Results Oriented Work Enviroment VS Clock Punching
mod
So I've been pondering working environments lately it seems to boil down to 2 or 3 types (possibly more)?
ROWE or Results Oriented Work Environment
The hours are flexible it doesn't matter when or where the work gets done as long as it is finished on time and up to standard.
Clock Punching
Your traditional work day/week 9-5 with scheduled breaks. 40 hrs no more no less, unless its requested or mandated. When the whistle blows everyone drops what they're doing and goes home.
Hybrid
A place that still holds to some of the traditional work schedule but is either transitioning or incorporating several components of ROWE.
ROWE or Results Oriented Work Environment
The hours are flexible it doesn't matter when or where the work gets done as long as it is finished on time and up to standard.
Clock Punching
Your traditional work day/week 9-5 with scheduled breaks. 40 hrs no more no less, unless its requested or mandated. When the whistle blows everyone drops what they're doing and goes home.
Hybrid
A place that still holds to some of the traditional work schedule but is either transitioning or incorporating several components of ROWE.
- What kind of work environment do you work in currently? Pros/Cons?
- Which kind would you prefer to work in?
- Would you switch from your preferred environment to another?
- If so what would be the deciding factor (creative freedom, stability, AAA title)?
Replies
- We have "core hours" from 10-4. So long as you put your 8 in, and are there between those times, you're solid.
- Breaks are up to you, and people are typically responsible about it. If you take smoke breaks often, or take a long lunch, you extend your work day to reflect time away from work.
Pros:
You're not sweating getting in early every morning.
You can, typically, schedule around appointments/out of work tasks rather easily.
Cons:
It's very easy to abuse this. One irresponsible person could force management to rethink policies at any time.
2. I definitely prefer Hybrid. It gives teams a solid amount of time to work together or have their meetings, while still enabling people to have a quasi-relaxed schedule.
3. After tasting a Hybrid work environment, it would take some adjusting if I were to switch to a Clock Punching environment, but I certainly wouldn't turn down work because of it.
4. All of the above?
I read about flexible hours and drool with envy.
1/2)Our company is generally a clock punching culture, but I've been able to swing it to being hybrid for our team only.
3/4) Yes! Location, AAA title, and working with talented and driven artists that will push me to get better.
elaborate on this ?
http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2008/thoughts-on-googles-20-time/
I've never heard of any game studio using this as a standard weekly allocation like google does.
clarification: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/googles-20-percent-time-in-action.html
I have heard of studios having in-house game competitions, using a couple of weeks or days of studio time, to gather new ideas and inspire creativity though.
One problem with using a strict ROWE model is that it may encourage your employees to work excessive amounts of time to meet deadlines. This means that it'll give your managers a distorted view of how much time it actually takes to complete tasks. Leading to a deadly cycle of ever-shortening deadlines.
I've worked for other THQ studios before and it was way more flexible. Core hours of 10am - 4pm and even then flexible based on how much time you put in which was 90% of the time voluntary and then you could come in later in the day due to being at the office till midnight or later the day before. We also used SCRUM which worked nicely.
EA had core hours but I can't remember what they were. We didn't crunch a ton but at times it seemed you'd have more work than time. Not bad though except for the random occasion.
Seems like there's always going to be overtime no matter where or what. Guess that's just one of the common events in game development.
I wouldn't want to work any other way. You should never be punished for being late if you still are there when people need you and you get your shit done on time. I hate the idea of being 5 min late and getting shit for it.
This is a misconception. I've worked projects completely without crunch. And they were commercial and critical sucesses. It is dependent on how much risk there is on a project, how good you are at your job, and how good the other employees are (especially managers!)
So true...
I don't mind working on things dedicated to the goal, especially if I'm really into what I'm working on, which is a good 99% of the time.
I think its important to rule a line under what you're working on, step away, go home, and come back refreshed. its easy to burn yourself out if you just work and work on something till its done- yeah sometimes thats needed but you'll have a more reliable energy amount if you have regulated work and home time
my new job
God that is horrendous,fuck that. Im sorry but crunch like that signals a massive failure in management. I think that the mentality that there is always going to be crunch or overtime no matter what is severely wrong. A well run project should not require 12 hour mandatory overtime sessions.
I get paid for it in the form of time off. In Germany i believe you cant force people to do overtime without compensation. I wish America had similar labor laws.
We have small scope stuff though, and we put alot of effort into making sure that no-one has to work overtime.
The silver lining of the clock punching is getting paid for overtime, but in my opinion it doesn't come close to being worth it in the end.
My job now is a big improvement, core hours from 10-4 and instead of a requirement on hours worked, there is a big focus on getting work done on time. Some people opt to go home early and work from home, and some people opt to work remotely 1 day a week.
You may be surprised how much extra work gets done when employees aren't shackled to their desks. Because the employees feel well taken care of we often come in monday morning to find a new feature that a programmer decided to put in over the weekend, from the comfort of his own home, on his own time, just because he wanted to do it.
we do but it's pretty easy to be classified as exempt LULZ
I got paid overtime at Mythic, I think it was because I was hired after the EA spouse incident. I believe we also accrued time off by hours worked... combine that with the American way of not taking time off and we hit our 200 hour PTO ceiling pretty quickly.
Here in Iceland: 10-4 flex hours, 8 hour days with a paid 30 min lunch break. So far no crunch or overtime, but icelanders are really relaxed about hours. Every 6 hours overtime is an extra vacation day, starting already at 24 (though I negotiated 34 for this year).
