)
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.
And if you're not willing to do it... (Score:3)
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?
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Depends on what you want (Score:2)
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
So Wait, Don't Gloss Over This (Score:2)
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.
Treat people like professionals (Score:2)
In all cases, the answer will be no but probably not even close to 100 hrs. But this is expected of software en
No, it shouldn't exist. (Score:2)
You mean devs shouldn't be punished?! (Score:2)
...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.
Optional under an union contract with clear rules (Score:2)
Optional under an union contract with clear rules only!
At least in FinTech, sure it is (Score:2)
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
the universal will to consume ice cream (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
There is an extremely severe difference between utility workers working on-call/emergency works working overtime. Often in the case of storms, many out of town utility workers will volunteer for overtime to help out. Also I'd like to point out that those utility workers are union employees(typically IBEW in the US). There is a huge difference between working overtime due to a disaster vs regularly being forced to work excessive hours.
There are many people who can die due to lack of electricity. Prett
Re: Why can't developers develop realistic schedul (Score:2)
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.
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Because the answer is obvious. They need to eat. Further, they are conditioned from an early age to fear being considered "lazy". They think it's the same everywhere.
It's always a "temporary condition" until it isn't.
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Not if they are also paying off student loans.
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When I was younger, I thought differently. But it does make things easier when there is a collective bargaining agreement. When the CBA says that an employee cannot be forced to work overtime, that has a force of contract, and this can actually free up other employees who want to work overtime to actually work overtime, without feeling like they are imposing on their coworkers with their "work ethic".
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It is the company, not the industry.
I've worked at five game companies. Each one had strict policies against overtime. I have interviewed with probably 40 game companies and turned many down due to their clearly abusive policies.
At my current company when I came on on a Saturday to finish off some work, the following Monday my manager and the studio head invited me in to an impromptu meeting ('uh-oh') and asked me why I was there, what I was doing, and why I felt I needed to work on a weekend. They wante
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Yep, this has been my experience as well. It's not systemic across the industry, but varies greatly from company to company.
I've been in the videogame industry for quite a while, and have worked at a number of videogame companies. The best companies I've worked for had very good work-life balance, and actively discouraged crunching. They wanted their employees to be happy and productive over the long haul, not to burn out and leave. The companies who tried to push employees into working longer... well,
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It's getting to the stage where no one's allowed to say anything negative about annoying or anything online anymore because any such sentiment will be shouted down with accusations of "white knighting", "virtue signaling" or some other equally stupid and misused phrase.
So, I'd appreciate it if you stopped white knighting for R* and the games industry, you know? It's not like you signaling your virtue about not helping people will actually help.
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You don’t know anything about the R* workplace. Neither do I. Neither does anyone else in this conversation.
Yet all these people are so full of themselves that they think they should make pronouncements about who is right and wrong and how decicisions should be made. You should all stop being so full of yourselves and start minding your own business. Stop being assholes.
That was the point. That was the only point.
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