The Jimquisition: Crunch

Jim, you are my angrier, braver, more articulate self. Thank God for you.

Ian Seale

Apparently he wrote more and chose to insult everybody ever: <a href="http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/18/recruiting-giants-2/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/18/recruiting-giants-2/</a>

Promoting economic slavery... Pathetic and sad.

I worked at a casino once as a slot technician. The property was closing, but they took us slot techs to an adjacent property to work on a huge project there. They wanted me working 12-16 hours a day and 6-7 days a week, and they made it clear that nothing I did would earn a transfer away from the closing property. So they wanted me to work 72-112 hours a week for months and then were going to fire me and all the other slot techs anyway. Being a young person, there was no way that I was about to dedicate my freaking life to this project, and definitely not when the unemployment office was the inevitable end result. So I quit on the spot. "Crunch" indeed. Fuck them, and fuck that mentality.

Well, that 10101 lasted all of 2 hours

JMC

Just yes to all of the YouTubes. Also, The $10,098 was annoying and the opportunity to make your monthly a binary number was too great.

JMC

Just started Patronizing you because of this episode. I recently graduated from a pretty good college, and this sort of mentality was rampant there among the pre-medical students. People would brag about how many credits they were taking, how many hours they crammed for this exam, and how little they had slept that week. I always fucking hated that mentality, and I wish I could have argued against it as adeptly as you did here. Thanks for this, Jim!

This one has certainly earned my patronage (that sounds like a Italian Renaissance Aristocrat so I apologize). I really do worry about the tech industry and a strange labor view, in which unions or worker's rights are seen as taboo. The whole idea that it is about art when someone else is signing your checks and would love some free unpaid overtime is crazy. I wonder if there is a large gaming company with good labor practices that is seeing the results of treating workers as human beings, as treating them like disposable robots cannot be a sustainable model.

So.... They're making commercials for cars that are pretty much solely targeted at MGS fans... even though most MGS fans are currently thoroughly unhappy with them? I dunno whether that's ballsy or stupid.

Naterkix

Holy crap. As a musician who works a day job as a QA tester, I spent half of this video exclaiming "Fuck you!" at Alex St. John. And I'm lucky as far as people in my job go, I actually get overtime pay unlike some of the developpers I've worked with. Still, it's honestly depressing to see people overworking themselves because something changed or broke at the last minute or because a deadline got moved ("Hey we'd really like to see this feature done tomorrow instead of in two weeks, thanks!"). Also wanted to say, it makes me happy to hear that you are learning to manage yourself and take breaks, because it's something many people I know, as well as myself, struggle with, and it's encouraging to hear of successes, big or small. Take care of yourself, Jim, you deserve it!

In my experience, the crunch comes on the heels of the idea that more features are better than fewer, but more well-built ones. The accumulated technical debt means that development grinds to a near halt, prompting the crunch as a way to speed it back up. The underlying disconnect seems to be the fact that coding is more than just manufacturing, but rather a creative process. I have actually had the"if I order a car"analogy thrown at me by these people. And no, I'm not in games development.

Regarding konami getting into bed with Ford I had to double check my calendar to ensure it wasn't April 1st! That shit is laughable AT BEST!

It fascinates me how in any other industry if you can code, you're treated with a lot of respect and many places try to cater to your skills by offering laid back atmospheres, strong work/life balance, and treat you like an adult (pay you what you're worth). Gaming seems to buck that trend. I code and would never EVER work in the gaming industry after the horror stories of friends who have tried. The laws of economics make me assume most coders worth their chops make the same decision I did and avoid the industry despite whatever passion for gaming they may have.

Stephen Ford