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Comment by ernesto905 | Hacker News Reader

> An end to crunch

I was unaware of the crunch concept:

"In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours" -- wikipedia

Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.

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It's been an issue in the game industry for decades, and yes, crunch is predatory. It's exploiting the passion people have for making games to make them commit to burnout-inducing working conditions. Some game companies have taken steps to improve their working culture, but based on what I've read I get the impression it's still a big problem.

At the last game company I worked for (decades ago now) the pay was at best average, and crunch time lasted for at least several months each year, every year (title had an annual release schedule). AFAICT this was both expected and considered normal by my coworkers.

And that’s why it was the last game company I ever worked for.

Crunch is good for maximizing shareholder value though. Which is the job of the developers. If they don’t like it they can simply not accept the contract and perish.

Definitely flying too close to Poe's law for some.

It's surprising how Wild West it gets out there. In the EU that would strictly fall into unlawful working conditions; I kid you not, in Spain the law doesn't allow to work overtime for more than 80 total hours per year.

I worked in the games industry from 2000 to 2010 in the UK... We very much did crunch.

I remember it was very common when the UK was in the EU to have employers get you to opt-out from the European Time Directive.

How? Because if there is any negative consequence to not opting out, that’s illegal.

And if you believe that nobody in Spain breaks that law I have a bridge to sell you.

I just didn't want to get into that angle in my comment. Of course there is widespread abuse. But precisely, having this practice explicitly ruled out makes a huge difference and allows calling it "abuse" instead of "just another Tuesday", which is the stepping stone on being able to defend against it.

I'm just a regular web dev outside the gaming industry, but crunch is a concept that's occasionally present in any project work; I'm sure many HN readers are familiar with it from their own work too.

When you have a deadline to meet, sometimes you need to go into crunch mode to get things done. Of course the crunch mode should last no more than a week or maybe two, otherwise you risk burning out. After crunch mode there should be a slow period where you take some time off or work on something not urgent at all.

yes but the compensation part is the problem

An 80h week should not be compensated the same as two 40h weeks

Actually, one hour of overtime should cost twice as much, if not more. When I worked on movie sets, hour 1-8 was ordinary pay. Hour 8-12 was 1/5 of the daily pay an hour, hour 12-15 1/3 of daily pay an hour and so on. This forced production companies to front load effort on planning.

In the case of crunch in the video game industry, an 80 hour week is compensated the same as one 40 hour week

I'm interested in this when people talk about low pay.

In the UK if you are low waged, paid for 40 hours, asked to work another 40 hours for free... your pay test for minimum wage compliance is total pay divided by total hours worked. If this puts you under minimum wage, then the company is paying you illegally

When I worked for EA (2015-2019) it was better than some horror stories I've heard, but still way too much overtime and many weekends spent at the office. The worst part that it was unpaid in exchange for an extra vacation week and then they had the gall to ask us to please not take our vacation because "don't you care about the game?".

Since then I've worked at Thunderful and now 505 Games. I haven't done overtime since I quit EA and I've been very efficient because I'm not too tired and I get peace of mind working from home.

who is in hn these days, remember like 10/15 years ago everyone was just willingly working 65+ hours. now it's "extremely predatory".

It is extremely predatory. Perhaps if you're a company founder you can try to glamourise this level of personal sacrifice, but for standard employees it's clearly an unhealthy level of work, and would have been seen so by most normal people 10/15 years ago too. Also, nobody is going to do their best work when they're having to work so many hours, it's highly likely you're not getting a lot of good work done if you push yourself that hard.

Imo it's fine to glorify the 65+ hour grind a founder takes on. The issue is trying to apply that logic to normal employees. The calculation of time v payoff is worlds different

Yeah you can't expect employees who maybe have a 0.1% stake in the company if they're lucky, to put in 65h+ a week.

> Imo it's fine to glorify the 65+ hour grind a founder takes on.

While you're right that it's easier to try to justify this level of work for founders, the reality is that this level of work is not sustainable by anybody, and founders would risk damaging their physical and mental health and reducing the quality of their work the longer this went on just as much as anyone else.

I'd also argue that it's largely unnecessary. There may be some periods of time when there are too many competing demands on your time and you just have to accept extended working hours to get through a week or two or even a month, but more often than not this situation comes about due to poor planning and/or poor working processes. Effective delegation and automation can greatly reduce the likelihood of having to work 65+ hour weeks, even for founders.

"Willingly" is basically just peer/manager pressure. "Everyone else is doing it, why aren't you?" "Do you want to be the reason we fail to meet our deadline?" My experience in tech outside of video games is that although there's an offer letter with terms and a bunch of stuff like signing invention agreements and non-compete clauses, it's also pretty much always "at-will" on both sides without any sort of contract. The actual job is basically just "do what we ask", with the conditions that each side is wiling to ask for or tolerate being a game of chicken (that tends to favor the employer, since most employees can't survive without a paycheck/health insurance, but an individual employee is likely expendable for the company as a whole).

I got nothing out of working like that 10/15 years ago but my employers certainly did.

I may have thought it was cool and in line with my passion and desire to learn and ship cool things, but I was plainly taken advantage of. I’m willing to admit I was naive.

Glorifying this type of abuse needs to be called out.

Every human gets only ~16 waking hours a day to live their lives, it is absolutely immoral to sign a contract to pay somebody for literally half of this time, and then pressuring them into giving up even more of their life on top of that. Especially when using threats of revoking the original contract if they don’t comply, and/or not offering any additional compensation.

> remember like 10/15 years ago everyone was just willingly working 65+ hours

> saltyoldman

I wonder how you've gotten so salty... those working hours wouldn't be a factor, would they?

Smoking cigarettes, heart attacks, not knowing your children, those were the days /s

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