Rockstar Employees Badly Overworked, Say Wives 633
juicegg writes "Wives of Rockstar Games employees in San Diego recently published an open letter on their Gamasutra blog. The authors say that Rockstar employees are seriously strained by unending crunch periods of 12-hour work days and 6-day weeks. High levels of stress are leading to serious psychological and physical problems for some of the employees. They charge that studio management uses arbitrary, deceptive and manipulative practices to get employees to work more unpaid overtime hours at greater intensity — despite over $1 billion in Grand Theft Auto revenue. Among the blog comments, some current and past Rockstar employees are confirming problems with the studio. 'Ex Rocker' writes: 'What makes R* crunch periods different then any other studio is that they tell you the game has to be finished in 6 months, so let's start our final push to get this awesome game out there! 6 months turns into 1 year, 1 year turns into 2.' Other comments reveal worker hopelessness and general mismanagement at the San Diego studio. This turmoil is affecting development on upcoming games as well."
Read on for responses from Rockstar itself and other members of the industry.
An anonymous reader adds, "Everyone is talking about the fact Rockstar Games has addressed the accusations that it has forced developers at Rockstar San Diego into unpaid overtime to finish imminent titles. But I've noticed that a former GTA3/Manhunt designer (Chris Kruger) has a comment in this piece published Thursday about crunch in studios, suggesting the problem goes beyond Rockstar San Diego and is company-wide.He says in Develop's Jury-style debate that the damage caused by excessive overtime can upend the out-of-work relationships developers have: 'Crunch is totally damaging, but much more so to the individuals involved. An almost failed marriage in my case. To the company the cost of crunch is very hard to define but any benefit at all is easy to measure. That's why it's such an easy decision to make for most companies. Unless there is a push back and the cost is made clear, it won't change. In my view self regulation doesn't work, and the only real solution is external regulation or utter agreement from the vast majority of staff on how to approach the matter.'
There's no easy way around the topic, but crunch is clearly damaging. When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?"
cry me a river... (Score:1, Insightful)
Once game development is a boring or uncool as say, J2EE or cobol development, the sweatshop reputation may fade. Until then, good luck.
It's not like these people couldn't get another job, say, writing insurance software or something if the hours were *really* a problem.
Welcome to Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The only option is for employees to show that it will cost them in the long run through turnover and training new employees.
Alternately, unionization or government regulation are the only other options.
programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
> When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?
The day that programmers stop being yes-men and saying to their managers they can do it. I've been with EA 5 years. I know the drill. Once your team wises up and only signs up for what it can deliver, the crunch goes away.
Step 1: Be upfront and straightforward. Don't promise what you can't deliver.
Step 2: Dont' work more than 40 hours. Just leave after that.
Step 3: Profit.
Let's try this again ... (Score:4, Insightful)
He could be describing Electronic Arts. Look, the game industry has been run this way for the better part of thirty years. I worked as a coder for a couple of game companies back in the mid-eighties
Jam up your development staff the way these outfits do, and you get poor quality code. It is inevitable, Mr. Anderson. The usual chain of events involves increased QA costs, continual rework, missed deadlines and lost customers. Yet they persist in this obviously defective approach, which to me indicates that upper management is hiring sadists to run their development teams.
Re:Rockstar is the evildoer in this situation, but (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason EA and Rockstar take young 20 year olds just out of school, and expect them to be gone by 30. Kids buy into the myth of 'work hard, play hard', don't know what quality of life is, and haven't yet had a shitty work experience to stand up for themselves.
Not that I'm a cynic but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having worked 28 some years in the semiconductor industry grinding out chips for PC's the story sounds SOOOooooo familiar.
"It's just this time...honest....just give up your entire personal life.... your wife and kids will love you for it cause we are just going to rain cash and kudo's on you"
Fast forward 2 years later...
"Ok, so my wife left me, my kids hate me and now your telling me my bonus went to the CEO and his butt buddies on the board because they needed something to light their cigars with and now your laying me off because we missed the market because you couldn't make up your friggin mind what you wanted and we all killed ourselves for you for nothing? Do I understand this right?"
Sux don't it?
I feel fortunate to have stashed just enough away to moon them all Ace Ventura style and walk away. Those in this kind of mess really have to ask themselves what is REALLY important. Those that run places like this which is 90% of corporate business these days don't give a rat's ass about you. Employees are an expense to be reduced not an asset to be valued. Think you are not replaceable. Put you hand into a bucket of water and pull it out and see how fast that hole fills up. That is the reality. If you really like that work more than life itself, then that is what you should do but if not..... you might just want to look around.
Project management... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'd suggest crunches are a symptom of bad project management, but there is apparently no project management in the first place. So it's simply incompetent, panic-driven management. Industry-standard, really.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, most developers are too brainwashed | chickenshit | dysfunctional to unionize. "Oh, but our job is different." "We're not blue-collar workers!" "We'd lose our independence!"
There, fixed it for you.
There's nothing stopping workers from unionizing except themselves.
Re:Rockstar is the evildoer in this situation, but (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's not necessarily just it. It's actually the same reason the don't become application developers as you mentioned: they love games. Absolutely LOVE them. They live by them, they breathe by them. Game developers are a special breed... game development is complicated in and of itself, when compared to just regular application development. It takes dedicated, hard-working people under an enormous amount of stress to bring a title to fruition.
And many developers, regardless of workforce pressures, will continue to work for a studio because that's how much they love games.
There are a few articles on this written by some ex game devs who lost/came close to losing their marriages/home life/etc because of stuff that EA was doing. I can't find a link to them so if someone can it may help to understand the point-of-view of many game devs.
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value.
