Pachter To Overworked Devs: 'Find Another Profession' | Hacker News Reader

Pachter To Overworked Devs: 'Find Another Profession'

industrygamers.com

34 pointsevo_953 comments

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.

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.)

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/108/1086448p1.html

Their work agreements didn't allow it, but Activision cheated them out of their bonuses anyways.

That's what lawsuits are for. Contracts can't always make people do what they should, but a good contract will mean you have grounds for legal action if necessary.

I'm pretty sure they are suing them, but it still means they won't see the money for 3-10 years.

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.

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

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.

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

One possibility: If the employee is fired other than for cause (crime, fraud, etc.), then the employer will pay the employee a pro-rated bonus at the same time other employees get their bonuses.

This is sometimes negotiated in executive employment agreements, but I can't say I've seen it in rank-and-file agreements.

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!"

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

"Crunch is the unavoidable result of poor project management."

Unless it's the result of on purpose project management. I suppose some companies would see a pretty good deal in paying people for three months to get five months worth of work.

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.

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

The problem with the game business is that so many young developers see it as a glamorous industry that, unlike most other dev specialties, there's more supply than demand. Employed game devs are reluctant to make too many waves because they know they can be replaced. This is why salaries are low and hours long.

I can't say I miss working in that industry much myself.

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

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.

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.

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.

The game industry was always like this. My best friend from high school worked at a game company circa 1990. One year as deadlines approached the company actually rented hotel rooms for the developers for a few weeks so they could code all their waking hours without distractions. Distractions, you know, like family, friends, hobbies, exercise, healthy food...

> 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.

I wonder: if Google decided to get into the video game business, would it fall into the game studio trap?

I'm not really sure what the answer is myself. For what it's worth, when I was at Microsoft, I heard no horror stories about overwork at MGS. However, any such stories would be second-hand at best because I never interacted with any MGS people.

Extremely shitty planning. Your 4 devs working 20 hour days for months? Hire more devs! Can't find devs to work shitty hours? Pay more!

Hiring more devs is often not the answer. Setting realistic schedules is.

When your _this_ low on staff, no amount of scheduling is going to make Johnny 80/hrs a week work any better for the next two years...

Of course not. Johnny's productivity is going to be severely affected by a few months of 80 hrs/wk. If you don't have enough staff to do what you want in however long, you have to take longer, or hire more people.

But I wasn't referring to that situation. For a given project, there's an optimal team size. Adding people to that team can often reduce the productivity of the team as a whole. There's a limit at which you just can't get the project done any sooner. In that case you need to set a realistic schedule given these limitations.

Reminds me of The Mythical Man Month (book): "Adding more programmers to an already-late project will result in the project becoming even later"

Isn't there research to the effect that making employees work more than 40 hours per week ultimately lowers productivity?

I've heard of a two-year crunch. Never participated in it, though.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Here's an article (reg required sorry try bugmenot) that offers developer emails and a lot of behind the scenes details about how awful the situation was at Team Bondi.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-07-05-revealed-th...

He's defending Team Bondi because he's a financial analyst who doesn't actually know much about game development. From a purely monetary perspective, crunch is great, because:

Employees produce more under crunch. Their productivity per hour is lower, but you're still going to get more out of them.

You can hit deadlines more aggressively if you crunch, so you end up paying less salary and benefits since you can fire the team once they're done.

Crunch enables you to hit unrealistic deadlines, so you can avoid investing energy into proper planning and skip hiring competent managers/producers.

Crunch causes developers to leave of their own volition to get away from it, so you don't have to worry about wrongful termination lawsuits, etc.

The developers who do stay, you can easily fire once crunch time has burned them out, and replace with new developers. There's a near-infinite supply of gullible developers who are desperate to 'break into' the game industry, and they'll accept awful pay and work conditions.

The mindset espoused by Pachter and Team Bondi is the 'slash and burn development' people have complained about ( http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35985/Develop_WB_Games_Fr... ). It's singlehandedly responsible for destroying careers, families, and companies.

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.

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...

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

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".

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).

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.

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.

I think it's also because people really want to be in the game business.

It's not quite the same, but when I worked at a porn company most of the non-programmers and non-essential production people got paid really low wages because a) there are a lot of parties and other perks you wouldn't get at most "normal" jobs (such as being able to say you work at a porn studio), and b) most of the non-programmers and non-essential production people see no way that they'd be able to get a job elsewhere after working at a porn company.

The senior programmers and top production people got paid very nicely, though.

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.

>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.

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?

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