
Pachter To Overworked Devs: 'Find Another Profession' - evo_9
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/pachter-to-overworked-devs-find-another-profession/
======
DarkShikari
_He cites the fact that Infinity Ward had a profit pool of $84 million to be
paid to around 100 employees._

... which they avoided paying out by firing the relevant employees before the
bonuses were due.

~~~
tomkarlo
While that's despicable, if true, it's also partially up to employees to
ensure that their work agreements don't do that. Unfortunately, human nature
is to see bonuses as part of expected comp rather than upside to expected
comp. If you're going to do that, you'd better make sure you've papered things
up to protect yourself and get paid for the work you did. (And trust me, I've
paid dearly to learn that lesson.)

~~~
brown9-2
Almost all professional employment in the US is characterized as at-will. How
can someone get ensure their work agreement accounts for this prior to
starting a job at one of these companies? Ask for a "you will not fire me
prior to paying me a bonus" clause?

It seems to me that if a company in this situation wants to screw the
employee, they will find a way.

~~~
killerswan
Possibly: ownership of the IP only transfers upon final payment.

~~~
kelnos
No, IP ownership transfers when your contract says it does. If you're a
consultant and your contract says you transfer IP upon payment, then sure,
that's the case. But if you're a salaried employee, then most likely you've
signed something that stipulates that your product is a work-for-hire, and it
becomes owned by your employer the moment you type it out.

~~~
killerswan
So I suggested one kind of contract to write which would ensure payment of
that sort, rather than the usual.

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brown9-2
I can't think of anything more ridiculous in the world of professional
software development than planned crunch-time for video game development.

The concept is a bit boggling. _Planned_ periods of "oh shit we need to work
14 hours today or we'll miss the deadline!"

~~~
Joakal
In a way, it does make sense. Once software/game is made, the developers are
no longer needed. So it gives a little incentive to force the completion of
software. This should give an idea that the investors care more of money.

Which is quite silly as the game needs to be patched. Booting burnt out
developers and even not acknowledging them would lower the morale of the
others and ruin future attempts to make sequels (Investors puzzled: Why was it
so lack lustre?). eg LA Noir credit omissions.

~~~
anthonyb
And the next game that you want to produce? Now you have to find another team
of developers, from a smaller pool (since word gets around). Seems incredibly
short sighted to me - why throw away all the effort of staffing, training and
tools?

~~~
Joakal
Hence my point that investors are more concerned about money than the product.
I meant short-term profit though.

~~~
anthonyb
Even short term profit is likely to be put at risk. I've found that the places
which are weaselly enough to screw you long term will normally screw you in
little bits and pieces first. After you've been through the cycle a few times,
you generally know what to look for.

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davidsiems
Crunch is the unavoidable result of poor project management. Project
management in software development is notoriously bad, and in game development
we're even behind that curve.

Schedules are built on hopes and dreams instead of historical data. Impossible
promises are made to publishers in order to secure funding or keep from being
cancelled.

Most harmful, is the belief that crunching actually increases productivity. If
you look at the research on the subject the most you can hope to gain is about
a 2 week boost before you backslide and become less productive.

If you could reliably deliver (fun) games on time and on budget you would have
a serious competitive advantage in this field.

~~~
jarin
Without being a game industry insider, it would seem like the best way would
be to use distribution and advertising methods that allow you release a game
_when it's done_. That is to say, distribution methods like Steam or the App
Store and advertising methods like dev blogs, teaser/sneak peak videos,
frequent articles on game review sites, playable demos at Comic-Con, etc.

Bioware seems to be taking a really good approach to this with Star Wars: The
Old Republic, but they might be able to get away with it because it's Star
Wars.

I think the problem is a lot of companies rely on big box retailers and
traditional media for their blockbusters, which means long lead times on print
materials, DVD pressing, magazine advertising. Big projects always go longer
than you intend, and if you make all of these big feature promises and
deadlines in advance you basically are forcing yourself into extended crunch
time.

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NickPollard
I think a lot of the problem is that Games Developers themselves don't do
enough to prevent this. This certainly doesn't excuse the managers who take
advantage this way, but if more developers were confident enough to take a
stand, they'd have more success changing this.

Pachter said. “I’ve never heard a developer say ‘I don’t work overtime and I
don’t work weekends’. Well, at my last industry job, that was me. I never
worked weekends, and I only worked evenings if I had fallen behind myself on
what I planned to get done. I made it clear to my managers (in a non-
confrontational way) that overtime was not to be 'expected', and that I would
only work extra hours in extreme circumstances if we had immediate (read: in
the next 1-2 days) deadlines that my planned work was not going to be ready
for.