Hear hear! For all the "Management Science" out there, what actually does work? The Waterfall method is hugely limited in software development, and upper management without a clear view is crippling. I was once part of a project where six teams had each developed their own printer drivers for their modules because management neither thought of it or noticed the duplication. Team isolation prevented sharing as well, so six freshly re-invented wheels.
What is it they are crunching on anyway? Did somebody's new skin break the display engine? Did fixing a wall error crump edge detection or LOS calculations? Did a weapons tweak make the ballistics engine puke? Was there a pent-up demand for crawling ants lighting on a display instead of just a glow? Where are the edges of accountability for these things, and which manager is (not) paying for their miscues?
Granted, starting with a well behaved engine or other project module is always going to be risky when you push it to do new or different things. The upper echelons should be aware of this in their design plans. But flogging the oarsmen when you're completely off course is the wrong way to go -- fix the navigator!
Organize stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
When people are overworked to the point of collapsing, when you put in 80 hour weeks and still can't feed yourself properly. When your boss does his best to make you feel small, you organize.
The conditions these jerk offs are working under are 1 million times better than anything industrial works get. They are being greedy little shits themselves. If they weren't so greedy, they would all just walk out. They would organize. They however, won't do that. They want that shiny car, they want that big house in the burbs, the big fucking tv, the 2.5 kids. They expect it all, and nobody has the heart to tell them, that just isn't how it is.
Simple solution you dolts. Don't like the work ethic of your employer, find a new one! They are treating you that way because you LET them treat you that way! If they ask you to work for free, tell them fuck no. You certainly wouldn't see a machinist, a welder, or any skilled tradesmen work a single minute for free. Our services are valuable, we know that, and if you won't pay for it, we'll go someplace that will. You all have the same option, and it's only your own greed that keeps you working like a dog. I do not feel sorry for these wives or their husbands, neither should you.
Re:programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
That not only applies to game development. That applies everywhere. Don't promise deadlines that you can't comfortably achieve.
I've been pushed to give impractical goals. I can't even count the number of times that I've been thrown an idea (not a plan), and been pushed for a deadline. "Will this be done in a month?" You simply can't give an answer to that. One job, it was with some unusual hardware. The pieces slowly rolled in, and each one presented it's own set of problems that set my personal timeline back. I keep my own personal set of expectations, but I won't promise these as a real life timeline. The expected timeline is usually 3x as long, with a list of caveats attached. If everything goes smooth, great. It'll be finished in 1/3 the promised time. If it doesn't? Well, you should have enough room to work in (hopefully). Sometimes a hard problem becomes an impossible one. A recent one involved a hardware fault, and the vendor reproduced it, but wasn't able to solve it. That required going another route, which pushed that step back to the beginning.
You have to work what is practical for you. If you can do 50 hours/week, do it. If you may want to actually have a social life and not get burnt out before you're 30, do the 40 hours and go home. Unfortunately, this can give the sign that you aren't willing to work hard enough.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't have to unionize to fix this problem. You just have to quit and go somewhere else if the terms are not acceptable to you. Obviously plenty of IT shops are not like that. The one I work for is not, for example. There are occasional crunch periods, generally not more than 2 or 3 weeks each year. I also don't make the rockstar salaries, but I consider my pay to be completely fair for the job I'm employed to do. If I didn't, why on earth would I work there, when there are thousands of other choices?
Look, it's a two way street. I'm offering a job, you want a job: if we agree on the terms, great! If not, great too - we each go our separate ways. Nobody is *making* you take my offer, and nobody is *making* me take yours. We're both free to enter or not enter into some agreement, and we're both free to leave it at any time. That's how the true value of labor is determined: based on where the supply and demand curves intersect.
Re:Welcome to Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Advocating unions or government regulation makes you sounds like a socialist.
Oh god, anything but that! The horror! Way to buy into the buzzword of the day.
When companies demonstrate they can treat workers with respect (which includes reasonable working days), I will stop bashing on the corporate model. Many corporations, however, fail to latch onto the fact that by respecting their employees will do more in the long run than treating them like shit and causing a huge turnover rate, forcing them to pay money for training on new workers.
Yes, I am aware that a company's sole purpose is to return as large a profit as possible within the bounds of law to the shareholders; however, this doesn't preclude the ability for companies to treat their workers like human beings for once, and that means paying them a living wage along with a few benefits. If they can't do this, then as far as I'm concerned they shouldn't be in the fucking business. Shareholders need to demand more from their companies instead of whining about their own pockets which are probably lined with enough Benjamins as it is already.
Exactly. Where is the Digital Developers Guild? (Score:1, Insightful)
I was about to say the same thing. If not the Animation Guild (which may not have relevance for programmers, for example), perhaps another union should be set up for the gaming industry. The movie and television industries have unions for various facets of production:
DGA - directors
WGA - writers
IATSE- production people
Teamsters-- transportation
AFTRA -- news, radio, sports and weather; variety shows, etc..
SAG -- screen actors
MPEG -- (the other one) Motion Picture Editor's Guild
etc.
After that EA letter floated around a few years back, I thought surely a union was going to result, but apparently not. People always say "well everyone wants to work for the gaming industry, they'll just replace you with someone else"... really? And people don't want to be movie directors and actors
The gaming industry is not in its infancy any more. It makes more $ than the movie industry. Modern Warfare 2 made what, a billion dollars? About what Avatar is making?
I know there's been an anti-union trend over the last few decades, but there's a Democrat in the white house now. The fact that this industry isn't unionized yet is confusing to me. What's going on? Are developers just a bunch of nerdy pushovers? Do they believe threats about moving jobs overseas? Are they by nature independent and/or competitive and the idea of working together just not in their nature? You could say the same about Hollywood...
so why is Rockstar losing money? (Score:3, Insightful)
Take Two the parent company is losing money for 2009. a lot of money. revenues are down and there is a big loss for the year. and the company is burning a lot of cash. at the current burn rate there is a good chance of Chapter 11 in 2010.
