“Some weeks I was work ing 100 to 120 hours a week”, says Glenn Watson, former Head Studio Programmer at Gameloft’s New Zealand arm. “Starting at 9:30 AM, going home at 2:30 AM, and then com ing back into the office at 8:30 AM to start work again was not unusual”.
It’s worth pointing out that Glenn Watson is fingering Gameloft Auckland as mistreating employees, specifically, and not the entire organization – though he implies the poor working conditions are a result of directives coming down from the top. Gameloft, a major iOS game publisher, has thousands of employees worldwide (they’re based in France).
(via IndustryGamers)
I’ve done these types of hours whilst employed as a software developer, and so have many other people. What we have in common is that none of us, regardless of skill, has had a >100-hour week that was as productive as our best 80-hour week. If Gameloft Aukland is actually expecting devs to be productive for that amount of time, they should be shamed as much for their stupidity as their malice.
That, or they’re not performing work that would qualify as “engineering.” Or they bill clients by the hour, in which case their clients need to wise up a notch.
Repeated overtime is a failure of management.
This is typical in the gaming industry. Young people enter because it’s cool, but quickly get burnt out and have to work elsewhere. I couldn’t even imagine having a family and working for these companies.
But it’s not going to change until people stop applying to work there.