Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work 90
so sue mee writes "There's a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch mode over 75 years ago: It's the single most expensive way there is to get the work done. When used long-term, Crunch Mode slows development and creates more bugs when compared with 40-hour weeks. Evan Robinson has an article at the International Game Developer's Association site talking about the harsh realities of crunch time, and why the gaming industry should stop using it." From the article: "It is intuitively obvious that a worker who produces one widget per hour during an eight-hour day can produce somewhere between eight and 16 widgets during a 16-hour day. As we've seen, that's the essential logic behind Crunch Mode's otherwise inexplicable popularity. But worker productivity is largely dependent upon recent history."
Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Working longer just doesn't produce more (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy kept us happy with relatively cheap methods - decent coffee, free biscuits/cookies and taking us out to lunch/dinner on a regular basis.
Even under stress times he told us to leave for the day. Interestingly this made people want to stay later and work harder.
At other places I have worked there has been an expectation of "we're near deadline, work an extra few hours every night" - for me this doesn't work. I get less done in more time, I end up sitting watching the clock or reading Slashdot, and resenting staying at work.
The solution to getting things done on time is simple
1) Hire smart people who get along with each other
2) Don't push them, let them work hard for 8 hours and then go home
3) Don't choose arbitary dates for shipping
4) Don't let features creap into the spec.
But managers don't seem to understand this.
Why there's a crunch mode (Score:4, Insightful)
The second reason is that the schedule you've estimated and the schedule the market demands live in two different universes. Management isn't stupid, they KNOW it's costing them more to make you do crunches. But the market says they need a product out in three months and not six. So you're given an insane schedule.
This is silly (Score:5, Insightful)
The cruch is a response to a problem (that may be flawed) but its not the real problem. This is somewhat different from the issues that people like Abbe and Ford were discussing which was the simple problem of extracting sustained and predictable productivity from their workforces.
The difficulty is that the work processes surrounding the writing software appear to be still relatively poorly specified, which is why there are many methodologies -- which attempt to produce sustained and predictable patterns of productivity -- but no silver bullet as yet. A hint to this is that of course Ford was in the vanguard of people who went out of their way, at considerable expense, to enforce a well-specified process behind their output. He had to have that in place before his adjustments to working hours made any sense; the author's analysis of Ford's management style misses this vital aspect out.
Still common, but not intentional... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still common, but not intentional... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
To be more precise, if the development staff need crunch time to finish a software product, then chances are that the management did something wrong.
Crunch mode does not work in the Software industry (Score:4, Insightful)
If a dev team knows they are gonna get stuck on crunch time beforehand regardless, they're gonna put off the crucial issues.
The video game industry is sick. From the devs to the phone monkeys, most companies prefer mandatory OT to sensible deadlines. As far as phone monkeys go, I know EA at least has a 6 month policy for employees. Right when the employee really starts to rock the party, they're cut loose.
Yes, I was a phone monkey in the day. EA could have cut half their support staff if they would have gotten rid of their 6 month policy, and started paying benefits. They would also reap the rewards of a competant workforce.
I hate to say it, but it's going to take unionization, and an industry wide strike to make them see the light. I'm no fan of unions, but this garbage needs to end, for everyones sake. The consumer, the company, and the employee
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not quite seeing it the way the publishers see it - it's not crunch time as in "holy crap, the deadline's coming up, we'd better work overtime!" It's more like a standard schedule. It's actually built in to the project timelines. It's not a surprise. You know that four or more times a year you will be working 80 hours a week, and management knows they can create milestones based on that schedule.
The way this came about most likely was accidental... you often hear stories from days of yore about things like the original Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 being developed in 6 weeks because Atari realized they had the license but had no product for Christmas of that year. The problem is, as even this article points out, crunch time does work in short bursts. The publishers learned this fact, and came to rely on it through a series of these happy accidents, where workers who were otherwise excited about what they were doing were asked to put in extra time on projects to make up for mistakes... and they did it successfully.
Once you start to make it less of an anomaly and more of an everyday thing, though, that's when productivity starts to drop and discontent starts to rise. Management doesn't really see it this way, though; they only do the math and figure that more hours equals more productivity at the same salary level. Obviously, this is poor management, because not only does it not hold true after a certain period of time, but it ignores other inevitable problems, like the incredibly high turnover rate that results... which costs a huge amount of money. (Recruiting a new worker for a full-time, non-management, white-collar position costs approximately $80,000, last I read, including lost productivity during the replacement period, training, new benefits, the actual search and interview process, and other miscellaneous HR costs.)
