2 ms·

I wonder why you got downvoted as you're basically spot on. Can someone check my calculations, because I'm getting ridiculous numbers, not "marginally behind"

I wonder why you got downvoted as you're basically spot on. Can someone check my calculations, because I'm getting ridiculous numbers, not "marginally behind" He remembers 1-2 times of 1-2 months of crunch of "not being expected to work _more_ than 60 hours". My bet is that this means people usually stayed _at least_ 60 hours during the crunch time due to social pressures created by the employees themselves. Sort of like "unlimited vacation" usually means that on average everyone takes less vacation, because they don't want to be the one with the most vacation taken. So to me this means the _lower_ bound is 60 hours, not the 50 you put as the average. 1-2 in this context tells me: it's definitely 2, if not more, but let's take the lower bound, i.e. 2. The following uses some generous rounding: That's 4 months, so the 1/3 of the year you mentioned of 60 hour weeks. 4.33 weeks per month on average times 4 months is 17.3 weeks of at least 60 hour weeks =~ 1040 hours of work over a period of time that they should've worked ~690 hours. That's an extra of about 345 hours of work they did, which is a whopping 43 8-hour days. Even if after each of the crunches they got 2 weeks off, that's 20 days of vacation to compensate for 43 days of unpaid crunch time that also wreaked havoc with their actual lives. Is my math off somewhere? Because otherwise as this was the lower bound from an idealized remembering of "the good old times" I'd call that exploitative.

socialist_coder 5y ago
No one expects the comp time to exactly equal how much extra time you worked. It's just like a little thank you for working hard, and so you can decompress and take care of whatever you've been neglecting in your life during crunch. Would I have enjoyed this if I wasn't a 20-something with no kids who who lived and breathed games? No. So I don't honestly expect everyone to understand this either. If you love your work, it's not work. Never once did I feel like crunch "wreaked havoc with my life". I think you are imagining the worst case scenario. Sure, it could. And the people who worked there who were parents with kids, I felt bad for them. I don't think I would have made that choice. But for me and many of my childless colleagues, the reality is that we loved working in games and getting that experience was vital to our careers.
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  I would be careful with such blanket statements. I would agree with you that companies do not expect people to expect that and will do everything they can to make people believe that exploitative relationships are OK. Personally though yes I do expect tit for tat. And there are employers out there that understand this very well. At one of my previous places for example we had a few major traffic days which required a sort of "all hands on deck" for the day and part of the night. You probably worked an extra 2 hours in total but you were looking at the chat and production monitors regularly while going about your day and evening/night otherwise. You got an extra day off for that. Also for production support via 'pager' any call from the NOC to you, even if it took 5 minutes of you just telling them 'yeah restart service X' was an automatic 1 hour billed at overtime rates. No not contractors. Internal employees. Also I do love my work and it's not work in that sense. But that does not preclude me from wanting and working actively towards a proper work environment. If you pay me for 40 hours you get 40 hours. 40 hours of 100% of me. Not 60 hours of 50% of me.
- goatinaboat 5y ago
  And the people who worked there who were parents with kids, I felt bad for them. I don't think I would have made that choice. But for me and many of my childless colleagues, the reality is that we loved working in games and getting that experience was vital to our careers. Those people with kids were once people like you, say 10-20 years ago, and they didn't fully understand the precedent they were setting by accepting and normalising those working practices. I would bet if any of them could go back, they would undo it.
goatinaboat 5y ago
Sort of like "unlimited vacation" usually means that on average everyone takes less vacation, because they don't want to be the one with the most vacation taken. If you have defined vacation, the company has to pay you for any unused days when you resign. With "unlimited" vacation they do not. So it's a win-win for the company to offer this supposed perk: peer pressure not to use it, and no financial liability.

socialist_coder 5y ago

No one expects the comp time to exactly equal how much extra time you worked. It's just like a little thank you for working hard, and so you can decompress and take care of whatever you've been neglecting in your life during crunch. Would I have enjoyed this if I wasn't a 20-something with no kids who who lived and breathed games? No. So I don't honestly expect everyone to understand this either. If you love your work, it's not work. Never once did I feel like crunch "wreaked havoc with my life". I think you are imagining the worst case scenario. Sure, it could. And the people who worked there who were parents with kids, I felt bad for them. I don't think I would have made that choice. But for me and many of my childless colleagues, the reality is that we loved working in games and getting that experience was vital to our careers.

tharkun__ 5y ago
I would be careful with such blanket statements. I would agree with you that companies do not expect people to expect that and will do everything they can to make people believe that exploitative relationships are OK. Personally though yes I do expect tit for tat. And there are employers out there that understand this very well. At one of my previous places for example we had a few major traffic days which required a sort of "all hands on deck" for the day and part of the night. You probably worked an extra 2 hours in total but you were looking at the chat and production monitors regularly while going about your day and evening/night otherwise. You got an extra day off for that. Also for production support via 'pager' any call from the NOC to you, even if it took 5 minutes of you just telling them 'yeah restart service X' was an automatic 1 hour billed at overtime rates. No not contractors. Internal employees. Also I do love my work and it's not work in that sense. But that does not preclude me from wanting and working actively towards a proper work environment. If you pay me for 40 hours you get 40 hours. 40 hours of 100% of me. Not 60 hours of 50% of me.
goatinaboat 5y ago
And the people who worked there who were parents with kids, I felt bad for them. I don't think I would have made that choice. But for me and many of my childless colleagues, the reality is that we loved working in games and getting that experience was vital to our careers. Those people with kids were once people like you, say 10-20 years ago, and they didn't fully understand the precedent they were setting by accepting and normalising those working practices. I would bet if any of them could go back, they would undo it.

goatinaboat 5y ago

Sort of like "unlimited vacation" usually means that on average everyone takes less vacation, because they don't want to be the one with the most vacation taken. If you have defined vacation, the company has to pay you for any unused days when you resign. With "unlimited" vacation they do not. So it's a win-win for the company to offer this supposed perk: peer pressure not to use it, and no financial liability.