bit of a boring question for industry guys

benclark

I'm currently trying my hardest to speed up my work so I'll have a chance of landing a job.

I'm just wondering, outside of crunchtime, how many hours of your typical working day are spent in meetings/discussions etc and how many are actually spent in front of the computer doing your thang?

cheers for any info

Rwolf

typical 9-5 job
1 meeting a week 15min-30min

Gav

Same. I usually run hours of 8:30 - 5:30, but that's personal choice.

adam

10-6 for me, sometimes until 7. When I'm doing OT its usually 10-10PM that I'm in.

Meetings? Probably once a day, no longer than an hour no shorter than 20 minutes.

JO420

8-4 or 10-6 depending on how much rest i had the night before. Meetings,once a week 20 minutes or so. Overtime,well all ive done was 2 hours extra a day for a week in my 1 year ive been at my current job.

Xenobond

7am-5pm with an hour meeting on Fridays and another much shorter one later that day. Then once every couple of weeks a conference call with Shanghai. -.-
Occasional meetings 33% chance for one each week.

TWilson

The amount of meetings you go to is of course dependent on what your job description is. There's been times when I have an hour of meetings a day and times when I have none for weeks.

Typical work hours are 10-6/7. Most places have what they call core hours. Core hours would be between 10 and 5. So if you want to do 8-5 you can or if you want to do 10-7 you can. And a good studio never mandates overtime (they might ask politely sometimes). Sometimes you just know it's time work late though.

MoP

Seniors tend to have more meetings than juniors or regular artists. Amount of meetings will depend on your job title, the company you work for, and the stage the project is at.

EarthQuake

Meetings suck and are for the gays, and level designers.

Farfarer

Usually the full 9-5 (with an hour for lunch, of course although I tend to work through it for lack of anything else to do) is spent infront of the PC.

Crunch time is as needed (usually ends up maybe 2 nights per milestone working 'til 9-11pm, sometimes later, although we've not had any for months).

Maybe one day a month we'll spend an afternoon doing a playthrough to show off what's been added, pick up on what needs improving and keep up to speed on what everyone's working on.

Kevin Johnstone

I average out at 10hours a day, 1hr a week in meetings, 1-2 hours in playtests

firestarter

I don`t know that there is a `standard`meeting quota if thats what you`re after, it`s been different in every studio I`ve been to. Most common I suspect is sub-teams (Env/Char/Design/Code) individually meeting once per week, whilst leads and producers meet pretty much when `required`. Edit, actually code and design are at it all the time...

Worthy of note also is Agile development, notably Scrum and that`s a very short meet everyday http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29

aesir

Yea, I've been at a studio that did the scrum whiich was 15-30 minutes every morning.

Also did a longer meeting at a different studio once a week that was an hour or more depending.

Geezus

Typical 8 hour day. I normally do the 8-4 or 9-5 (core hours 10-4).
Meetings vary. We have a "squad" meeting everyday....which is about 6 of us that work together on the same environment. Company meeting once a week....with beer...MMmmmmMmm. Project meeting once every two weeks. Aaannddd random meetings with design sprinkled throughout the month. Design meetings are usually the longest, and the rest average about 10 to 30 minutes.

Joao Sapiro

whoa, wait, is per a male ? wtf ?

Joshua Stubbles

7:30-4:30 usually (1hr lunch), but I end up staying past 5 a lot. We have 1on1 meetings with our leads each week, and a small team meeting each week. For milestone reviews, we have company wide meetings in our teamspace. With BEER :D

doc rob

Per128 wrote: »

stuff

Yeah, it's called "working with other humans" and it's how big projects ship.

And, yes, working with humans sucks most of the time, and is usually an exercise in stupifying inefficiency. We need a freaking borg implant, that's what I say. But until then, it's still the only way to make a big, complex game.

Making less big, less complex games seems like it would be more creatively rewarding, but I don't have the experience to back that up.

Oh, and Re: OP:
8-7 for the last six months (about 55 hour weeks). 9-6 for most of the 6 years previous to that.

