EPTAnd I agree that game development seems to suffer from especially bad management practices and could learn from other engineer related jobs.
The Games Industry And ATVI - Page 31
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Archeon
3251 Posts
And I agree that game development seems to suffer from especially bad management practices and could learn from other engineer related jobs. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17185 Posts
But this is pretty much what people during crunch feel. | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12128 Posts
Now I'm working at even bigger corporate and it's still not forcing the overtime even though there were even bumpier moments, they rather shift people from other projects. But we have like 25k IT people so finding somebody experienced who can quickly jump in and help is easier. So it's possible, although I know it's a common practice  Edit> also we have project managers who are really on the schedule and when something looks like being delayed they start to ask for help around to make sure the delay won't be any big. The company really tries to mitigate any negative impacts as much as possible. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16382 Posts
On December 14 2020 17:59 Silvanel wrote: You are sying it from freelancer point of view. It is slighlty diffrent for fulltime employee. There are no permanent full time jobs in the software development industry. You are always auditioning for your next job while working on your currrent job. the sleazebucket companies just tell you that you have a permanent full time position. The slimebucket company creates a fake hierarchy where the "full timers" are the most important people... in order to get the full time people to grant concessions on their working conditions. The nano-second an outside contractor can do something better.. they get hired. HR are a bunch of double agents who pretend to be "on your side" while they compile facts to bury you in the future should the need arise. The faster one figures this out the better one is able to position oneself for a career in software development. I figured this stuff out about 13 years ago. On December 15 2020 04:31 Archeon wrote: Tbf planning is hard in software development in general and in game development in particular since it is a creative work where things just might not work out the way you thought and then you have to adapt. yep. I'm a follower of Alan Cooper's published work when it comes to managing the dev. process. i employ many of the techniques he writes about in his books. i only spend a portion of my week as a project manager though.. so i'm no expert. | ||
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Yurie
11679 Posts
Automotive and other areas have a lot of overtime as well. They usually have factories with a set capacity like 300 units/shift. If you can sell 450 units/shift for a short period it becomes a bit iffy. Either you push overtime to get as much out as you can or you hope this new peak is the baseline and invest in more production lines or capacity. That is where a lot of overtime end up, covering for lost production or for a temporary peak. Though it mostly holds true for blue collar and not white collar. For white collar it is usually scheduled overtime near a product release to change the line while it isn't running or similar. Or doing final testing after an IT release before production starts in the morning. To make it a bit more IT related, usually no issues since it passed UAT but one bad time and you check all others since it costs too much. | ||
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On December 16 2020 00:30 JimmyJRaynor wrote: There are no permanent full time jobs in the software development industry. You are always auditioning for your next job while working on your currrent job. the sleazebucket companies just tell you that you have a permanent full time position. The slimebucket company creates a fake hierarchy where the "full timers" are the most important people... in order to get the full time people to grant concessions on their working conditions. The nano-second an outside contractor can do something better.. they get hired. HR are a bunch of double agents who pretend to be "on your side" while they compile facts to bury you in the future should the need arise. The faster one figures this out the better one is able to position oneself for a career in software development. I figured this stuff out about 13 years ago. That sounds like an extreme, north american view on working in software dev(and employment in general). Doesn't really reflect my experience in Germany/Central Europe. | ||
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Neneu
Norway492 Posts
Crunch itself is not legal here either, which means that the employer would break the law if the employer let its employees do it. I've heard about a few who have done it on their own initiative, but those have all been unaware of the risk they put their employer in. There are one or two exceptions to the legality within certain sectors with specialized contracts though, but they are heavily regulated. In the end it has convinced me that crunch is indeed mostly a problem with project management or the employer's values/strategy, since we are able to avoid it fine here. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17185 Posts
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12128 Posts
On December 16 2020 20:04 Manit0u wrote: I think that there's too much push to release early. In my opinion they shouldn't even announce they're working on a title and show it to the public until they have at least a fully playable alpha stage and are about to reach beta. And even then they shouldn't really set any hard release dates. I guess the pressure from publishers/investors is just too high. They wanted to gather all the positive reception CDPR had at the time so they started the hype train. And didn't realise what hype can do if the company doesn't deliver. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16382 Posts
