Hacker News Reader

Comment by dailyvijeos | Hacker News Reader

New grads need to realize $100k/yr gross (~$70k net) at 100 hr/wk is ~ $13.50/hr net. So either get a better comp. package or refuse to work like a slave.

View on HN

Most new grads (or employees in general) are NOT working 100 hrs a week, even in startups.

Anecdote, but I currently work ~40 hours at a startup during holidays as an undergrad.

Who the hell works 100 hours a week? 14 hours a day, every day of the week?

* lowers head in shame

Actually maybe only 80. Foundin is hard.

Most of the gamedev industry for starters. Did many 80-90hr weeks for 3+ month periods.

Back when I was making 35k/yr in Seattle I did the math and could have doubled my take-home working a min-wage job at the hours I was putting in.

I've done 80 sustained for long periods multiple times (3mos - 9mos), in both film and games, over two decades. In my experience, more than 80 is quite rare in both industries, and less than half ever get above 70. There simply isn't much time left to do more for any length of time. At 80 hours/wk, you eat, sleep, and work, and that's it. More than 80 and you're cutting into sleep. One guy I know pulled over 100 for a couple months, but we was definitely sleeping inhumanly low amounts, and was taking prescription drugs to stay awake.

The last game studio I worked at measured actual work hours and noted a significant discrepancy between what people thought they worked and what they actually worked. A lot of people over-estimate their load during crunch. Maybe they factor in commutes, maybe they just over-estimate, but a lot of people that though they worked 80 were only in the building for ~60-65. Some people who thought (or at least said) they were pulling 45-50 were actually working 35. Maybe the mental stress of crunch adds phantom hours.

I consider commuting as part of my working hours. If I'm driving to a client, it is billable time, if I'm using public transit it is a reimbursed fare plus I do work on the train/bus for them or another client (so it's billable). Commuting especially in heavily congested cities should be calculated as part of your "work hours". If not to increase your pay, so you know what your hourly rate actually is.

That is great if you can bill for or otherwise count your commute hours. In film and games, that is sadly not the case for any studio I've ever seen. Work hours are usually defined as being physically in the building working on the production. In some studios, lunch is even deducted. If your commute is an hour each way on top of an 80 hour work week, it just means you're away from home 90+ hours per week. I've done this, and it really sucks, there is zero time for family life, social life, exercise or hobbies during the crunch. Even before we get to niceties like everyone counting commutes as working hours in dense cities, it would be great if we could get rid of crunch times altogether.

When I worked at Yahoo years ago many people told me about how they worked long hours. It was some sort of point of pride. In reality, most of these people worked normal days or close to it. They’d work til 7-8pm every night but they never showed up before 10-11am. With lunch thrown in, that’s just 8 hours.

People overestimate their hours when they work places that treat long hours as a sign of commitment or productivity. When the culture expects long hours, people fake long hours.

Yeah, it's easy to inflate. In this case I lived a few blocks from the studio(and was tracking my hours since I was accused for 'skimping' because I came in at 8am instead of 12-2pm).

Either way crunch has no place but that industry has so many wide-eyed people clamoring to get in that I don't see it ever changing.

Bullshit. 80 hours a week is at least plausible. Working 100, no fucking way. That's 9am - 11:15pm actually physically inside the office EVERY SINGLE DAY OF YOUR LIFE. There is no way "most" of the gamedev industry do that.

Who said you have to be inside the office? It's totally plausible to work remotely. Reading your emails is working.

Who about on call? You can be called repeatedly in the middle of the night, every night.

I've seen people being abused to work on days, nights and week end. It's doable.

Yup, that sound about right, I'd get in at 8am, go home at 5pm for ~30 minute dinner with my wife(then GF, I don't deserve her for sticking it through with me) and then back to the office till 10-12pm.

Got a ton of shit for it too because everyone else usually rolled in at 12-2pm and stayed till 2-3am so the time I worked from 8-12 wasn't noticed and I got called out for leaving "early" at 11pm.

Got into a huge fight with one of our content guys over it which was one of the catalysts for leaving that industry. That along with blowing a red light next to my place 2 times when I realized that job was literally going to kill me.

FWIW the previous gig was pretty similar.

That's not even half of the crazy war stories I have from that industry. I'm always happy to talk to engineers who are interested so I can tell them to stay the fuck away(or learn how to put proper boundaries on working hours, which will get you passed over on career progression).

Oh man, you're bringing back memories I had stuffed away. I had similar resentment stories, and everyone did. It's insane to work unpaid extra hours and have people bickering over who's putting in more or less than others.

Once I started managing, I found it extremely difficult to avoid discounting the people "only" working 55 hours rather than the guys who pulled 65. People with kids on my team putting in an extra 3 hours each and every weekday for years, and the company/environment/industry made it seem like slacking.

I more or less missed the first year of one of my kids over a long crunch. Here's to the wives we didn't deserve to keep!

For about 3 weeks of crunch time before shipping our Sony PlayStation title, I brought a cot and sleeping bag to my cube and basically lived in the office, going home about once a week for laundry reload. I'm proud that we shipped on time, but working like that is completely in the past for me, now with kids, a wife, and a non-gamedev job.

Except that's absolutely the truth. When you're getting close to launch and crunching to meet the deadlines, you basically live in the office. Game dev is a total meat grinder, there's always two eager fresh newbies that want to make games for every dev seat available. This isn't even an industry secret, it's pretty well known and people still want to be game devs, it's insane to me.

engineers at amazon do, the ones who have stockholms syndrom.

I worked at Amazon for two years doing typical 40 hour weeks.

I’ve done this in crunch periods but it’s obviously unsustainable. I recently sustained that pattern for two weeks to deliver a big chunk of work to a deadline. Then I took a holiday.

As a younger person I routinely put in 36h of continuous work. Can’t do that no more.

Some of us actually prefer to sprint then rest.

I had an interview recently where the founder asked me if I was ready to work 100 hours a week on an ongoing basis.

I laughed.

Yeah I think I’d start with 100hr/wk being absurd. I’ve worked at startups and 50 was an unusually high number of hours for a given week.

I'm a new grad. My comp package is a -bit- cushier than that at 40 hrs/wk

I'd laugh in the face of anyone who asked me to work more than 40 hours for more than 2 weeks a quarter.

Almost nobody is working 100 or even 80 hours a week.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com