Literally every time I had a 3-4mo 80-100hour crunch it always started out with "we're going to push for a week or two" which just transitioned into "just one more week" for the next 3 months.
Also, shame for celebrating a crunch. You may have enjoyed it but there's a high likelyhood someone else went along just to not "rock the boat". I don't care who you are putting in more hours puts stress on other parts of your life.
I just don't understand how that industry has their head up their ass from top to bottom for such a long time. There's some interesting problems in that space but after my 6 years I'd never go back.
I worked for five years at early and late stage startups before transitioning to games, and I cannot recall there ever being a time when extra work was not needed to get over the finish line.
If a union ends up being the only way chronic overwork can be addressed in the industry at large, so be it. Perhaps the real solution though is a legislative one, as suggested below.
I worked at such company too. It had zero to do with need for overtime and and a lot to do with people wanting to work this way. E.g. unwillingness to prioritize, unwillingness to negotiate, wish to be seen like the one who stays late and thus finding work to stay late when not needed. Overtime is not seen as failure of organization, so the organization does not learn how to do it. People staying late are seen as heros and people managing projects so that overtime is not needed are not rewarded, so latter leave and former create culture.
To large extend, people who stay in such companies don't believe it is possible to make deadline without overtime, so they are not even trying.
Show me any project with dynamic requirements that has some sort of deadline, be it time or money running out, and I guarantee there has been some extra work at some point.
Prioritization, negotiation and saying no. Estimates large enough that they have buffers. You don't need on hour predictability. It is precisely when you have dynamic requirements when you are supposed to use tools like that.
After crunch, there are typically many bugs and convoluted code. It just adds to overall time in long term. Pretty much all studies found crunch to not be effective. It is not about achieving more.
Fuck yeah it's "just work".
I want my employees and coworkers to be happy, healthy and well actualized so that when they're at work they're focused and giving it 100%. Plenty of hard business data there shows that when you make sure someone's time outside of work is well respected they'll perform much better on the job.
Burnout and turnover can have a brutal impact on an company/organization's ability to execute, the list goes on. You're also self-selecting for a workforce that has the flexibility, which means your viewpoint is a lot less diverse.
This is the same crunch bullshit I got fed before in that industry.
What if you were a single dad?
What if you had an elder family member to take care of?
What if you were living paycheck to paycheck and had a second job to be able to make rent?
I've found some of the best teams I was on had a diverse set of people who bring their unique perspectives into the fold. Otherwise you could end up with a racist soap dispenser[1].
> What if you were a single dad? > What if you had an elder family member to take care of?
As I mentioned above, family takes priority. If your team is so immature that they feel resentful when another member can't work those two extra hours a day because their Dad is sick, you've got another set of problems.
> What if you were living paycheck to paycheck and had a second job to be able to make rent?
This is a bit of a stretch. We are limiting the scope of our discussion to workers in the game industry. If you need two jobs to make rent in this scenario, find a way to cut expenses.
I'll hazard that the answer is low, because the industry self-selects for people who are willing to take abuse for 'prestige'. They take pride in it, just the same way you did.
> This is a bit of a stretch. We are limiting the scope of our discussion to workers in the game industry.
Yes, yes we are. My first job in the industry was $35k/hr as a dev and I've seen worse salaries for design or art.
Let me pose a question to you. How would you live in Seattle, on $35k/yr in a way that one accident/major expense wouldn't put you in a situation where you're living paycheck to paycheck? Keep in mind an average 1br apartment is ~$1800/mo[1] so you're going to be well over 50% income : housing ratio.
For that reason you have people who work second jobs or have other commitments to be able to make their rent.
[1] https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/wa/se...
And $35k for a dev job? When was this, and if it was anytime even remotely recent why on earth did you accept? A new QA hire at my last job would've made more than that.
You don't live in Seattle proper if you are making $35k. Live in a suburb on the line. Don't have a car payment if you can avoid it. And to pull that income : housing ratio down get roommates. I have done this.
And frankly this is a pretty silly argument to make in a discussion around why game developers should unionize.
But crunch is normally defined as sustained overtime - articles I seen it require it to be over 6 weeks. So it is quite a lot of time.
If I wanted a predictable job that always has upfront hours, I suppose I could go back to making hourly minimum wage with zero benefits.