My managers were pretty ok with that actually - I was still a good programmer
and put plenty of effort in during my normal work hours, and it meant that
people had an accurate idea of how much work I could normally get done in a
work week.

~~~
joshcrews
I recommend to devs to take this a little bit farther. If a dev is willing to
work overtime "if we have immediate deadlines", management will increase the
frequency and urgency of deadlines.

Rather commit to working overtime if the company/team will miss a deadline
that you committed to for a reason that you are responsible for. That closes
temptation to create deadlines that you never committed to.

An example: Manager: Dev, we need you to stay extra because we've got to get
Facebook Connect integrated by tomorrow!

Dev: I wish we'd talked about if that was a reasonable expectation given the
other development priorities we have for this week. Next time we have a
feature with a deadline, ask me in advance and I can tell you the earliest
date I can guarantee it can be finished by.

Then be reasonable, with a good buffer, about future deadline commitments. If
you make a commitment, keep it. If you have a deadline commitment, and a new
"urgent" request comes in, you can then ask the manager if they'd rather you
delay the new request to honor the first deadline, or if they'd like to push
back the deadline of the original request.

Using this I never worked evenings or weekends when I was an employee

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andymatic
Three to six months is an acceptable period of 'crunch time'? That's just
shitty planning.

~~~
Lewisham
I agree with this.

The games industry has conditioned itself to believe it is unique in software
development, and that as a special snowflake, it is able to define whatever is
reasonable for itself. Whatever is reasonable is what's come before, and
what's come before has been a terrible mess. Google can launch products with a
much better work/life balance than most games studios, and their engineers
make a lot more money for it too.

The only people that stay are the people who can survive it. Those that
survive are those that don't know any better (fresh-faced grads), grizzled and
bitter vets that perpetuate the cycle of violence, or those people who really
can't imagine anything more awesome than making games, personal life be
damned.

Pachter is being blunt here, but he's right. The industry won't change, and in
my interactions with it, it doesn't seem to want to.

~~~
seanalltogether
The gaming industry ended up being invaded by the media industry, which is
notorious for chewing up people and spitting them out. Luckily digital
distribution is putting all the bargaining chips back in to the hands of the
content creators instead of the content distributors, and hopefully a lot of
the absurd conditions will die away.

~~~
sbov
God yes. I have friends who work in TV. For them, there is no such thing as
"crunch time" - just 14+ hour days 7 days a week. And they get paid and
treated like shit.

I don't quite understand the glamour of the business. When I hear stories from
my friends it just makes me angry that million dollar salaries are subsidized
by such shitty working conditions.

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rjd
This employer behavior is nothing new, its usually eventually solved with
unions. Organised strikes tend to be the next step in most other industries.

Also its terrible blame shifting. It sounds like they are trying to create
games with insufficient timing and budgets, and the people are to blame are
the workers not the money men.

I'd have walked as soon as I realized I only get paid my due wage if the
product succeeds. The onus shouldn't be on me to make sure I get paid making
someone else product work.

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chrisbennet
"Pachter noted that developers are well compensated in the form of bonuses,
and as such, overtime is not a factor. He cites the fact that Infinity Ward
had a profit pool of $84 million to be paid to around 100 employees."

I wonder how much of that goes to those below executive level.

~~~
kevingadd
At game studios that even have a bonus/profit sharing structure (it's actually
very rare, despite what Pachter says), it's typically paid out based on a
combination of tenure and your salary. So the new hires who are working their
asses off during crunch to avoid getting fired when the inevitable cuts come
are going to get the least out of any bonuses that do get paid out.

------
agentultra
I just finished reading The Clean Coder and it puts into words what I always
knew how to do instinctively I think.

I've never worked in the game industry where there may be strong political
reasons to submit to such working conditions. I've rarely had to work over-
time (mainly writing web applications and servers) and when I did it was
usually of my own volition. The problem with doing is that you burn out a lot
faster than you think. Being frustrated and unhappy can interfere with doing
your job as a programmer. We're paid to think and good thinking can only
happen when you have a clear, healthy state of mind.

If I've ever done "crunch time" against my will it's usually because some
manager or sales person went above my head and made promises without clearing
it with me. That's very unprofessional IMO. It's also unprofessional to avoid
taking the initiative to righting that sort of wrong. It's like watching
someone walk backwards into traffic and not doing anything to stop them. If
you're part of the team, you're going to be hurting yourself too. (And I think
it took me a few tries to realize this).

So I dunno... there are probably a lot of pressures in the game industry that
help this nasty practice persist... but if it's not worth it, Pachter is
right: move on. Life's too short and there's better work to be had.

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foblast2ng
I don't see why dev's don't ask for more money during crunchtime. I mean, if
the studio's dependent on you to finish their $millions budgeted game, then it
seems like you should have quite a lot of leverage over the company, since
hiring someone else to finish the game would only make it take longer.

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Tiktaalik
His position is bizarre because on one hand he says, "I think there’s a
legitimate complaint if crunch time is never-ending." but he defends Bondi
even though there seems to be a wealth of information out that there shows
that the conditions at Bondi (and Rockstar for both this project and Rockstar
San Diego) were very much in line with "never-ending."

Perhaps there will be some sort of bonus for those who stayed on (especially
after this negative publicity) but what about everyone else who left over the
years during this massively delayed project?