Re:Easy problem to solve (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, are you an idiot? Hourly paid employees do have rights. The DOJ cares about them. Do you work at Walmart?
"Exempt" employees are deemed "management" and therefore have to "do what it takes" to get the job done. This is typical for software developers, but most office workers too. If the exempt employee doesn't like the conditions, it is up the him/her to solve the problem - talk to your boss, figure out comp time (usually illegal), work out a bonus structure that doubles your salary on completion, or quit.
It really is that simple. The DOJ doesn't care.
When I left "employee" and became a contractor, my client implied that I should work more hours than I billed. I raised my rates and still billed every hour. I was hoping they would fire me, but they didn't. When that contract was up, I raised my rates for the new contract, they paid it, so I guess I was worth it. I hardly ever worked/billed more than 45 hours a week. For a few weeks, during "crunch time", I would work and bill 60 hours, but never more than twice a year. After crunch, I took a 2 week vacation.
Finally, after 10 years of raising my rates, they demanded I become an employee or my contract wouldn't be renewed. I left. Thanks for all the "f0ck you money, guys!"
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, of course there's a lot of bad managers out there (see Sturgeon's Law) but there are also very good ones. The same is, naturally, true of unions, except that unions are far harder to remove if they turn bad than managers are.
Assuming the top leadership of the company is sane, of course, and if it isn't, you have bigger problems on your hands anyway.
Re:Rockstar is the evildoer in this situation, but (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to think like that and stayed with Oracle much too long putting up with management's BS. Now I work for Google for a few months and couldn't be happier. Google is hiring developers aggressively "in this economic climate". Opportunities are there, you just need to look for them.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:5, Insightful)
You find another job? You make it sound so easy!
The auto-workers can do the same thing. They can just "find another job", and it's so easy anyone can do it!
Unions have a place, but they too can become a monopoly. Would you be OK with joining a union as long as there were multiple programming unions, competing in how they represented employees and negotiated contracts? IMO, Unions should be subject to the same anti-trust laws that corporations are. There's too little competition.
Steven Levy reported the changeover in "Hackers" (Score:5, Insightful)
Required reading for the Period It All Changed is Steven Levy's book "Hackers". He focused on Sierra On-Line, which started off programming Apple ][ games in assembler, with founder Ken Williams as programmer/guru to houseloads of teenage programmers that were making up to a quarter-mill a year (in 1983 dollars) for inventing Frogger and the like, because Williams gave percentages of what the game made to the developers.
This changed at remarkable speed to a market where the owners of capital got everything but "what the traffic will bear" in terms of how little programmers would work for.
And young people doing something that gives them a buzz (and, let's face it, fellow addicts, writing an elegant algorithm, solving a knotty problem, producing a slick-looking result on-screen, especially in a problem area where the output is intensely visual...there's no buzz like it) will work for pretty much nothing.
And, no, my "owners of capital" term isn't the start of some socialist screed. The critics are right: the workers can just walk away any time they come to their senses. The profit split may resemble a 19th-century company town by a coal mine, but "Labour" here isn't some hapless bunch of illiterates with no options; they just have to accept that they're being "paid" in buzz, and any time they want to switch over to money, they can go program payroll systems.
There's some buzz there, too, believe it or not, you find elegant algorithms, and user interfaces that match the human intuition and expectations hand-in-glove, in lots of places. And you're home by six, good paycheque warm in your pocket.
There are satisfactions, too, in being part of actually building the Real World, not just amusing people with fantasy ones.
Re:Welcome to Capitalism (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, seeing as how the government and unions here rape things until they die bleeding from the ass. Can't speak for any other country. You need to look at cases individually. Anyone who only says "unions are good" or "unions are bad" is a fuckhead ideologue of the sort we need to breed out of the species as fast as we can.
California is going to be a desolate wasteland in 10 years or so because of the magic combination of government employees and unions. The politicians and union leaders here are the foulest, most amoral sacks of pig shit on the planet, with the exception of the regular citizens who cheer for them. *Those* people are lower than slime molds.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't have to unionize to fix this problem. You just have to quit and go somewhere else if the terms are not acceptable to you.
Indeed - and it seems to be particularly a problem in the games industry, rather than development in general.
I guess the problem is that there's a larger supply of people willing to work for crap conditions in the games industry, because of the attraction of it being "fun". Although then again, I remember a recent story in the UK where the games industry were whining about a skills shortage [bbc.co.uk]. Of course, they had to cheek to blame the Universities. The reality is that there are plenty of us with the skills to work in the games industry, we just go elsewhere where the pay's better, and we're not treated like shit.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to effectively refute the charge of being brainwashed, perhaps you should cite some of your actual experience with unions.
My experience with unions doesn't jibe with your description of them. I was a union member in a west coast school system that I developed software for, and the dues were trivial and I never once had a union official telling me what to do. About the only thing you got right was that the union did attempt to influence local politics, but guess what? Most companies do that as well, and they sure as hell don't ask their employees what they think about it.
What I got out of the deal was decent pay, decent hours, and full health care coverage and a really nice pension plan.
This is not to say that unions don't have drawbacks as well, but everything involves a tradeoff. For a good picture of what life was like without unions, see the 19th century. Or, apparently, Rockstar.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I can personally negotiate a much better contract than any union can on my behalf.
The *only* time I'll support unionization if it joining the union is not a condition of employment-- i.e. if it's completely voluntary. Anything else I see as un-American and despicable.
(Of course, unions would never allow that since it would demonstrate my first point very nicely.)
Re:programmers (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a regular Slashdot poster with a sig that says "Debt is slavery." It's no joke.
