[gameprogrammer] Re: crunch time

Alan,
If you do leave over this, be careful how you do it. Most companies require overtime at one point or another. If you tell your boss that is why you are quiting, don't bother using that company for a reference. And if you say in an interview you quit for that reason, don't expect to get a job.
If it's an important issue to you, just ask them about overtime. The companies you would want to work for will enthusiastically rail against this. The ones that are ambivalent will require overtime.
I work over 100 hours a week, but it's on my own company. Back when I was working for others, I usually didn't do overtime, but neither did I complain when it came up. I never had to do overtime for more than a month anyways. 

Matthew Weigel wrote:

Alan Wolfe wrote:


I knew about the unpaid overtime going into game programming but 90
hour work weeks seem a bit excessive.


Yes.


Im curious to hear what people at different companies have experienced
and what the overall climate of the industry is regarding crunch time.
The climate has been shifting toward recognizing 40 hours a week as reasonable for some time, but of course it varies from company to company how in tune with the general climate they are. The reasons for working fewer hours are many: some reasons, some companies are willing to ignore, but that doesn't mean you as an employee should ignore them.
Burn out, family strife, the urge of employees to leave and escape *that company* after the game has shipped... these might seem like minor problems to a company focused on shipping a game. "Employee turnover" never seems like a big problem until it is. Likewise, a reputation among players for making buggy or unfun games never seems like a big problem, until the reputation is hard to escape...
However, other reasons are more immediate and should be noticed by your company: the enormous drop in cognitive ability from the implicit lack of sleep, the separate drop in productivity from not being able to 'backburner' a problem while away from work, and the lawsuit risk all mean that it's going to be a generally bad idea to work these kind of hours. 

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