One Horrifying Account Of Working At Zynga

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.

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.

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.

This is blogspam. Original is here: http://www.quora.com/Zynga-Stock-Price-Collapse-Summer-2012/...

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.

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."

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

Fuck this shit. This isn't journalism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.