I think the point is "don't build up so much debt in the first place." Buy only what you can afford-- other than my mortgage payments, I have zero debt right now, and I have enough in savings to pay my mortgage for at least 3 years.
No incentive to avoid crunch aside from bad press. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the larger companies are trying to get away from this practice, though not always with much success. I do know that even within a single company, things can vary greatly from one team to the next, so I wonder if this is due to the management at a particular studio, or if it is a problem that affects all of Rockstar. The article mentions 'despite over $1 billion in Grand Theft Auto revenue', which is deeply misleading. That was made at Rockstar North, in Scotland. There is no reason to assume that just because one studio is printing its own money that the revenues will be distributed evenly across all partner studios.
I have worked for two of the largest companies in this industry, Ubisoft and EA. At those companies, I can tell you that as far as the CEO / corporate level management are concerned, they just want to see a game get done on time and on budget, and for it to hit the sales estimates. This is because those things will have a direct affect on the quarterly and annual statements. For a game to be a hit depends on many factors that cannot be directly influenced; ie: the design, gameplay, story (if applicable), the license and the marketing campaign all have to hit the right notes to result in a hit. Most pressure that a typical developer sees, especially if there are not any direct design responsibilities, is to get stuff done On Time and On / Under budget. The incentive used is a bonus. And this is where good intentions start to break down.
The producers on a project are typically given a bonus that depends mostly on the game being done on time and on budget. They are given a budget, and after that, the rest of the company does not look at anything beyond various demo's done for the editorial boards. The CEO types would like for the employees to be happy (no one wants bad press), but they leave that up to the studio HR and project leads / producers. What most people do not realize is that even within the same company, the work experience can vary greatly from one team to the next. One team might be using wise development practices, be carefully deciding which employees work on the title, and doing what they can to keep the scope of the game manageable given their time constraints. Other teams might simply pour on the crunch hours and death march the employees to meet the goal. But if the game is done on time and on budget, the producers always get their bonus.
What I see as being a big part of the problem is that there is no incentive at any point for those who run the projects to keep their employees happy. At a company like Ubisoft, you can finish your project, and have 70% of the staff quit, burn out, or just refuse to work on the sequel. But if you got it done on time and on budget, you get the same bonus.
Getting back to the article at hand, it is entirely possible that the people running Rockstar North have great development practices and have happy employees, but for the Rockstar San Diego studio to be helmed by Captain Bligh.
END COMMUNICATION
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually that attitude was exactly the reason why I never even considered going into games development.
I refuse to work in an industry which has a history of abusing its own employees up to levels where it becomes dangerous for your live.
Re:Welcome to Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh god, anything but that! The horror! Way to buy into the buzzword of the day.
Um, no. Its not the 'buzzword of the day' ( if there is one currently, its fascism ), its a time old concept that is rather repulsive and is not the type of system our founding fathers intended, here in the US anyway.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
No way man, not this developer. Unions just give you someone else who is 'in charge' of you. Not only do you have to pay union dues, half the time those union dues are spent on political purposes you don't agree with and have no say over.
I work as one of 6 developers inside a huge 20000+ corporation. To keep it simple, our corporation decided that we were to move from salary to hourly and it turned up a huge stink, clocking in and such, and people began a movement to unionize which thankfully went nowhere.
When my wife and I got married, she was part of a food workers union which went on strike during winter while she was prego. She lost 15 lbs (she started at 108 lbs) and the Doctors forced her to go on leave 5 months before the baby was due for her health. The union received the doctors notice and as unions typically do to protect their members, is decide that they wont pay the hospital bills for the birth because when we turned in the doctors note, we didn't fill out some 3x5 card that was mandatory for them to continue medical coverage. Where is the common sense in this world you piss ants, but thankfully the state picked up the tab. That's my first and last contact with the f-ing unions. They may have been worthwhile at one point in time, but no longer.
And in regards to getting paid by the line of code, that's stupid too. Out of the 6 programmers, I am probably the #2 guy in skill level, and if you looked at my code vs the other's, mine is object oriented while theirs looks like a batch file, scripted into submission. it gets the job done at a much slower and ludicrous pace.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, exactly how much artwork work is required in a console port of a PC franchise with 'at-the-time' outdated graphics and an existing engine require?
You are also conflating last gen with current gen's artwork requirements. HD gaming has raised the bar exponentially for the number of man hours required to make state of the art graphics. Sure, a small indie game does not require 70 artists, but a game that pushes the boundaries, or at least can hang with the AAA big dogs most certainly does.
On Braid, that game may have been developed by a skeleton crew, but it still required several years of development time and a budget of around $500,000. You can say that anybody can drop what they're doing and start coding a game, but how many have the tenacity and resources to devote that much, particularly when balanced against the risk of never breaking even or losing money in the end?
Financially, indie game development is a HUGE crapshoot. Alternatively, every one of the horrendously overworked R* employees went home to their failing marriages with paycheck in hand. I'm not defending R*'s labor practices, but from a practical risk/reward analysis, they are much better off than the average indie game dev, who operates with no certainty of every having a payday. It's solving the poverty problem by installing slot machines in low-rent neighborhoods. .
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
Base level of competence? Like the Teacher's Union shows? :P
That said, game development is far away from electrical work. Electrical work has a set of best practices and a code to adhere to. Game programming is more of an art. You slap the thing together and pray it keeps working, because it's not like it's going to burn anyone's house down, and you do whatever it takes to release a good game, which has little to do with good code or good art.
If I'm hiring a game programmer I don't really care if he knows design patterns. I care if he can take a game engine and turn it inside-out in a week because we had a neat new idea that the current engine can't support.
