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Well, it's true. I've worked on both gaming and enterprise software companies."Crunch" is everywhere. The only difference Games (especially casual one) has very

Well, it's true. I've worked on both gaming and enterprise software companies."Crunch" is everywhere. The only difference Games (especially casual one) has very short lifetime and changes are frequent and sometimes targeting some event or season like Christmas. With this, the work load becomes very uneven throughout the year. There are months teams are waiting for a solid project (otherwise management keeps them busy with some "New IP" experimental work which is destined to fail crossing approval gates ) and there are spikes where they have to work 6 or 7 straight weekends. Some regions where labor laws are not strict (or in culture itself work-life balance is not expected) its for irratic. In one hand the crunch time is extreem where employees are asked to spend very long hours sometimes overnight at work on the other hands they may have to wait for months for a project to be outsourced from the studio that is holding the IP.

ekianjo 9y ago
It's not like people who work in the video games industry do not have the skills to do something else if they wish to. What the article fails to mention completely is that most people in the VG industry actually want to be there in the first place, despite knowing and experiencing all this.
- deleted 9y ago
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zer00eyz 9y ago
Holiday hell: welcome to e-commerce. Redesign, relaunch, rebuild, replatform, add vendors, remove vendors, deal with poorly built contracts that allow for shenanigans because no one in tech signed off on the deal you just made. I think our whole industry is hell bent on consuming youth and self destruction. No one in tech is immune but some have it worse than others.
- freedomben 9y ago
  I know a guy in his late 30s that just had a freaking heart attack as a result of chronic stress and overwork. Worst part is his is self-imposed! He is an entrepreneur and does lots of contract work. Sometimes we don't realize what we are doing to our bodies with overwork, stress, poor diets (you know it's true), and insufficient exercise. It's good to get reminded every once in a while.
  - abawany 9y ago
    I agree. I have left jobs that were grinding me when I realized that the end purpose was not something that I felt was moving the world forward. Bill Watterson said the following via Hobbes (08 Apr 92, pg 56) that rings true for me: 'I don't know which is worse...that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low.'
nradov 9y ago
It's easy to be cynical and claim that "crunch" is everywhere, but my subjective impression is that the better managed enterprise software companies have actually reduced crunch in recent years by applying agile development methodologies and continuous integration. That stuff actually works if you take it seriously and make it a core part of the organizational culture.
onion2k 9y ago
"Crunch" is everywhere. Crunch is a function of deadlines. In my experience you don't get crunch if you have continuous incremental releases (eg a SaaS product where pushes to live are automated). Unfortunately that tends to only happen when something is both successful and mature.

ekianjo 9y ago

It's not like people who work in the video games industry do not have the skills to do something else if they wish to. What the article fails to mention completely is that most people in the VG industry actually want to be there in the first place, despite knowing and experiencing all this.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

zer00eyz 9y ago

Holiday hell: welcome to e-commerce. Redesign, relaunch, rebuild, replatform, add vendors, remove vendors, deal with poorly built contracts that allow for shenanigans because no one in tech signed off on the deal you just made. I think our whole industry is hell bent on consuming youth and self destruction. No one in tech is immune but some have it worse than others.

freedomben 9y ago
I know a guy in his late 30s that just had a freaking heart attack as a result of chronic stress and overwork. Worst part is his is self-imposed! He is an entrepreneur and does lots of contract work. Sometimes we don't realize what we are doing to our bodies with overwork, stress, poor diets (you know it's true), and insufficient exercise. It's good to get reminded every once in a while.
- abawany 9y ago
  I agree. I have left jobs that were grinding me when I realized that the end purpose was not something that I felt was moving the world forward. Bill Watterson said the following via Hobbes (08 Apr 92, pg 56) that rings true for me: 'I don't know which is worse...that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low.'

nradov 9y ago

It's easy to be cynical and claim that "crunch" is everywhere, but my subjective impression is that the better managed enterprise software companies have actually reduced crunch in recent years by applying agile development methodologies and continuous integration. That stuff actually works if you take it seriously and make it a core part of the organizational culture.

onion2k 9y ago

"Crunch" is everywhere. Crunch is a function of deadlines. In my experience you don't get crunch if you have continuous incremental releases (eg a SaaS product where pushes to live are automated). Unfortunately that tends to only happen when something is both successful and mature.