40-hour work week
polycounter lvl 17
Motionographer just posted an article about finding work/life balance and the importance of limited (but highly efficient) work hours. The article is based on a blog post from a Microsoft engineer/project manager who used to pride himself on 100-hour weeks before realizing such efforts were unsustainable and unproductive.
http://motionographer.com/2011/10/12/worklife-the-40-hour-work-week/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/21/40-hour-work-week-at-microsoft.aspx
http://motionographer.com/2011/10/12/worklife-the-40-hour-work-week/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/21/40-hour-work-week-at-microsoft.aspx
Replies
I've heard lots of people say they've been in the industry long enough to understand that you leave work at work and that the time spent there is more than enough to satisfy the drive of making art. I tend to agree, there are more things than just work that one needs to experience if you want to be a well rounded individual. Not only at work or in your art, but socially, health and what not. More often i find that taking the time to unwind from work, dedicate time to family or just read a book gives me more perspective and a fresh mind to tackle things at work. With that said... work time is work time, and i do go beyond the 40 hr week to a 50 hr week. But being a lead requires the extra time to plan and be diligent in assigning tasks to fit a schedule. But 50 is more than enough, except when we have deliveries or ramping up to wrap up a game.
Just my 2 cents tho.
If your career-defining project forces you to work 80hr+ weeks, then you're defining your career as 80hr+ weeks.
Fuck that.
I'd rather have shorter hours at a no-name studio doing Facebook games than 80 hour work weeks at a big name studio. I have a life, it's precious to me, and you'd better give me a goddamn good reason to be cutting into my private time with work. That goddamn good reason is called overtime pay, and even then it's a stretch to call it a goddamn good reason.
So don't voluntarily work overtime - that leads me to a question: say you're already 4 days ahead on your schedule and then the whole studio goes into crunch - has anyone successfully argued out of it?
A little crunch is ok every once in a while but if it becomes chronic then something is wrong and the place is probably horribly mismanaged on many levels.
Which is a good question, one of my teachers told me that it's a good idea to hand in your work atleast 3 days before it due, incase something happens or changes are needed, they can be done with a 3 day gain, which apparently is a holy-grail in the game industry, or so I was told, so you don't bring down the whole team or end up being the bottle-neck.
Question is, if you do so, and it lightens your load during crunch-time considerably, what is the etiquette in this area? Do you help the other people out in your team, or do you kick off early and keep to the 'schedule', even if there isn't much to do if you kept 3 day ahead of your projects?
80+ is just stupid, that is just asking to be burnt out, and to lose your Girl and social life in the process too.
If you were working on a Farmville clone, sure, you'd be up out of your chair a second before end of business; but if you were working for Valve and you knew those extra hours would make the game that much awesomer, wouldn't you do it? That's what I meant.
nah, my entire experience has been working on games I thought where pretty bad ass
Nope, I wouldn't.
I have no allegiance or loyalty to any company who wants to make me work 16 hour days. My life is more important than the success of some company's game, thank you, so they could take their stupid work hours and shove 'em.
I'm in my mid-twenties. I'm not going to waste my best years fucking off in some office building on a shitty project that's going to line somebody else's pockets.
If anything it would probably be the farmville clone company pushing their 1 artist to do the work of 5? Budgets being tight the company being small and new?
Personally I don't think it matters how big the company is, just how well its run. If someone wants to spend 80hrs per week, that's fine just don't hold it against the guys that get the same level of work done in 40hrs because that's what they're paying you for and that's probably what they expect you to work...
I personally would pump a lot more into the former.
And I take my life, and my personal time, very seriously.
Most research seems to come to the conclusion that effects of overtime work will show signs of degrading work quality after only TWO weeks of continuous overtime.
Assuming a 60h week, you'll end up actually doing a 35h week because your productivity, mental capacity, memory and focus significantly drop.
This is because we do solve quite a lot of our problems when sleeping, it where we process the data gained over the day and learn from it subconsciously. So since overtime takes away your sleep and/or spare time it also takes away your productivity and ability to do the work the best you can.
In addition to that it causes a lot of health problems, like high blood pressure, insomnia and in some cases signs of depression.
No so called dream project is ever worth having all those problems with your personal health, your social life and your work itself. Overtime does not solve problems, it creates them. Don't let yourself being forced when the management screws up.
if you want to read about it just google it, or check those references:
http://www.brighthub.com/office/human-resources/articles/120237.aspx
http://ascelibrary.org/coo/resource/1/jcemd4/v131/i6/p734_s1
That's a bit of a sweeping statement, you could easily not be personally invested in Christmas racer 4 but still be a complete professional, friendly and helpful, someone who gets on well with the team.
"Stockholm Syndrome: Usually refers to junior developers who are loving this hardcore crunch-laden life that is being imposed upon them because suffering gives meaning to their existence."
"Give us 200% or we have to let you go"
Trying to quantify your creative energy in some half-assed empirical way like that isn't just bs, it alienates you from understanding the benefits of a properly efficient and productive cycle. You lose perspective of time, and your creativity suffers.
Management doesn't understand this because this sort of thing is foreign to them and impossible to communicate most of the time, so they accept the cycle of overtime/overwork as a new standard and honestly wonder why the last team of employees were such burnouts who couldn't 'step up their game' or something after they offered to work 80+ hours.
totally agree dude. I would never work at a studio where overtime isnt payed. That ll suck. An even if its payed I ll try to avoid it as much as I can. And dont get me wrong I love my job. Really like it, I do my 8 hours sometimes 9/10 depending if its a rush, but I dont fuck around I am productive. so Staying overtime bugs me. and yeah in the end nothing is more important than free time and going outside.
I actually researched that book. Seems it really only works for people in managerial positions. Mostly has you limiting meetings, phone calls, and emails that will save you a couple hours a day.
There's no way to trim how long it takes to make an epic badass piece of art... only your skills.
80 hours of work a week is tard. So much fail.
+1
I work between 40 and 45 hours. If a problem really interests me, I might spend my own time on it at home, learning, researching.
And sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do if you're a responsible person and stay longer. But in my case this is voluntarily and nobody swings the whip. If it were like that, fuck it.