There's a reason that technical competence certificates are crucial in the electrical industry, and largely irrelevant in the programming and artistic fields.
You are oversimplifying (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, so you had a good experience with unions. That's wonderful, not everyone does. Take my roommate, he's in a plumber's union. Well for starters they take a significant amount in union dues, over a hundred a month. For that he gets apparently jack and shit. They ran out of work during the recession and basically told all their employees "Sorry, nothing we can do." None of those dues were used for savings for unemployment help, they didn't reduce rates to try and get more work. For that matter he got a "raise" because he'd been with them long enough. Of course additional money per hour times zero hours equals useless. Also he's not allowed to take non-union jobs while they don't have a job for him. He is more or less expected to sit around and go broke because they can't find work. Of course he's broken the rules and gotten a job, but there you go.
Or there's me. I work in a non-union place. Hours are pretty much 8-5 unless there's an emergency which there rarely is. Plenty of paid time off, fairly low stress work environment overall. Pay isn't stellar, but then you do have to trade some pay if you want higher quality of life, and it is still plenty to own a house and all that jazz.
Unions can be good, but they also can be extremely bad. If you had a good experience, fine, but don't assume it is all great. With my roommate's union, it was fairly good when economic times were good, but then so was most work. However in the down time their members are even more fucked than non-members.
Re:Union, Yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Then the press release would read, 'Rock Star is proud to announce the opening of our Rock Star Mumbai Studio.' On the up side, at least the developers would have more time to spend with their family....right?"
FUD. Somehow all these digital animation studios are still in business even with unions: http://www.animationguild.org/_Jobs/Jobs_h/jobsFRM.html [animationguild.org]
Re:No incentive to avoid crunch aside from bad pre (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod this up--I'm no way involved in even a related field of work, but this is pretty close to the reality of how corporations run.
I'm sick of the "CEOs are evil sociopaths" mentality simply because it implies that the rich are some evil exploitative faction of society while everyone else are halo-wearing do-gooders. Everyone is the same, and often the greatest evil is really just assholes in middle-management. My point here is that malice is far less common than simple incompetence.
The only way to fix this is for employees to work together. Unionize? Maybe, maybe not, but in any business the lowest common denominator can affect business if they work together.
Re:Rockstar is the evildoer in this situation, but (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem really isn't R* or EA (not that they're faultless here), it's the employees. If you LOVE games so much that you're willing to sell you soul to a studio, then who's fault is it? It's like the battered wife that LOVE the man so much that she'll keep going back no matter how badly he beats her. Is the man faultless? Absolutely NOT! But it isn't he who continues to go back for more abuse.
Hey Devs, wake up! Stop putting up with the abuse! No need for a union, just stop taking it.
Oh yeah, and if it's true that studios hire 20-somethings and expect them gone by 30, let me tell you something... your 20-something. You have you're whole life in front of you. Quit. Move. Stand up and say, "NO!" Whatever you want, you're 20-something. The night is still young!! Once you get to be 40-something, you'll understand what I'm saying here.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
Unions can be good or bad, but in general, with the labor laws in the US, they do more harm than good in this age. Back in the early 1900s when labor laws were in their infancy, they were necessary. Currently all most unions do is destroy the business they work in by hindering innovation (auto, port, and teacher's unions come to mind).
In the ports industry, it took a company 5 years to negotiate the use of remote operated dock machinery because it could reduce the necessary staff...even though its 10x safer than having someone in the cabs. You can't strong arm the union either because they cover the entire coast..."oh, you don't like that? Well, I'll have my union go on strike on the entire east coast in only your terminals...". Its straight up extortion, and their wages reflect it. Putting clauses in contracts that prohibit innovation is disgusting.
The teacher unions are way different by trade, but you get the problems of being unable to fire poor teachers, resulting in bad education (this is VERY prevalent in the SE US).
I still beleive unions have cases where they are necessary, but at the moment they are far too far-reaching and do more damage than good. I think their power should be scaled back a bit.
We have a "sucker" culture (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason engineers and software developers got the idea years ago that they were "professionals" and thus should have pride in finishing no matter the cost.
Of course, the jobs that are really considered "professional" by most people (lawyers, doctors, etc) don't operate this way.
Re:You are oversimplifying (Score:5, Insightful)
My mom is in a teacher's union in Ohio. She freely admits that the union keeps incompetent people from being let go in favor of those who are better teachers. They also remove your ability to bargain for your own wages - they bargain for you, and sometimes that means you get something better, and sometimes it means they ignore what areas of compensation you care about in favor of others (see increasing pensions to the point where the state will go bankrupt if they ever have to pay them, instead of money you are sure you'll actually get). They will fight for you if management tries to get rid of you... of course, they'll also fight for people who have no business being teachers, increasing the antagonism between you and administration. She firmly believes that no useful reform is going to come to the education system until you make a system that sidesteps the union and existing organizational structure. She also doesn't really want this to happen, because it will likely cost her a large portion of the benefits she has in her contract in lieu of decent pay.
There are a lot of people who, given the option, would take higher pay over a higher pension. However, if you've been working twenty years for that pension, it's not like you're going to be in favor of changing the system now. Unions pretty much remove your ability to have a choice there if you're going into a union-dominated field - you don't really have an option as a public school teacher - either you're in the union, or you pay the union dues anyway and don't get a say in what they negotiate for your salary.
Game developers get away with bad business practice because probably 3/4 of people going into computer science started out wanting to make video games. They are one of the few areas in CS where people just love the work they're doing enough to put up with poor management and horrible hours. Even if people try to unionize, there are so many scabs ready and willing to do the work instead, that I doubt there would be much success to it.
