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Comment by harrygallagher4 | Hacker News Reader

My first programming job (actually, just my first job) was technically a 40 hour/week job, but in the employee handbook it said something along the lines of: "The <company name> day is typically regarded as 8AM to 8PM." They didn't pay very well either. Brian is right, I totally hated my job, hated my boss, hated pretty much the entire company, and quit in 5 months. I was pretty disappointed. I'm still cautious about getting back into the industry. I'm at school now, not studying anything CS related.

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> "The <company name> day is typically regarded as 8AM to 8PM."

correct me if I'm wrong, but usually such statement means that you can choose your own 8 hour timeframe to work. So you can work 08 AM - 4 PM, or 11AM - 7 PM, or whatever. It is not expressing expectation of 12h workday.

That's how I would take that too. It sounds like it's okay to come in at 11 as long as I work until at least 7 pm.

They definitely meant 12 hour days. I got there at 9 and left at 6:30 for the first few days (I hadn't read the handbook) and got an email from my boss about "leaving early"

> "The <company name> day is typically regarded as 8AM to 8PM."

Did the building have nets under the windows?

That's pretty SOP for the video game industry: low wages and insane work hours.

No it's not. Infrequent "crunch time" is the norm in the video game industry, with regular hours outside of crunch time (if you're lucky enough to be employed at that time).

Standard expectations of 12 hour days is most certainly not the norm.

I don't want to misread "if you're lucky enough to be employed at that time"; are you saying that the games industry now hires labour for crunch time and then fires everyone afterwards?

The games industry has had a poor reputation for a long time but I don't want to unfairly interpret people if things are better these days.

That's how I read it. Clarify OP?

As a game moves toward completion they will hire up. As deadlines start coming up (e.g. milestones negotiated with publishers) you'll experience crunch times. When the game finally is released, they have a swollen staff that they don't need anymore as they transition into the planning/exploratory phases of the next game. They absolutely lay people off at that time.

This has been the case for a long time and is no secret.

It was the first floor! No need for any nets.

That sounds horrible. I'm still at university anyway, but it seems to me that there should be a mechanism for detecting these companies and shutting them down, if they don't recover. I sincerely hope you'll find a job (industry, academia or otherwise) doing something you like doing in a place that you like. Good luck!

Let's be clear. By "shutting them down", you mean legally prohibiting anyone from voluntarily agreeing to work differently than one university student (who doesn't even work there) would prefer, am I right?

What should be the penalty for those who try to do it anyway?

Because "voluntary" is only just that as long as you have many other options and can easily get away from such a place. In most industries that kind of job security/market fluidity that just isn't the case. Workplace standards are there to protect workers from being exploited. In much of Western Europe the work week is standardized to 40h/w.You can work overtime, but only within certain boundaries for shorter and longer aggregated periods to avoid every day being crunch time.

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