Hacker News Reader

Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

The critiques I've seen of crunch mode always seem to assume that it's a normal state of affairs, and thus leads inexorably to burnout. We'll have maybe one or two weeks of crunch every quarter or so when we have a major release that everyone needs to coordinate on and no one wants to be blamed for holding up. For those one or two weeks out of twelve, we'll work sixty or maybe seventy hours. It's absolutely effective, and while I've felt tired at the end of it I've never felt burned out. It's also offset by having very relaxed working hours the rest of the time.

I get that some firms see the productivity boost that happens during crunch mode and try to make that the new normal, but is this even that common? Do most firms not do as mine does and just crunch when you need to and have normal hours the rest of the time?

View on HN

It is quite common in games, and this article is from the perspective of games. Crunch for one or two weeks certainly can be effective, even if a little tiring, but in the games industry a crunch of three months is in many places a short, light crunch. It could be hard to understand a critique on crunch if you haven't experienced a bad one, but really try to imagine eighty hours a week for six straight months. That might not be common in general, but it is happening in games companies, and I've been through more than one. After you've done that a few times, honestly, its hard to hear someone talk about a one or two week "crunch" and take it seriously. I don't mean that to be demeaning or belittling, my point is that it can be hard from any side to see the other side's point of view. Crunch times in games, among other industries, are sometimes really, really awful and take away very significant amounts of time from people's lives and families.

is this even that common?

Common enough for people to talk about it. In some industries (especially games) it's become the norm. It requires mature management-employee relations and not short term profit maximisation.

No offense, but if your company's crunch time is so predictable, there must be a mistake in your scheduling. I've worked at companies where there is literally no crunch time, ever.

I used to work for a major game company on a major title that had a new release each year around the same time of year. Every year, for approximately 3-4 months prior the release of the game, the team would work 10-12 hours per day, 6-7 days per week. As far as I could tell, no one else considered this unusual.

I, too, worked for EA on sports titles.

Superman Returns was worse: 9 months of 60+ hour, 6 days a week crunch.

Did you see a super huge payback on those hours or was it just life force draining from your shell?

Well, the game tanked, we didn't get huge bonuses and next to no comp time so... mostly just drained life force.

It was a technically challenging project, though, and I learned a lot on it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com