Would you like some Rat with your union-free world (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad you can't go to the alternate reality without unions where everybody works 60hrs/week and you can be legally exposed to any danger without the company having to worry about being responsible.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:2, Insightful)
How does a statement like "Unions just give you someone else who is 'in charge' of you." get you modded informative? You're more than welcome to actually participate in the union, and steer the political direction of it. If by politics you don't agree with, you mean working to further union power and workers rights, then I suppose joining wouldn't make sense for you...That'd be like signing up for someone to punch you in the face.
As far as "Unions are great in industries where workers have no way to answer the power of the boss.", I guess I'm not sure what you'd have these people do. Sure they can quit, and they may even find jobs. All that means is that someone else will take their place; you could forward your resume if it sounds like the kind of thing you'd be into. You can always just go get that other job if you don't like it, right? Also, you said "industries" - which is exactly what two parents up was talking about ("Oh, but our job is different."). Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Stand up for yourself.
I dont think anyone would say there are no corrupt unions, or that they cant be misused or badly managed. In those cases, it only adds another layer of bullshit on top of a situation like that at R*...but that doesn't mean _every_ union will work that way, and again, you're more than welcome to participate and make your union what you need it to be.
It's not unique to game jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US there's a large supply of people who want to eat and keep their houses that are willing to work under crap conditions.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
That said unions can be just as bad as companies but if an industry can't afford to pay for all the hours actually put into creating a game then there is something fundamentally wrong and it needs correcting in one way or another.
I think the problem is that the industry absolutely loves young employees. People straight out of uni will work as hard as possible because they'll likely be single and assume that's just the way it is. They lack job experience and don't want to rock the boat because they're afraid of being jobless with potentially a load of uni debt.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
I was a union member for 10 years in a different industry. Money spent by unions for political purposes is money you DO have a say over. If you'd ever been a member in a union, you would know that. You are allowed to be exempted from dues that would otherwise be spent for political purposes. You are simply required to inform your steward and (probably) fill out a form rescinding consent for political spending. I say "probably" because in 10 years in the union (5 as a steward) I have never had one member actually make that request, but I would expect paperwork to be required as records are always required.
From what I have seen, most programmers have never been union members and you all come up with the most bullshit reasons not to unionize. The union is not 'in charge' of you. They are not your boss. Other members, including the union leaders (stewards, area reps, local presidents, treasurers, etc), cannot 'manage' you and, if they try to tell you how to do your job, management will be more than happy to remedy the problem for you.
Unions are great in industries where workers have no way to answer the power of the boss
Sounds to me like the employees at Rockstar Games (and other development companies, according to other posts) are having exactly that problem! The power of the boss enables the boss to abuse the employees. The point of unions is to mitigate the boss's ability to abuse the employees. Apparently, you feel that working 72 hours (6 days x 12 hours) and not getting paid for the hours you've worked is not abusive. Personally, I don't understand what kind of dumbass you have to be to be willing to not be paid for the hours you've worked. If I am at work, then I am getting paid. If my employer wants me to work 72 hours, then they'd better be prepared to pay me the overtime pay I have earned.
Simply put, if you've never been a union member, you really need to get educated about what unions are really like and what they are really all about. Unions are only as strong as their members are active. When you are in a union, EACH MEMBER is the union. Not just the stewards, area reps, vice presidents, presidents, and other officers. Many of the members of the local I was in complained about how the union didn't stand firmer in bargaining and didn't 'help more', but these same people always rolled over and voted 'yes' when asked whether they wanted to ratify the latest contract. These same people were never willing to mobilize, either, by standing up for themselves or bringing public attention to the company's abuses. They even refused to take an hour or two ONCE A MONTH out of their busy lives to attend the union meeting OR even read the minutes of the meeting (posted on a bulletin board in the workplace, online at the union's website, emailed to them [if requested] AND snail-mailed TO THEIR HOMES), but they were happy to bitch about how they didn't know what was going on in the union. They also didn't want to get the union involved when faced with discipline, either. So, how is the union supposed to protect you when you decide to go it alone? I am so tired of hearing all of you whine about how unions are TEH GRATE EVUL, but you've no experience with actually being in a union. Go talk to union members about their unions. Every union is a little different. So, be sure to find members who are happy with their union, as well as those who are not.
Re:Welcome to Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, seeing as how the government and unions here rape things until they die bleeding from the ass.
Yeah! If we let programmers unionize, they'll rape the video game industry over until it's no longer profitable in the US and another country will take over, just like actor and writer unions have done to hollywood!
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
You're more than welcome to actually participate in the union, and steer the political direction of it.
I don't want to spend my time doing that. I want to spend my time building up the company I work for, because at the companies I work for, we work as a team (and I get paid for it). I work for three reasons: one, to learn; two, to make money; and three, to make useful products for the world. A union will get in my way for two of these, and in the computer industry probably won't help much to make money either. We already make a lot as programmers.
As far as "Unions are great in industries where workers have no way to answer the power of the boss.", I guess I'm not sure what you'd have these people do. Sure they can quit, and they may even find jobs.
I'm not sure what you are referring to here. If you are talking about something like the auto-industry, where it is hard to find another job, I concede that unions make sense. In the computer industry, yeah, I suggest they find a job that doesn't make them work so many hours of overtime. Looking for a job is a skill, but it's not especially hard, and if you have "worked on GTA" on your resume, you're going to find one pretty easily. Find a job at a company that doesn't require 72 hour work weeks. Really, it's not that hard.
that doesn't mean _every_ union will work that way, and again, you're more than welcome to participate and make your union what you need it to be.
True, not every union is like that, and you seem to like them. I don't. Good for you. My company already offers health insurance and a 401k matching program. A union isn't going do much for me. The OP basically insulted everyone who doesn't want to join a union, but there are valid reasons to not want to join one.
