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"The person may look like a hero, coming in to solve crisis after crisis, when in fact the crises could have been avoided. Sometimes, the workaholic may have un

"The person may look like a hero, coming in to solve crisis after crisis, when in fact the crises could have been avoided. Sometimes, the workaholic may have unwittingly created the problems to provide the endless thrill of more work." I've had a few jobs with big organizations where they expected long hours, and it would be a stretch to say that I created the problems. I think whether or not your organization hits "crisis mode", and how often, is something that company leadership and management needs to control. They can't cry wolf all the time - it is not good for your people's morale (and sanity) to push them that hard all the time.

phaedrus 18y ago
I used to have a boss who always said "This is you #1 priority!" Uh boss, this is the third time today you've said that. Which of these #1 priorities comes first? I think sometimes crisis mode is more of a (dysfunctional) motivational tactic than a scheduling strategy.
Tamerlin 18y ago
Most of the time in my experience, the "crisis mode" resulted from poor planning. The leadership tried to fix the situation by convincing the employees to work longer hours, which invariably made things far worse in the long run. The reality is that very rarely did the longer hours help to get things done more quickly, instead the sweatshop mentality resulted in more bug-hunting and less progress. I have not yet in over ten years encountered a situation where the long hours approach actually worked, though the management thought that it was working because people were working long hours churning out lots of code.
- tokipin 18y ago
  when i was in high school and college i wanted to get into game development. but stories about multi-month 'crunch times' eventually turned me away. in fact the games industry was renown for them. it was likely through a combination of poor planning and wishful hoping. it's quite sad, because not having me is about the biggest loss the videogame industry ever suffered http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php (download requires account, but page has few stats)
  - Tamerlin 18y ago
    That's the main reason that I also stayed out of the games industry, even though playing games is what lead me into programming during high school. One thing that always makes me wonder about the perpetual crisis mode folks is that the vast majority of them despise Microsoft for producing such low-quality products, but follow exactly the same microserf development model that lead Microsoft to doing that. A lot of the developers working there left as soon as their options vested, and for years MS has been paying the price in terms of maintenance overhead and a plethora of security holes and bugs in released software, which has lead to a reputation for having software that's full of security holes on top of everything else. Joel Spolsky has also commented on the value of encouraging developers to work sane hours rather than sweatshop hours, though I don't know which of his articles it was in.
  - derefr 18y ago
    Game developers can't help it--basically, every title is a race to make the best use of the newest (to the point that anyone other than a game developer would call it "alpha") graphics technology. There's also almost never maitenance: 1.0 is final for console games, and usually final for anything else (no new features are ever added, only bug fixes.) The only things that don't fit this model are MMOs (RPGs or FPSes) because their clients are dependably net-connected on large lines, the content is on the server under the company's control, and many people will still be "coming into" the game long after it is released, and continuing to pay money for the game, basically keeping it alive. I imagine Blizzard must think of WoW as relaxing and elegant work compared to their other titles.

phaedrus 18y ago

I used to have a boss who always said "This is you #1 priority!" Uh boss, this is the third time today you've said that. Which of these #1 priorities comes first? I think sometimes crisis mode is more of a (dysfunctional) motivational tactic than a scheduling strategy.

Tamerlin 18y ago

Most of the time in my experience, the "crisis mode" resulted from poor planning. The leadership tried to fix the situation by convincing the employees to work longer hours, which invariably made things far worse in the long run. The reality is that very rarely did the longer hours help to get things done more quickly, instead the sweatshop mentality resulted in more bug-hunting and less progress. I have not yet in over ten years encountered a situation where the long hours approach actually worked, though the management thought that it was working because people were working long hours churning out lots of code.

tokipin 18y ago
when i was in high school and college i wanted to get into game development. but stories about multi-month 'crunch times' eventually turned me away. in fact the games industry was renown for them. it was likely through a combination of poor planning and wishful hoping. it's quite sad, because not having me is about the biggest loss the videogame industry ever suffered http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php (download requires account, but page has few stats)
- Tamerlin 18y ago
  That's the main reason that I also stayed out of the games industry, even though playing games is what lead me into programming during high school. One thing that always makes me wonder about the perpetual crisis mode folks is that the vast majority of them despise Microsoft for producing such low-quality products, but follow exactly the same microserf development model that lead Microsoft to doing that. A lot of the developers working there left as soon as their options vested, and for years MS has been paying the price in terms of maintenance overhead and a plethora of security holes and bugs in released software, which has lead to a reputation for having software that's full of security holes on top of everything else. Joel Spolsky has also commented on the value of encouraging developers to work sane hours rather than sweatshop hours, though I don't know which of his articles it was in.
- derefr 18y ago
  Game developers can't help it--basically, every title is a race to make the best use of the newest (to the point that anyone other than a game developer would call it "alpha") graphics technology. There's also almost never maitenance: 1.0 is final for console games, and usually final for anything else (no new features are ever added, only bug fixes.) The only things that don't fit this model are MMOs (RPGs or FPSes) because their clients are dependably net-connected on large lines, the content is on the server under the company's control, and many people will still be "coming into" the game long after it is released, and continuing to pay money for the game, basically keeping it alive. I imagine Blizzard must think of WoW as relaxing and elegant work compared to their other titles.