~~~
kelnos
And I'd consider his 3-6 months of crunch time as "never-ending". Two weeks,
tops.

At my last company we spent over a year in crunch time. Never again.

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nhangen
In all of the times I've hired employees or freelancers, I've only asked them
to work overtime once, and that was three weeks before Christmas when we were
behind schedule, based on their own timelines.

In the end, it still caused friction, and we weren't able to keep that team on
long-term.

I don't regret that we had to do that (I was working overtime too), but I also
don't understand why employers treat developers like garbage. IMO, developers
are gold.

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anthonyb
Here's Valve's (well, Gabe Newell's) take on it - 'Crunch Mode', about halfway
down:

[http://www.develop-online.net/features/1184/The-Valve-
manife...](http://www.develop-online.net/features/1184/The-Valve-manifesto)

(Though they unfortunately seem to have hotlinked the images, which are all
broken :P )

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flocial
That's pretty easy for some alpha male security analyst to say. Setting clear
goals and boundaries requires discipline on the part of both developers and
managers. It's not slacking off or lack of commitment unless you're hiring
unmotivated hacks and leftovers. But even then, maybe you're overpaying for
low quality and could hire more for less. Either way overtime is mostly
avoidable. Sure, sometimes the deadline takes on a life of it's own and you
need to set your foot down and say "we promised, so we will deliver. Let's do
a post-mortem to ensure it doesn't happen again, but right now we need to
ship".

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latch
I know that in Ontario (Canada), the labor code is pretty specific about
overtime. There's a very long list of professions which are NOT required to be
paid overtime. Nurses, teachers...and yes, programmers.

These groups are still protected by other rules - how long someone can work
without breaks, or rest periods, and general health and safety rules. But, and
again I only know about Ontario, unless your contract says otherwise, overtime
isn't paid and you can be fired for not working it (provided it doesn't
violate some other rule).

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Jach
Yeah, game programmers have it tough. I hear you're treated just like a male
porn star, they use you all up until you burn out and then toss you in the
trash as another young stud walks in the door willing to accept lower wages
and willing to burn himself out just the same. Some luckier ones make it into
management though. Others just stay away and either make indie games or
program something else entirely.

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tsotha
Game development shops are well known for this because of the cyclical nature
of the sales cycle. So he's right, sort of, in that if you can't handle the
Christmas season crunch you need to get into another industry. But there's no
reason to find another profession - there are plenty of corporate development
jobs with 9-5 work schedules.

~~~
spitfire
It isn't the cyclical nature of the games business. It's that the people
"managing" are absolute rank amateurs, shamelessly greedy businessmen, or
both.

Couple this with the fact that there's an endless amount of fresh meat (I want
to make games when I grow up!) and except for an enlightened few there's no
real reason to change.

~~~
tsotha
>It isn't the cyclical nature of the games business. It's that the people
"managing" are absolute rank amateurs, shamelessly greedy businessmen, or
both.

 _Every_ industry is loaded with managers who are rank amateurs, shamelessly
greedy, or both. The difference is game companies tend to go out of business
if the product isn't shipped in time for the Christmas season.

>Couple this with the fact that there's an endless amount of fresh meat (I
want to make games when I grow up!) and except for an enlightened few there's
no real reason to change.

There's a lot of truth to this. I wouldn't work in a game industry for the
same reason I wouldn't open a surfboard shop or a used book store: I don't
want to be competing with people who are willing to devote all their time to
the job and don't care how much money they make. Eventually game developers
burn out and move on, but like you say, there is an endless amount of recent
grads to take their place.

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groby_b
Many of the good devs I knew have taken exactly that step over the last year.
Sure, there are many great people left - but there has been quite an exodus
over the last year.

There are non-gaming companies that are great to work for and value developers
_way_ more - why _would_ you stay?