I'm well over 40 and I don't agree (Score:3, Insightful)
So your argument is that if employees settle for being exploited, there's nothing wrong in exploiting them.
Re:You are oversimplifying (Score:3, Insightful)
Since everyone in here is so certain that they're so perfect and don't need a union then they'll vote for good people only and the IT union will be perfect.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rockstar is the evildoer in this situation, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:4, Insightful)
Never been in a union, have you? It shows. Unions don't take away flex-time, etc.
Come back when you've actually been a union-dues-paying member.
A union can work in the best interests of both the employee and employer. The employee gets some protection from management games and abuse, and the employer gets a stable work-force. Also, the employer now has an official way to be notified when they're going too far - before it's too late - rather than what's happening at Rockstar, where it's obviously gone to the point where it's not salvageable.
70-hour weeks say one thing - management doesn't know how to do their jobs. Coders don't put in twice as many productive hours in twice the time - production turns negative after a certain point, with more bugs, lower morale, and generally lower productivity ALL the time, and not just during the extra hours.
Sometimes management needs to have their feet held to the fire, for their own good. 70-hour work weeks are one of those times.
Re:programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but if you don't have any hard timelines you end up with Duke Nukem Forever.
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
If so many developers are so perfect and anti-bloated union then when they start their own it will be perfect.
The fact is it is wrong that people work so many hours for free and risk not having a relationship just to make shitty game sequels. Over working employees most likely contributes to poor software too. People just don't function well without a decent sleep.
So your choices are really either to get the government to make those sort of practices illegal or start a union. If you start your own it will be small and nearly impossible for it to be corrupt like the auto workers union. If it does go corrupt quit and get your fellow workers to quit too. A union is effectively a company and you need to vote with your feet and your wallet.
Labour laws aren't in their infancy but tech related fields still have to deal with companies treating employees like shit. Whether its importing people on H1-B visas to work for less, exporting jobs or making you work for free. There's also much more ageism in IT because companies prefer naive young employees who don't realise they're being fucked up the ass. Most jobs don't have to deal with those sort of things so yeah a union is probably a bit useless.
Companies don't only sack useless people. If they're cost cutting they're more likely to cut someone who they deem a bigger financial drain which can be someone who is a better developer purely because his pay is in relation to his skills. He could be older too and therefore more likely to be using more healthcare benefits so again, he's a drain. He's not useless but he can lose his job.
My union only asks for £10 a month and has protected jobs without protecting useless people and negotiated sensible inflation based pay rises. The pay rise deal gets reviewed in 5 years. If the company doesn't want to offer it again they're willing to go for that. They've not been locked into being forced to pay people more money for no good reason.
If you have a union you have the duty to vote in decent people to run it properly and if the union does things wrong then you have the duty to get people to quit the union.
Despite having a union I still work overtime and sometimes I do it without asking for pay because accomplishing something excellent and worthwhile is my my drive. What I don't want is my employer expecting me to give up my free time whenever it suits them. When I switch jobs (which the odds are I will given that I'm not old), I'm not bothered if the company has a union or not because I'm very confident in my ability to do my job, I don't slack and I will do my best to end up in a decent company.
Game companies in particular treat employees like shit. The publishers are like the RIAA, they don't give the retailer much profit (hence the reason they sell used games) and if it's hardware the retailer probably gets zero profit which is why a lot of them did not want to carry the PSP Go. They fuck over the developer by making them give up their social life with potentially no compensation.
Any sector that has to charge high prices for their products yet they can't afford to give retailers a decent cut or pay their employees then something is wrong. It needs to be fixed.
I can't see why people rather support a corrupt set of publishers than start-up their own union because it might end up corrupt.
Maybe if publishers had to start paying for all the work their employers do then they'll think twice about releasing shitty sequels year after year.
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just the game industry. I'm betting everybody who's reading this who has a job is working longer hours under worsening conditions.
There's been an all-out attack on workers since 1980. Little by little, every bit of progress that was fought for by organized labor in the first 3/4 of the 20th century is being destroyed.
The years when organized labor was strongest in the US were also our years of greatest economic growth. It's not accidental that Germany, which is one of the countries where organized labor and labor protection laws are the strongest, is also the number one exporting/manufacturing country, with exports valued at about 300% of China's.
It's also interesting that the years when we had upper-bracket tax rates over 75% were also the years that we had the greatest increase in GDP and the greatest growth in the middle-class.
Remember this the next time someone tries to tell you that labor unions and taxes on the rich are bad for the economy and jobs.
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact he could be describing any company working in any industry.
Not really. There are plenty of companies out there that don't require ridiculous hours of their employees.
Open letter to Rock Star Employees (Score:4, Insightful)
If your job sucks, you are doing it wrong. Fix it or get out!
If your wife talks to your boss for you, you are doing it wrong. Grow a pair for christ's sake!
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
You will not be fired for exercising workplace rights. You'll be fired for "not being a team player".
-Laxitive
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember this the next time someone tries to tell you that labor unions and taxes on the rich are bad for the economy and jobs.
Taxes on the rich are good; let's make capital gains count with all income, and there will be plenty in the general fund. Never happen though, because the rich buy the legislation. Labor unions were good, but now are a drain because they are almost all almost entirely corrupt. How many unions in the USA are run by the Mafia? I know of at least one for sure. I personally know of at least three incompetents working for one junior college who should have been canned long ago so that someone competent could take the work and serve the students by serving the faculty, but it's virtually impossible to be rid of them because they're union employees. And, I might add, I'd have had one of those jobs if they could be fired, and I discussed this situation with their manager.
Unions are the employment equivalent of feminism; it was a good thing until women got rights. Now it's just sexism. We need humanism rather than feminism, and we need labor laws for all people rather than Union protection for a few.
