
One Horrifying Account Of Working At Zynga - gagan2020
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/09/working-at-zynga/
======
danko
The article makes an excellent point: you can really only demand "startup
hours" out of your employees if you can offer "startup perks" (i.e. (a) an
extremely favorable work environment, (b) interesting work, and (c) the
possibility of the big cash-out).

Zynga has never seemed particularly strong at (a) and (b), but compensated
with a heaping helping of (c). Now that's gone. If they're going to demand
startup hours now, they'll have to get there by pressure and exploitation
(which admittedly is nothing new in the gaming industry). There's always been
something brutal and antagonistic about that company, and that's probably just
going to get worse.

Also:

TechCrunch comment threads have one positive attribute: they make me
appreciate the level of discourse here at HN all the more.

~~~
colmvp
For some reason I have trouble loading TechCrunch comments, which I guess is a
good thing.

On that note, I'm a little surprised they copy and pasted the Quora writeup.
Might as well just link to it and call it a day as the rest of the writeup
wasn't particularly insightful.

~~~
jrockway
The writeup on Quora seems to have been deleted.

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kevingadd
Oh, I see, it's the developer's fault for going to a studio and letting them
mistreat him so that he could try and hold onto his job. "Quit, and go do
great things." Yes, because everyone who works for a scrappy startup and gets
acquired has a huge nest egg, right? It's not like starting a company is hard?

Commentary on this stuff is utterly ridiculous sometimes. It's like it's
coming from people who don't live in the real world.

The OP describes 12 hour days, 7 days a week with lots of broken promises and
obvious failures to address issues, and all a Zynga employee can come up with
in response is that it's an "exaggeration" and that it would be more
appropriate to call the results "disappointing". So does that mean the
employee isn't wrong and his team was abused and given little opportunity to
rest after a long pre-launch crunch, and that Zynga staffers only 'slightly'
lied about future value of stock to encourage people to overwork themselves?
Maybe he only lost 5 pounds due to stress and malnutrition instead of 15
pounds? That's okay, right?

Someone whose employer is acquired doesn't exactly have any easy choices here
either. He probably wasn't planning on working for Zynga, and suddenly being
told that you're now a Zynga employee doesn't give you much time to find a job
- and job hunting in games isn't easy in general. It's only natural to at
least try and make the new job work.

~~~
clarky07
It's not like there are no other jobs in the software field right now. If he
was being mistreated at GM and is only qualified to work in a factory that's
one thing. There are more software jobs than qualified workers right now.
Quit, go get a job at a company that isn't the scum of the earth.

~~~
michaelochurch
Quitting and getting a job at a company "that isn't the scum of the earth" is
easy. Getting an opportunity to do great things is hard. Blue-sky R&D is dead,
and very few people ever end up with the money to own their lives instead of
renting them from a boss.

People work for the Zyngas of the world because they expect to be able to do
great things after the big payday, but that rarely pans out.

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justanother
Nice to hear Schap's style hasn't changed much. I don't want to sound too much
like a whiner, because I'm writing this from my boats on the tropical island
where I live now, but I was the first programmer to quit from his first
company when he gave me the royal butt-chewing treatment for daring to take
two hours off to visit friends on Independence Day 1996. He paid me $24K per
year, with zero stock options or advancement opportunities, to work from
11am-2am every day of the week, to write a certain Super Nintendo game.
There's worse I could say, but again, the point isn't to whine. Nobody has to
put up with that.

~~~
MartinCron
I you write more about these experiences, I would be eager to read them.

~~~
justanother
It wouldn't be particularly good karma to dish dirt here on hackernews, and my
prior description pretty much says it all. Fortunately I was only 18, and only
stayed in that environment for about 3 months before quitting without notice
(on July 5th, as it happened), while many of those who did stick with it and
who succeeded in that environment, remain virgins to this day. It's all about
which lifestyle suits you, I suppose. I can tell you that Schap once asked me
how I liked Orlando, because it was where I could continue to live as long as
I did good work for him (I lived there 13 years after I quit, before moving to
the tropics).

~~~
MartinCron
Your discretion is admirable.

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philwelch
This is blogspam. Original is here: [http://www.quora.com/Zynga-Stock-Price-
Collapse-Summer-2012/...](http://www.quora.com/Zynga-Stock-Price-Collapse-
Summer-2012/How-do-Zynga-employees-feel-about-the-companys-summer-2012-stock-
price-drop/answers/1435680)

~~~
orijing
It appears that the original answer has been deleted

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dlikhten
And let this be a lesson to ALL. Never EVER work > 9-6 hours. Only on
occasional crazy deploys. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow rarely
comes, and enough horror stories show that. Don't be stupid.

If your employer sees your problems and genuinely needs the hrs and does
everything in their power to assist u, that's different. I heard of crazy
google stories followed by how google spent time and effort making their
people happy.

~~~
kevingadd
I agree with the rule about never working crunch hours - it's helped me a lot
to stick to it - but I know a lot of people who simply don't have that option:
If they don't work those crunch hours, they get fired. I've only had the
benefit of being able to do it due to job security, and not everyone has that.
I have to imagine that would apply to most Zynga employees based on what I
know about how that company runs.