Kevin Johnstone

doc:surely you know by now that when Per makes a long post it's just to push buttons
and go against the grain for kicks?

He doesn't mean it!

The weird thing is that he's the most relaxed laid back artist I've ever met, when he was over
here for a while, Kirsten and I would be out the car, halfway up the steps to the cinema
and he'd still be sitting in the car aimlessly reflecting on what foot he normally
sets down first, 'hmm , now is it normally the left, or is it the right.... this needs some thought'

ohnein

My 8 hour day is usually 10-6pm - overtime is usually 8am to 2am. I'm rarely ever in a meeting unless we've got some crazy short term deliverable.

Irreal

LoL, per's comment really hit home for me. I could have typed it myself. okay, so i've drank one 2 many beers and probably shouldn't be on polycount at this time but still. oh man, the stories i could tell. what was the original question?

pliang

As it may even be included in an employee handbook...the usual core hours are around 9 or 10 till 5/6PM...least for me, meetings are rare for someone my current level unless there are updates to the deliverables...

For me I spend about an hour for lunch and chat with upper management sometimes...occasionally pushing for incentives like DVDs, training to get people motivated as employees...

When I'm in front of the screen which has a tendency to go BSOD once a few days...I usually have to check my email frequently which are sometimes clogged with irrevent shit from the chattier coworkers.

So far it been like that for half a year now.

killingpeople

you guys obviously love meetings and talking.

easterislandnick

I work 9-6 with an hour for lunch. Usually about 2 hours of meetings a day. I'm a senior so I have to organize 5 other people and sort out procedures, time ups etc. The higher up you get the less modeling/animation you get to do but please don't bitch about meetings, If we didn't have them at our place we would be far less organized and it would mean big overtime. I have just finished running a team of 28 juniors on the biggest release our company has known and the most over time any one did was 17 hours in the last month of development. Thats 17 hours in a whole month and it was paid at time and a half! There is no reason for overtime in out industry apart from bad planning, it's a despicable working practice that people take for granted as 'just part of the industry'. I ensure my guys are on schedule every day and the only way of doing that is meetings.....

fr0gg1e

7:30 - 4:30 I am an early bird. Daily scrum meetings...Must mean I am a huge vaseline consumer.

I chit chat while working sometimes. I smoke too, so that is another couple of breaks in the day and I love coffee that is another excuse for breaks. 2 years I didn't do overtime (nor the artists who were on those 2 projects with me) as well and I am ahead of my schedule most of the time (or just in time when I am not). Now that I am lead, I have no plan to allow any overtime in my team too, I would rather be fired than make my team pay for bad practices / bad planning / irrealistic schedules, especially if I raise flags as soon as something smells fishy.

I would love to remote work tho (that would mean not being lead tho but that would be fine in my book). I am sure I would be even more productive. I would probably work longer, but if I ever want to go fora walk to change my mind and think about my work (happens a lot when i am not at work) noone would frown at me, and I love that idea. I just can,t concentrate long enough to stay 8 hours in front of a computer straight. even with 1 hour lunch in between. I must have some attention deficit disorder. But hey, that never busted me so far.

Justin Meisse

normally: 9:30am - 6:30am an hour lunch and maybe a 30min hacky sack break at 4 and maybe a few hours on the weekend cuz I can't stay away from the office.

last few weeks I've been working until I have a certain amount of work done = if I can get x amount done a day I'll be done by tuesday kinda stuff.

oh yeah, I've taken off since Wednesday and I'm feeling antsy, can't wait to get back to work tomorrow.

greenj2

...and once again I find myself in awe of Per128's brilliance. Sir, you are the Rembrandt of rambling, I tip my hat to you.

Meetings are funny things, most projects I've worked on either have far too many or far too few. I think one meeting per week is a good idea, keep them brief and team specific.

Armanguy

Is there anything you guys do to keep yourself focused while working,

I recently got a bunch of contract work at once and i want to complete them on time but it seems impossible to keep up without getting exhausted, is there any tricks you guys have to keep you in the zone and working decent hours, i usually stay up until 4 am working on my stuff? is that a normal time to goto bed for any of you freelancers?