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> How do you end crunch? Two words: overtime pay. This makes crunches disappear as if by magic.
by cyberax 5mo ago
> How do you end crunch?
Two words: overtime pay.
This makes crunches disappear as if by magic.
- nightski 5mo agoI'm confused, wouldn't this incentivize crunch? You could make a lot more money that way.
- hnaccount141 5mo agoTypically overtime pay requires approval from management
- nightski 5mo agoI don't think they are in a place to deny it if they are fighting a video game launch deadline.
- gmadsen 5mo agoIt aligns incentives to reduce crunch as much as is feasible
- xmprt 5mo agoWhen management needs to pay more for crunch then it will prove whether the deadline is real or fake. eg. If we don't meet this deadline will it materially affect the business... or is it not really needed and it's better to save on the overtime pay.
- cyberax 5mo agoIt will incentivize the management to prohibit working overtime and/or hire more people.
- Jach 5mo agoMany game studios have overtime pay and yet still crunch.
- jayd16 5mo agoWho?
- Jach 5mo agoEA was famously sued ~20 years ago for not paying overtime. They lost and had to reclassify roles to non-exempt and paid up. It impacted hiring decisions for non-exempt/hourly roles (especially QA), encouraged more outsourcing, but this didn't eliminate crunch then, and it hasn't eliminated it since. That's really my point: overtime-paid crunch is still found all over the place. EA, Activision-Blizzard, Sony's studios, Com2uS, 343 Industries (even with "priority zero"), outsourcing groups like Keywords Studios... They all have crunch stories but they also all make use of both overtime-paid roles and exempt salaried roles during crunch time. If overtime pay eliminated crunch, we'd expect to see a stronger separation in overtime-eligible workers not experiencing crunch, and crunch concentrating entirely in exempt roles. Instead, crunch appears in both. Furthermore, over the last 20 years, crunch has decreased in both. I think that's better explained by things that directly affect the underlying reasons for crunch like changes to production practices (i.e. patching instead of going gold) and better management practices (i.e. less waterfall methodology). On indirect pressures, it's a broader mix with competition from the rest of tech, cultural backlash against crunch, and sure overtime classification changes. Explicit overtime pay increases the cost of crunch and thus incentivizes figuring out how to reduce it, but it doesn't directly reduce it itself, and certainly doesn't eliminate it.
- jayd16 5mo agoI think you're conflating has crunch and has non-exempt employees with everyone is getting crunch OT. It is simply not the case.
- Jach 5mo agoCertainly exempt FTEs are crunching and not getting (directly) compensated for it. But the above comment's "overtime pay makes crunches disappear" claim is also simply not the case, just given the still-present abundance of crunch time for non-exempt employees who do get overtime pay.