Why crunch mode doesn't work: 6 lessons

poopinmymouth

http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php

Great article from the latest IGDA newsletter. My favorate quote, and the one I have found to be true first hand.
"They (managers) crunch because they have learned only the importance of appearing to do their best to instead of really of doing their best."

Scott Ruggels

One of my old Bosses, and a very smart man.

Scott

jzero

Oh my GOD. It has a freaking EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

That's where the author sums it all up in an easily-readable chunk at the front, so that those who are so high up on the chain that they are too busy, fast-moving or illiterate to actually bother to read the article. Shows you who the real target of the article is.

Hey, but he gets out the '21 hour day == legally drunk' quip in there. Very helpful. And I love it that most of his backing evidence seems to be from the turn of the previous century, i.e. they already figured this out 100 years ago.

/jzero

Kevin Johnstone

That was a bloody good read... I doubt it will make a damn bit of difference though. Afterall, its merely common sense with decorative prose.

So it is still what it has always been, common sense.

I myself know it, I have known it for years and I still periodically do longer hours without being asked to in the hopes of stealing a march on deadlines.

Daz

Agreed. We could have a gazillion of these articles written with increasingly decorative prose. It doesn't change the fact that it's just us lot that care or read them, not the executives that need to.

Badge

makes me feel less guilty about wanting to sleep until 10 mins before i to clock in

PaK

As soon as you have acrunch mode it means your managers and schedulers have a lot to learn about managing and scheduling.

My favorite was pro-active crunch time at my last workplace: "let's crunch now so we dont have to crunch later"

What a fuckin' asshole he was.

-R

kleinluka

PaK loves his old boss

Daz

[ QUOTE ]
"let's crunch now so we dont have to crunch later"


[/ QUOTE ]

AHAHAH that rocks my world PaK. If I believed in internet signatures, I'd have that one!

Slayerjerman

You'd be surprised how many times ive heard that said "lets crunch now so we dont have to later..."

And everytime it turns out that the early crunch was just to prepare for the later crunch.

Worst part of it all is when your lead/boss makes you feel like shit for leaving early after a 10hour+ day. I had this one lead that would make rather rude comments as you left out the door after already doing more than your fair share of work and OT. Finally I just gave up even trying to please that prick. And you know what, im steadily employed and he is working temp gigs now.

Joke's on him.

poopinmymouth

[ QUOTE ]
"let's crunch now so we dont have to crunch later"

[/ QUOTE ]


yup, heard that one at my last job.

RageUnleashed

Damn good read, thanks poop. I ran into such a situation at my last internship. The "boss" wanted us to work 40+ hour weeks for free, time management was shot to hell, and the checkpoints were never getting met because everyone had to work other jobs, or do school, or both.

Lore

Since I have never experienced crunch time personally, the best equivalent I can relate is overtime.

I used to work at a merchandise warehouse with a average of 10 hour days and had worked a week of 72 hours during the Christmas time of 2000. Despite the fact that it was labor it did seem like I was dreaming and time seemed to have passed faster. Now, the only reason why I got so much overtime was because Second shift was never trained to do the task I did on First. That and they didn’t have enough workers on Second to do the tasks that First shift couldn’t get done. So it came down to lack of management of resources and the willingness to manage those resources properly.

I did volunteer for the majority of that overtime, and the good insensitive was I was getting paid time and a half. Everything has price or a karmic reaction

oXYnary

So what would happen upon them saying such you printing a copy of the summary and leaving it on their desk?

Mark Dygert

WOW thats a GREAT artical!

While I haven't worked crunch mode in the industry "yet". THe company I work for now likes to put everyone on 9hr days 7 days a week from Dec1-Feb1. After the first week or two just about everyone is brain dead and the "dumb answers" everyone is handing out just to get to the next call sky rockets. Which makes people call back again to get a good answer that actually fixes the issue. So we end up having to take 3,500 calls instead of 1,500 because most people call in 2-4 times, Instead of haivng thier issue solved on the 1st call.

I understand we have alot of customers to please and alot calling in after christmas, but really its horrible CS to hustle them off the phone because you know they will end up calling back in, and getting more pissed. But then the mgrs toss little parties and celebrate the numbers "yeah we helped 3500 people today!" no we didn't, we helped 1500 2-4 times over and over again...

ndcv

I think this article is different from most I've read in its citing. Most of them just accept it as common sense, which however true is not very persuasive; this one actually cites scientific studies. That puts it into a different ballpark (a more effective one).

joolz8000

Great read- just passed it on to a few managers.

oXYnary

anonymously I hope?

hawken

interesting but hard to read on a screen thats 1440 pixels wide, which is way beyond the 468 pixel reading width recommendation.

Asthane

hawken: How so? If you're running at that res, you should be used to pages that load using the whole thing...? I'm using 1600x1200 and it doesn't look any different than any other page-- like these forums for example.

?

Mark Dygert

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interesting but hard to read on a screen thats 1440 pixels wide, which is way beyond the 468 pixel reading width recommendation.

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Hold down ctrl and use the mouse wheel to enlarge or shrink the text I had to enlarge it to read it =(