~~~
MartinCron
Getting fired for refusing to work insane hours? Win-win!

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mwill
Wow some of the comments on that page are horrifying, and incredibly hostile.

 _"Ex Zynga employee is just a spoiled little brat with no common sense."_

 _"wow what a spoiled douche."_

 _"Is this supposed to make us feel bad?"_

 _"You played the startup game and you lost."_

~~~
austenallred
Comments on TechCrunch are only a half step above the comments on YouTube.

~~~
GFKjunior
thank you for copying and pasting this insightful comment everywhere.

~~~
austenallred
?

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endlessvoid94
Really? There's a techcrunch article about a quora post?

Fuck this shit. This isn't journalism.

~~~
philwelch
Quoth the guidelines:

"Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they
found on another site, submit the latter."

If only the moderators actually enforced this anymore.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
...or the readers aggressively flagged bad entries.

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btipling
I work long hours because I love what I do and I work with great people. Not
because I'm expecting to get rich. I feel fortunate to be writing code, and
making a difference and advancing a product. I'm immensely proud to think of
myself as part of 'product.' I am grateful for the opportunities I have been
giving and the faith others have placed in me.

I also love learning, and I get to learn something new pretty much every day.
That's something a lot of people don't get in their line of work. I don't take
it for granted.

Some people just need to grow up a little and think about their life. Every
moment I spend at work is a moment I don't spend with my wife and daughter, so
I am sure to spend it on something that is worth it for them and myself. A
flash game that annoys me on Facebook isn't it, but there are people who
thoroughly enjoy playing those games and others who love making them, that
isn't me, but that's someone and I hope they find that work rewarding. I
couldn't, so I don't do that work.

------
redcircle
This type of stuff happened leading up to the bubble. Somehow the knowledge
didn't successfully transfer from the people burned then to those getting
burned now. Fuckedcompany.com sure tried.

~~~
dredmorbius
Sadly, fuckcompany.com is ... fucked.

~~~
smacktoward
Pud did turn the best/worst of FuckedCompany into a book
([http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-Com-
Flame...](http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-Com-
Flameouts/dp/0743228626)) after the site ended, at least. It's a useful
artifact of the era.

~~~
damian2000
I just received that yesterday - can confirm it is an awesome read. Pud
certainly doesn't pull any punches.

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damian2000
This reminds me of the EA spouse article [<http://ea-
spouse.livejournal.com/274.html>] which was regarding conditions 8+ years ago
at EA. I thought the games industry had progressed since then - obviously not.

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papaver
I don't understand people that bitch and moan about working long hours in the
software industry, especially games. You can leave whenever you want, its a
free will state. Would you have been bitching and moaning if all this happened
yet you made millions? You lost so you cry? Seriously, been there done that,
learned my lesson at EA, moved on and made sure I don't put myself in the same
situation again. No one is putting a gun to your head.

~~~
spaghetti
You're right that no one is forcing the people to work the long hours. However
imo programmers and gamers are often naive. Spending high school and college
working alone or with friends of a similar mind-set can prevent someone from
seeing the "real world" aka MBA-types who prefer making money to advancing
interesting technology. So while no one is forcing the employees to work
themselves into the ground there's still something to be said about cunning
non-technical leadership taking advantage of 18-22 year old naive programmers.

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phillmv
Question.

Suppose you work at Zynga, and you're at the bottom-to-lower end of the
hierarchy. Nobody with a C-title knows the name of your manager.

You're stuck working 10 hour days forever. What's the expected value on your
equity? You obviously have some minuscule fraction. Are people really killing
themselves over a $100k bonus?

Is this all based on the "pre-Facebook IPO" world where tech stocks were
expected to triple in price over six months?

~~~
btipling
A $100K bonus could shave off a decade from a home loan. Even in the bay area.
I'd work hard for that, but I would also have to like where I work even
without the bonus.

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adrr
Maybe someone can answer this. When negotiating equity, couldn't you red line
the lockout period provision? Or is this set by law? If it is by law, how are
executives getting around it?

~~~
beagle3
There's a law (SEC rule 144) which says that if shares were not bought in an
open market, they are locked up for 6 months after the event that makes them
liquid (more or less). It's complicated, but generally you're rarely in a
position to NOT need to adhere to it, regardless of what your contract says.

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amurmann
What I find appalling about the Zynga, the Facebook and the Groupon IPO is
that people at the top who actually are responsible for the mess can cash out
early whereas people at the bottom who have to rely on people at the top who
already cashed out themselves. CEOs and founders should have to wait longest
to sell their stock. This would protect not only employees who get stock, but
also investors who bought stock early on. There would be much higher incentive
to build an actually working company instead of having a scammy IPO followed
by a quick cash out. It's one thing if a company fails and everyone loses.
It's another if everyone loses, but people who are most responsible get many
millions.

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taskstrike
I feel companies with tech cofounder often reward their programmers and
workers far better than ones founded by business founders.

This is really terrible for them. A large part of your compensation is stocks,
and to lose that suddenly while others cash our must be extremely frustrating.
Each person should be able to cash out a percentage of their stock to be fair.

~~~
bilalhusain
I don't think this is true, I have seen tech cofounders being equally vile.
The trait is not related with what suit you wear.