I've always been more efficient when my personal time is respected. Working overtime, even a few days makes me cranky, and really makes me feel disrespected. I have a personal life, a relationship, and stuff to take care of at home, and even when it's paid or overtime is given, I feel resentful for losing that recharge time. Especially since often in games you have periods of doing fun stuff, interspersed with tech or tedium that can really bog you down if you're going 10+ hours a day on.
In Germany it's very *very* easy to report worker right violations, and companies do not want to risk the fines. It was vaguely suggested (by the person working the overtime) that toward the end they might want to come in on Sundays instead of Saturdays since everything in Germany is closed on Sundays, and it makes doing errands on the weekend impossible if you lose your Saturday, and every manager was very emphatic with NO workers even in the building on a Sunday for fear of heavy fines.
I believe they can write a certain number of hours overtime into the contract, in mine it was 5, so I just did an extra hour per day during the week during our "crunch" period, and then went home, and never came in on Saturdays. My immediate leads weren't super happy about it, but there was nothing that could be done legally as the law was on my side. When firing a person in Germany you have to have crazy documentation of reasons why, so they can't just lay me off for the implied reason of not doing unpaid overtime, without any legitimate documented violations.
Rules like this is a big reason why i've never worked a single day at an American game dev studio despite the fact im American. I really wish we had proper labor laws in the states. Every job ive worked at has not had the soul crushing/unapid overtime as friends of mine have experienced at U.S countries, Last job i did total six hours of overtime and at my current i have had some but the guidelines given really reduced the impact of the extra work. Basically 24 hours over 6 weeks and i got to choose how i did it. So i worked the time over weeks with an extra hour a day,sometimes two over this time span. And being that its Germany its paid time in the form of vacation which ill be using for an easter vacation at the end of a milestone.
As for American studios, JO420 - it's really just a matter of where you work. Some studios are practically slave labor, while others certainly take care of their people.
"less than 20k, but i only work 20hrs a week (at least according to the contract. in reality it's more like 40-50hours)"
I rather prefer getting paid 1.5x my hourly rate for overtime as opposed to only vacation time (I got both while working at EA)
At 343i we have core hours of 10-5, but things are very flexible.
I think it's the best of both worlds. I've worked on a full ROWE system and I think it can be hard for some people to adapt to (and not fall into the "I'm going to be lazy until the last minute" hole).
Also with smaller teams I think it's important to ensure people are always in the office at some point together. It's hard to work with someone on something, or even collaborate and share information, if they run drastically different hours than you do.
24 days of vacation!?
8 hours of overtime = one day of vacation!?
Good lord man!
Are you saying that in shock that it's too little? Or too much?
In the UK you are entitled to 28 days of vacation per year (that's including bank holidays), and at our company, 6 hours overtime = one day of vacation. Although obviously that may vary per company policy and whatever contract you signed.
Agree with this, even for bigger teams. It can be a right pain if someone you're relying on isn't available just because the "flexible hours" means they can come in or leave up to 2 hours before or after you.
They say Americans dont like to take time off but when you try it,it isnt half bad.
But remember socialisim is evil
yea, but when you call it 3 weeks of time off a year, it sounds so much better! (that's what they call it)
My deal isn't all that abnormal either. I checked in with HR earlier today actually to see how much time I have left, and I have 6 sick hours, and 24 vacaction hours. So, I hope I don't get sick! I can't take a full day off.
But when your out of work the x factor kicks in,aka labor laws. I think if my last would have een in the U.S i would have been fucked. In Denmark when i lost my job i recieved 3 months of salary,all of my unused vacation and was paid the month of salary i was owed that my company could not pay due to bankruptcy. That money pretty much bought me the time to get my affairs in order,get a portfolio ready and look for work as well being able to stay in my apartment,pay my bills and be able to buy food.
I was able to find work but in the absolute last moment before things would have gotten hairy. But if it wasnt for that who knows where id be here today,i know i pat alot more taxes back at home but when you lose your job and those safety nets kick in you start appreciate that money you spent. Same for healthcare,i also got real sick in those three months and was still able to go see a doctor free at charge.
it's another one of those depends moments, I'm not sure what I can say about my EA severance package but it was pimp.
oh snap, I think this thread has derailed!
EDIT* But it's a job that I'm more than happy to have right now..
Core Hours are 10 to 5 and you must put in 8 hours of actual work. You can choose to work earlier or later as long as your 8 hours contain the time between 10 and 5. We have one hour unpaid lunch and two fifteen minute paid breaks.
We have a concept called Focus Time that we shift into from time to time (usually at the end of a milestone) to help keep us from having to crunch. The goal is simply work as diligent and streamline as we can. During focus time we are encouraged to keep IM and Web Surfing to work related task only (as everyone knows, this can be a huge killer of productivity). Regular 8 hr day and everyone is asked to go to lunch and be back at the same time 11:45 to 12:45. The reason for this is to make sure that everyone is available and no one gets road blocked by dependencies. We also get our two fifteen minute paid breaks that we can use as we please (for me this is my polycount time).
We do crunch from time to time but this is usually for vital checkpoint deadlines and is more geared towards making sure everything really works to spec and what can we do to make things better. As lead, I do my best to keep my team from crunching. As long as they work hard on the assigned task and maintain their deadlines, they shouldn't have to crunch. On those rare occasions that the project requires some crunch time I will send the character team home (as long as they don't have any individual gating task) and will stay myself to put out any fires that might pop up. Thanks to focus time I have only had to crunch 3 or 4 times in the last 2 years. Not bad.
The only thing that I don't have here that I've had at all of the other studios I've worked at is the 10 to 4 core hours. One extra hours isn't that big a deal. Oh! and I would kill to work 10 hrs 4 days a week. I love 3 day weekends.
- BoBo
Yea I can't read the thread now without reading cock punching... ha!
And the beer is good too
sold.