20 Years of Crunch Take Their Toll on a Game Developer | Hacker News Reader

20 Years of Crunch Take Their Toll on a Game Developer

steamed.kotaku.com

58 pointsmiobrien38 comments

The word 'crunch' is used so frequently in the article that the repetition becomes strangely hypnotic and the word becomes disassociated from meaning. Occassionally using 'overtime' instead might have reduced this effect ... :-)

'Overtime' is paid, crunch is not.

That's not true at all. Overtime can most definitely be unpaid, and usually is.

and couldn't crunch also be paid?

By the legal definition, sure, but in common usage the word "overtime" is usually qualified as "unpaid overtime" if that's the case.

Invoking the word "overtime" to mean "unpaid overtime," especially by young team-members, typically results in uncomfortable coughs, silence, and expectation setting from managers / senior members of the team, none of which would be necessary if, like the word "crunch," the unqualified word carried no connotation of payment. I've seen this happen many times in a number of settings so I'm pretty sure it's not just a regional quirk. Connotations are important.

No one I know specifies overtime as unpaid or paid. It is simply time that is worked over the amount normally worked, and may be paid or not.

Of my friends, I know if some of them say they worked overtime they mean unpaid, and I know if some of them say they worked overtime they're getting a fat paycheque.

Legal reference? (This is a matter of law, re engineer's compensation.)

Unless you are "Salary Exempt," in the which case overtime is not paid.

There's actually a term for that effect: "semantic satiation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation

I'm glad someone else mentioned this. So much crunch. All I could think of was that they were channeling The Mighty Boosh.

https://youtu.be/X1rCpcC_-Ps

This article felt more like an ad for his game, than it did a warning about "crunch."

This is a little misleading title.

He didn’t crunch for 20 years, but point still valid.

Just wondering how much crunch there in game dev vs startup vs FB/Goog/etc.

It depends on the startup.

If it's well run, you aren't working late every night and every weekend.

If it's run by sociopaths who want to keep their employees in a state of perpetual crisis in order to maximize the value of their shares, it's pretty awful.

I worked at EA before and at Google now.

EA got better over time (and I worked to avoid game teams where crunch was worse), but I had patches of bad crunch. My longest was 9 months of 60+ hour weeks, 6 days a week, 10+ hours a day. Outside of that, I had a couple of more intense shorter crunches. A couple of 80+ weeks.

At Google, I don't believe I have ever once worked more than 50 hours in a single week. 99% of the time, I'm right at 40. If I stay a bit later, the office looks like a ghost town by 6:30.

I worked 80 hours a week at a startup for about six months where we weren't sure we were getting paid unless we shipped to customers so we had to get things done but I was the only programmer at that time. I worked 12 months in 70+ hours a week crunch on one game project (I found documentation here https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131533/postmortem_bli...) - remember the motivation speech was we had to finish or we were all getting fired but I never felt like it was ever as hard as the startup - it was a larger team effort so I was hardly ever the one thing holding up progress. YMMV.

> six months where we weren’t sure we were getting paid unless we shipped

Don't do this unless you own significant shares

Yes, great advice, don't kill yourself unless you have skin in the game.

I remember the leads doing promo videos before the launch and they looked like zombies.

Wondering how he can blame this crunch time for all of these ailments. Maybe he ignored everything but why does his foot hurt and go out? Back related?

> Maybe he ignored everything but why does his foot hurt and go out? Back related?

Yeah, being sedentary for long periods of time can mess up your back, which can in turn cause peripheral neuropathy because all of your nerves go through the spine too.

I'd get a Captain Crunch tattoo if I were this guy.

People have nobody to blame but themselves for working crazy hours, in an in-demand role.

Engineering talent is in such high demand, the only reason anyone would work a death march is masochism. I mean, we get paid 5x the average US salary. We make enough to retire in our thirties. Working stupid hours in this environment is a choice.

Engineers are retiring in their 30s? I can honestly say that I have never met a person that did this. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. What's the secret?

e: engineers, not people in general.

https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ (See sidebar for lots of links)

30s is a bit aggressive, tho ;)

The comment I replied to made it sound like engineers are commonly retiring in their 30s. I have never seen an example of that happening personally.

Yup. GP is definitely exaggerating how likely it is, although his larger point that in this era, working in the game industry is an explicit choice, because there lots of other options out there for devs, that point still stands IMHO!

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

It's not common but the math behind it is solid. You just have to not live like most other people do.

Simply put, if you save half of your take home, your passive income will approach your living expenses in roughly 10-15 years. And that even with a conservative draw of 3%, you can start to live off that money without touching your principle. There are a lot of assumptions about inflation and not getting stuck in a long bear market, but it's still a fairly solid way to look at how our spending keeps us tied to our work. The really big takeaway from MMM (who lately has been seeming more and more out of touch sadly), is that every dollar you remove from your budget works double, in that it helps you grow savings, but also decreases the amount of costs interest you need to live on.

Compound interest is something that more people should really understand.

Reread. I said "we make enough to" do so. If you live like an average person and invest the rest, you absolutely can retire in your thirties.

My point is that we are one of the few professions where there is NO reason to work ourselves to death. We are in a position to insist on good working conditions or to stop working entirely IF we so choose to do so.

That the case broadly in tech but in gamedev not crunching gets you marked as not a team player and eventually pointed to the door.

Which door? The one with more money and less hours?

If you work in a big tech tech company and let the RSUs actually vest with a bit if financial frugality and saving, then you could. This is, of course, assuming that you don't intent to stay in an area of high cost of living.

The only reason to live in a place with a high cost of living is if you have a high income job nearby. Literally the entire rest of world is left to you in perpetuity if you saving up $1-2MM.

I'm pretty close. Invest well and create passive income/royalties.

You would be shocked at the passive income you can have in your 30s if you actually get to keep some of the stuff you build.

¿Where is this magical world where you study up to your twenties and retire at your 30s?

That guy is not an engineer, judging by his credits[1]. I strongly doubt producers and QA testers (it's not some fancy script-writing SDET, it's a "play the game in different ways and try to find bugs" tester) are in such a high demand as to demand no overtime (which they are paid for, btw).

[1] http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,97...

It makes sense. We spend our days making sure the machines are running properly enough to keep us entertained, fed, or traveling. The clerical lifestyle is phasing out our bodies.

Use it or lose it.

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