Rockstar. . . hmmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's see:
Grueling hours. Check.
Damaged health. Check.
Strained personal relationships. Check.
Doing work for free. Check.
Corporation raking in billions. Check.
Disregard for talent. Check.
Sounds just like being a real life "rock star!"
(on a serious note: Come on Rockstar. Treat your freaking employees well. This makes me not want to buy your games.)
Re:12 hour work days? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like you are in Management. What does Management do all day? 1. Dream about huge salary increases 2. Order people around without any thought to the order they lack 3. Hunt for a new job on JobFinditForMe.com There should be fewer managers and more coders. ID software was entirely coder driven. Now look where they are. Micromanaged to the shithole. Rage will suck.
I think you misunderstood the tone of my post. I was NOT saying "Aw, it's always management's fault" (as in, they're being unfairly blamed), I was being literal. It is always management's fault because it is their responsibility to hire the right people for the right positions, provide them the resources they need to do their jobs properly, and also to make sure that they're on track and are, in fact, doing their jobs. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't matter how competent or otherwise the actual engineers may be ... the project is likely doomed to failure from the outset. And no, I don't work in management, but given my age and the way engineering jobs are leaving this country I may find myself in management eventually. I'm trying to stave that off as long as possible of course. I like what I do for a living ... whether or not that will continue to be of value is another issue entirely.
Besides, I'm really not into herding cats.
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the corporations aren't going to give you those rights out of the goodness of their hearts.
We got the five-day work week, and sick days, and safe workplaces, and fair pay because people fought for it and bled for it. A lot of working people trying to organize got their heads broken by off-duty cops working for the corporations.
I'm not saying that there aren't people who are doing bad jobs and not getting fired. Some are protected by unions. Some are protected by being the boss' nephew. Some are protected by having even more incompetent managers.
But every, single American worker has benefited directly from the labor movement. There's not one improvement to wages or working conditions that would have happened without unions. Even in "right to work" (sic) states, it's the union contracts that serve as the model for employment standards.
And most important, organized labor is good for business. As I said above, Germany is one of the most labor friendly countries in the world, and they've had tremendous success in the world economy, exporting more goods than even China, which has no protection for workers.
Men didn't just decide one day to give women the right to vote. The US government didn't just decide one day to be fair and end slavery. And corporations aren't going to give you fair wages or decent working conditions out of the goodness of their hearts. Somebody had to go out and fight, and bleed and get their head beaten in to get them for you.
Finally, you shouldn't expect the government to pass any "labor laws for all people", especially now that corporations will have unfettered ability to use their profits to influence elections.
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:1, Insightful)
I found my current job by looking for an important position in a traditional and deeply unsexy industry, where most people don't want to work.
I haven't been required to work more than 40ish hours in 2 years or more, and because of the financial crisis overtime is _forbidden_.
It's a supply and demand thing.
Work in a "sexy" job that everybody wants (like gaming or Google) and supply/demand says you're gunna get screwed.
Work in an unsexy industry and supply/demand is in your favour, and you get treated well.
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
So the labour unions are somehow responsible for GM and Chrysler making cars that suck? Most workers at VW are unionised, but somehow VW still manages to become the largest automaker.
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd lose that bet.
:)
I work 37 hours a week. A few more (up to 50) when absolutely necessary. I think there were four weeks I did that last year.
Our software is doing great, the company is doing great and I'm getting paid well, raises and a promotion last year.
I'd recommend you find other work. Or maybe move to europe
Re:How to get management to listen (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, the evil unions forced our country to pass socialist laws like:
40 hour work weeks
Overtime
Safe workplaces
Fair wages/ no company store money
Minimum Wage
and of course, Child Labor.
Wouldn't we be lucky to be in a business friendly country that employs children and doesn't let them waste the day in some silly school environment?
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/ [historyplace.com]
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:1, Insightful)
"The problem then comes in that management sees the amount of work that gets done in a crunch and says "Man, we could get so much done if we worked like that ALL THE TIME!" Of course there are tons of problems with this that are easy to see, but they ignore that."
I've heard of this happening with management for an accounts dept. Talk about stupid. In this case, it meant less employees at end of month to do the crunch work - until of course it just got unworkable. Cue serious issues due to backlog in accounts. In this case this was just one symptom of a very broken approach to the entire operation of the company. I can't really even highlight the line of work, but lets just say the ordinary plebs that were customers (i.e. people on the street - not corporate customers) got to experience firsthand the results of this. Unfortunately the company had a fixed contract for providing "services" so people could only manage a certain amount of boycott (the losses from which only encouraged the company to be even more outrageous).
The inherent problem is that capitalism doesn't work without strong regulation. You can argue that those abusing it will end up crashing and burning and everything will sort itself out in a fashion akin to the natural world or something, but a) this can take a while to happen, b) this causes misery during the process, c) it may not happen, d) as we've seen, there can be huge reprecussions to such crash+burns.
The only answer is to force people to play nice. Obviously this has many problems too, but there has been ample history to draw on in avoiding bad regulation, and of course we do have the advantage that governments can be thrown out (admittedly more so in some countries than others). Also here in Europe, the European Union performs as a sort of collaboration for governments to all have input into regulation, plus there is strong influence from better run countries like Germany and the Nordic countries. Unfortunately the UK also has a lot of influence, but fortunately less so now that people see how broken their model is (only good for short-term advantage). The other problem, which we have here in Ireland, is even ordinary people objecting to having to play nice (or do things "properly"). Particularly absurd given that regulation is only half-effective in this country (lack of enforcement, or more particularly, inability to deal with such widescale flouting of it) and those determined to ignore them can usually get away with it (and certainly at the time). However, we also have the problem in Ireland of people managing to get *official* leeway to ignore regulation.