SJ Mercury News: Sparking a revolt against overwork

[Newsjock]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/14427996.htm

By Nicole C. Wong
Mercury News

Erin Hoffman's heart was breaking. She hardly got to see her overworked fiance, a video game software engineer who was working 85 hours a week at the industry's premier company, Electronic Arts of Redwood City.

... So Hoffman, then 23, poured out her frustration -- under the pen name EA Spouse -- in a November 2004 blog that resonated so strongly with other video game developers that it helped spark an employee uprising inside EA and six lawsuits for unpaid overtime against three of the industry's most prominent employers.

... Round-the-clock work schedules have long been common among game developers. Some say the overwork epidemic in the video-game industry is spreading to other professions as financial pressures intensify.

The $10.5 billion U.S. games industry is ``kind of like the canary in the coal mine,'' said David Fugate, an independent literary agent who is helping Hoffman find a publisher for her book about overwork in America.

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[regnaD kciN]

1. This is actually a follow-up to an old story...

...from back in 2004.

It wasn't a surprise to me at that time, because I lived through the same sort of experience project after project as a game progammer at Amaze Entertainment during the three years previous.

Game programming, unlike other software development, was considered especially vulnerable to this sort of work environment because there were so many guys in their early 20s, just out of school, who loved computer games and would happily work 60- to 80-hour weeks (sometime even as unpaid interns) to create them. If you weren't willing to endure that schedule, companies said, there were lots of these young gamers who would be more than happy to do so, for less pay or even no pay at all.

Of course, nowadays, it isn't just the game companies where this is commonplace. And, instead of "20-year-old gamers," for the rest of the industry, it's "secretary-wage programmers in Bangalore." :-(

[ixion]

2. this is more than just the gaming vertical in technology

70+ hour weeks are not at all uncommon in the tech sector.


Much of it, IMO, is due simply to poor planning and bogus marketing tactics, both of which wind up on the developers plate as "must have right now", hence the developer tears into the task to complete it.

I have been working in the tech sector as a software engineer for 11 years now, and most of those weeks were 70+ hour weeks. Not because I was behind, but because of the unrealistic expectations placed on us by mgmt and marketing. Between mgmt not taking the time to properly estimate projects, and marketing making promises that cannot be kept, any software engineer in any sector can expect working conditions like these right now.


:-(

[freethought]

3. I was in this sort of work environment eight years ago!

Granted, I wasn't a software designer or engineer, I was a chemist for a environmental services firm. Fifty hours or so a week turned to sixty, then sixty to seventy, then 70 to eighty, and then I broke the eighty hour mark. This went on for about a year. The stress and fatigue began to take its toll resulting in lack of sleep and a shortening of my patience and volatility of my temper. This particular period cost my personal life nearly everything. I would probably be a happily married man if it were not for the workload I was given. The relationship I was in disintergrated into disaster. Last time we saw each other was about 7 or so years ago. I hear she attended law school and has moved forward to a new career.

I do not predict that this sort of situation will improve. Management will always use the spectre of "increased competition" to get the workers to make sacrifices contrary to their interests.

[teryang]

4. I'm in this sort of environment now

People who say they are going to work 40 hours and use the leave they are entitled to get moved out.