On December 16 2020 18:21 Neneu wrote: Yeah it's pretty far from what I've experienced as programmer in Norway as well. Crunch itself is not legal here either, which means that the employer would break the law if the employer let its employees do it. I've heard about a few who have done it on their own initiative, but those have all been unaware of the risk they put their employer in. There are one or two exceptions to the legality within certain sectors with specialized contracts though, but they are heavily regulated. In the end it has convinced me that crunch is indeed mostly a problem with project management or the employer's values/strategy, since we are able to avoid it fine here. On December 16 2020 17:57 KeksX wrote: That sounds like an extreme, north american view on working in software dev(and employment in general). Doesn't really reflect my experience in Germany/Central Europe. to give you an idea how long it has been like this... My grandma's brother ( grand-uncle i guess?) ... was an RPG3 programmer in the 1970s. He changed jobs every couple of years in order to secure large raises in pay and more interesting work. Sometimes, he'd leave a place.. work somewhere else for 18 months .. and then come back to the old place at 50% more pay and more responsibility. Internal direct promotions where your pay goes up 100% rarely happen in 5 years. From age 20 to 30 his pay went up 350%. He went from being the junior tester to programmer/analyst to systems analyst to project manager in 10 years. I've never heard of that raise in pay coupled with increase in responsibility happening for a non-salesman working for one single company. There is 0 chance my income is what it is today if I stayed at the place I worked permanent full time when I graduated 10 years ago. There is also 0 chance I'd be doing the really cool interesting stuff I get to do today. In NA, Job hopping has been around forever. back in the 70s and 80s the elite programmer geeks that did this were called "yuppies". | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12128 Posts
On December 17 2020 00:41 JimmyJRaynor wrote: to give you an idea how long it has been like this... My grandma's brother ( grand-uncle i guess?) ... was an RPG3 programmer in the 1970s. He changed jobs every couple of years in order to secure large raises in pay and more interesting work. Sometimes, he'd leave a place.. work somewhere else for 18 months .. and then come back to the old place at 50% more pay and more responsibility. Internal direct promotions where your pay goes up 100% rarely happen in 5 years. From age 20 to 30 his pay went up 350%. He went from being the junior tester to programmer/analyst to systems analyst to project manager in 10 years. I've never heard of that raise in pay coupled with increase in responsibility happening for a non-salesman working for one single company. There is 0 chance my income is what it is today if I stayed at the place I worked permanent full time when I graduated 10 years ago. There is also 0 chance I'd be doing the really cool interesting stuff I get to do today. In NA, Job hopping has been around forever. back in the 70s and 80s the elite programmer geeks that did this were called "yuppies". I don't know about elsewhere in the Europe, but this is still the only valid thing how to get a bigger payrise in the Cze. Either you have a better offer to negotiate with(and in many instances you have to really leave the company), or you don't and then you're in a very bad position. Exception to the rule is if you know critical things, but that doesn't apply always. | ||
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On December 17 2020 00:41 JimmyJRaynor wrote: to give you an idea how long it has been like this... My grandma's brother ( grand-uncle i guess?) ... was an RPG3 programmer in the 1970s. He changed jobs every couple of years in order to secure large raises in pay and more interesting work. Sometimes, he'd leave a place.. work somewhere else for 18 months .. and then come back to the old place at 50% more pay and more responsibility. Internal direct promotions where your pay goes up 100% rarely happen in 5 years. From age 20 to 30 his pay went up 350%. He went from being the junior tester to programmer/analyst to systems analyst to project manager in 10 years. I've never heard of that raise in pay coupled with increase in responsibility happening for a non-salesman working for one single company. There is 0 chance my income is what it is today if I stayed at the place I worked permanent full time when I graduated 10 years ago. There is also 0 chance I'd be doing the really cool interesting stuff I get to do today. In NA, Job hopping has been around forever. back in the 70s and 80s the elite programmer geeks that did this were called "yuppies". I've actually heard more of people staying in a company than people job hopping; but the main reason I think is that many people choose job safety, at least here in Germany. If you stay in a company for a significant amount of time, it's actually quite hard to get rid of you (you need to screw up badly, or they cash you out) and it's only worse if labor agreements/unions are involved. This changes for startups/gamedev however. Probably because people don't even want to stay in a company for a significant amount of time, or they simply do not exist for that long. So people switch jobs asap to stay relevant and get pay rises. Can't get job safety here, might as well make more money for the higher risk. So yeah; biggest difference here I believe is the option of staying in a company and then becoming "hard to fire" which is causing many people to not constantly switch companies. Safety in exchange for worse pay. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16382 Posts