The game industry is young, as are most of the managers and even CEO's involved. (When I worked for a game publisher, my boss - the CEO of the company - was younger than I was, in his late 20's.) They simply do not have any real management skills or training. They are wasting huge amounts of money without even realizing it, in fact believing they are doing the opposite. They think they have stumbled upon some magic formula for business that nobody else has ever thought of - simply drive your workers as if they're slaves! They don't know that everybody else has already tried this and figured out it doesn't work.
Eventually, as the industry matures, this will likely change... though by how much is anyone's guess, as it's a culture at this point. But already you're seeing quite a bit of consolidation as poorly-managed companies get merged into larger, better-managed companies - or simply go out of business. But even heavyweights like EA obviously have their problems, and once the growth spurt we've seen over the past decade or so subsides, they will have to deal with their management issues too. (If they're smart, they'll do it now, before it's too late.)
Crunch mode is inevitable... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody will pay enough for software that isn't done half-assed, so you go with half the resource you need and slave-drive them to get it out when the customer wants.
If you push back at the customer, and say "you can have it in twice the time or at twice the cost", then they will just buy from someone else who accepts the constraints.
Also, if your company is publically-traded or has more than a few investors, their profits must continually grow at a continually growing rate. You can't just keep raising the cost of your sofware, so you need to keep the staffing levels low, so they spend all their time on death marches.
Clueful management can't save you... ours knows the stuff we're doing is a bad idea, but it's either that or go out of business now. At least if they hold on for a while then they might be able to cash-out.
If anyone believes there are software development jobs, anywhere in the world, not held to these constraints, let me know... I will sleep with whomever I have to to get one.
Re:Why there's a crunch mode (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Crunch mode is inevitable... (Score:3, Insightful)
It does? Funny, we must be in different markets. The market I'm in sometimes demands a superior product, or a lower price, or a quicker delivery. Those requirements are generally fulfilled by maximally efficient production: more quality and quantity produced for less time and money.
Now, if the market you're in somehow demands products completed well beyond schedule, or way over cost, or ridden with bugs, that's a curious challenge to current economic theory. You should probably get someone to study it.
Re:Obvious (Score:1, Insightful)
I've seen it done both ways -- managers make the schedule without consulting developers, and managers make the schedule with the development team, and it doesn't seem to affect the crunch rate either way.
The only real way to avoid crunch is to be working on such a popular game, that's already made so much money, and continues to make so much money, that you can "ship it when you're ready." And you still crunch at the end.
This problem didn't start from nothing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly I'm surprised no other slashdotter's pointed it out: Programmers want to be 'leet'.
I remember starting to learn how to program about 9 years ago, I used to brag to friends about how I stayed up all night coding - a few people were even impressed by the fact I hadn't slept in 48 hours and made this cool little game.
Now we're all getting older. Young programmers (IMO) will tell any employer "Oh yeah, I can code for days on end, I'm a leet code haxor". And even if a young programmer tells a potential employer that he can't work 50+ hours a week, the next young programmer that comes for his interview will.
I have a feeling upper management of these game companies know this and exploit it to their own ends.
ALL programmers have to wise up and realize that their best code comes not after staying awake for 50 hours while running on 4 cans of Jolt cola, but after a relaxing sleep (it's a fact!).
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
When management asks for that kind of an estimate, the only reasonable, professional, response is, "I don't know, how long can you give me to research the problem to determine the scope?". Management needs to accept that, and be prepared to respond if the estimate comes back "too long".
In games development, (and plenty of other fields) management doesn't accept that answer. The deadline is set at next Thanksgiving. It's impossible for them grasp the concept that some things can't be estimated.
Management's "solution"-- just push as hard as possible to get what they want, and punish the failures. Reality intrudes regardless, games get delayed or features dropped. Sane people would plan and prioritize features. If task X can't get done in time T, either that feature gets dropped or another, lower priority, feature is dropped to give time to finish task X. There is no "work twice as many hours so you can get both done".
Similarly for unanticipated stuff that comes. Change happens. A perfectly reasonable estimate that can be agreed on by multiple programmers can turn out to be wrong when something else comes up. It's no use railing against fickle customers or glitchy hardware and libraries. But that's another essay.
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Huge and steady supply of warm bodies and marketing-driven deadlines being prioritised over software stability. It is cheaper to work star-eyed programmers into the ground and discard them at the end when the overall quality isn't a priority. It's disgusting.