On December 18 2020 09:31 KeksX wrote: So yeah; biggest difference here I believe is the option of staying in a company and then becoming "hard to fire" which is causing many people to not constantly switch companies. Safety in exchange for worse pay. ah ok... people who opt for safety in exchange for worse pay do that by working for the government in NA. | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12128 Posts
On December 19 2020 00:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote: ah ok... people who opt for safety in exchange for worse pay do that by working for the government in NA. heh, same here  Actually here many government employee are not suitable for many bank products(e.g. morgage). But because they work for the gov, they are allowed because they have the safety... | ||
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On December 19 2020 00:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote: ah ok... people who opt for safety in exchange for worse pay do that by working for the government in NA. Haha, working for the government is a whole different story altogether. For some reason these people manage to make a buttload of money for doing literally nothing sometimes. But they end up with bore out super often. To bring this back on topic however: Companies like Blue Byte (now Ubisoft Mainz/Düsseldorf) actually manage to be that "boring"-type of company where people work 40 hours a week, have decent retirement plans etc and people stay there 10+ years at least, even longer. My company(also gamedev) is a bit of both; we have people with 7+ years under their belt (which is the company's age) but are constantly hiring new people as well. This seems to happen whenever a bigger publisher/more stable money gets involved. So now I'm wondering if this is exclusive to Germany for some reason. CDPR never seemed to have "matured" that way. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16382 Posts
On December 18 2020 09:31 KeksX wrote: I've actually heard more of people staying in a company than people job hopping; but the main reason I think is that many people choose job safety, at least here in Germany. If you stay in a company for a significant amount of time, it's actually quite hard to get rid of you (you need to screw up badly, or they cash you out) and it's only worse if labor agreements/unions are involved. This changes for startups/gamedev however. Probably because people don't even want to stay in a company for a significant amount of time, or they simply do not exist for that long. So people switch jobs asap to stay relevant and get pay rises. Can't get job safety here, might as well make more money for the higher risk. So yeah; biggest difference here I believe is the option of staying in a company and then becoming "hard to fire" which is causing many people to not constantly switch companies. Safety in exchange for worse pay. one thing i'd like to add. for me and most of the guys i know ... its not just about money. it is about seeing the results of your work change businesses and lives. it is about having a big impact on a project. Its about seeing the new software application improve the state of the organization. For example, I worked on a team of 3 to create a "Guard Card" for a small insurance company. It is a credit card sized plastic card that insurance policy holders keep with them. It allows the policy holder with an extended health benefit plan to get instant payment and approval for dental procedures, physiotherapy treatments, and many other medical procedures not covered by Canada's government run healthcare. In the past people had to pay money up front for dental work, physio treatments, eye exams ..etc etc. Then, they spend 30+ minutes filling out a bunch of forms. Then, they wait 3+ weeks to be re-imbursed or declined for their insurance request. With the "Guard Card" it all happens right at the office of the healthcare provider within 2 minutes. The company that offers this card only has about 60 employees. It was really cool being part of a very small team that added new technical capabilities to the products this insurance company offers. Of course, they acquired a giant bunch of new group insurance customers due to this added convenience. In a giant company, where you are on a team of 200 it is difficult to see the impact one has on a project. Working on a team of 3 or less it is really obvious and cool to see. Furthermore, you can build a reputation this way. In a giant team it is always in question who did what. Right now, I'm working my 18th straight day adding new features to a contact tracing application I built in 25 days in May/June. With front line medical staff putting their well being on the line every day... its the least i can do. The IT department of this customer of mine .... is filled with lazy ass pikers .... so they gotta bring in a hired gun to get the job done. Many of the IT staffers resent my work ethic. Dude.. I got no idea how half these salaried IT guys can look the nurses and docs in the eye. Its like a giant department of George Costanzas. To balance this out. My work ethic is not stellar 365 days a year. I probably work my ass off 3 or 4 months a year. Most of the salaried IT staff never work hard. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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Harris1st
Germany6691 Posts
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Manit0u
Poland17185 Posts
Vicarious Visions merged into Blizzard and their studio head got executive VP of development at Blizz. Team 1 (HotS, SC2, WC3R) disbanded and development/support for SC2 halted. D2 remake rumors. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16382 Posts
(1) By ATVI standards, over the least 9 years, Team1 made stuff that brought in $0. (b) When there is a major error the top brass wants to see a big change. W3 Reforged was a major error. It was a giant stain on Blizzard's reputation. These changes are intended to put a halt to the processes and methodologies that created W3:Reforged. meh. | ||
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