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Trenches comic: Tuesday February 7, 2012 - Pyrite
Bogey
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator Mod Emeritus
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator Mod Emeritus
I don’t CARE if you don’t have anything to do!
02/07/2012 - Anonymous
I was working for a startup.com, doing pretty much everything but development. I’m a very motivated person, and when I get to work, I *work*, so that when 5 rolls around, my work is generally done. In those days, it was getting out of hand, and I was working until 9PM, 10PM, etc.
I put in several shifts of over 24 hours in those days, watching the sun come up in my office, trying to remember if I’d eaten dinner, and where I was going to find breakfast.
But I got all of my servers built and got the build process completely automated, so that when a new release was ready, it was a total of 10 minutes before it could be pushed to any environment. All of the environments were up and solid. Everything was working like a well-oiled machine.
So when the CTO called me at home on a Saturday morning asking where I was, I said, “I’m at home, eating breakfast.”
“We need you here.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, but you’re a part of this team, and you should be here.”
“Is there something you need me to do?”
“No, but that’s not the point. This team WORKS as a team.”
“Well, I can’t make it today. You’ll have to survive without me.”
*click*
The next day, Sunday morning, he called again.
“But you don’t have anything you need me to do, right?”
“That doesn’t matter. You should be here on Sunday, EVEN IF IT’S JUST TO GO GET PIZZA FOR THE OTHER GUYS!”
It was at that point that I started working from home 3 days a week, sometimes more, and just holding on until management realized what a moron this guy was, how horrible he was to work for, and what a churn rate they were developing.
It only took 2 more months after those incidents, and it was a great feeling to find out he’d been let go, until I found out that his golden parachute had basically bought him a Winnebago and 3 months to live in it, traveling the country for the summer.
So for a year and a half he ruined my life, then, let go because of his ineptitude, he got to live my dream.
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As for the cartoon, it is nice that they are finally covering issues that tester actually has to deal with.
Oh God, you've had this conversation as well?
"This is a bug. We can't let this go Gold and ship it"
"Its a known issue and will be fixed with a day 1 patch"
"So there's going to be a patch ready on release day to fix this?"
"well.....not exactly day 1"
Pretty much this. But I was naive and eager at first.
Oh absolutely. But where I worked, no one would ever admit to the patch even existing until it arrived.
Well this isn't even a game company story. Shit like this could happen anywhere.
Except where I work because my company has set us all up as hourly workers so we get paid for all overtime (which I've never had to do anyways). 24 hour shifts would mean bringing home a lot of extra cash - as it should.
I would have thought given Q's love for the source material, he would be more of a perfectionist about this game.
But only the Laserdisc is canon, so it's all good. :P
What an awful story.
Well, there is a reason many seasoned developers quit the industry altogether.
Long hours, low wages compared to similar jobs in other forms of software development, little job stability, a need to move halfway across the planet from time to time for employment.
I'm not even talking about QA.
It can be a fun and rewarding career, regardless of the dicipline you are in, but it's not a perfect world by a long shot.
Alot of people in the industry have a mindframe of "everyone comes in and leaves as a team- if some people are working crazy hours, they might not like it that the rest of the team are not working crazy hours, and get resentful... So let's have everyone in there at crazy hours so that everyone feels like they belong, and noone feels resentful".
It makes no sense whatsoever, but since they aren't paying overtime, managers feel like they can just mandate this. It's pretty rare to see people like the teller of this story flip em the bird and say "hell no, I have no work to do, I'm not coming in on the weekend".
Though the infrastructure guys DO have a bit more leeway that way, especially in a startup where they're likely the only ones who know where everything is and how it works. Telling THAT guy they're fired means you've basically doomed yourself to trying to find someone to replace them AND figure out how everything works from scratch, and probably reinstalling half of the infrastructure from scratch when the former employee "forgets" to tell you all sorts of important passwords.
I suppose this depends on your industry.
For example, at my work (which is not minimum wage), the more senior QA are actively encouraged to take a broader view of the situation. Washing your hands of responsibility is short sighted at best. You're there to provide input about the quality of the product, and only have no responsibility if you choose not to take any. Admittedly, giving Juniours that sort of responsibility is less common, but a lead is there to put the case for the product, and to discuss the validity of any go/no-go decisions.
As I say, maybe it's different in gaming, but in the rare instances where we recommend against going live, stuff does not go live,
I guess what I'm getting at is, your responsibility doesn't end at reporting the bugs. You have to know the system, and fight for your defects if you think they ought to be resolved, or if you think there's an impact from past or future work.
If you have no responsibility, then get involved in your project and take some; I almost guarantee your lead will be grateful.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
This varies greatly by studio. I've worked places where they value QA's input, and places where they just want QA to shut up and stay on their side of the building. (or behind the locked glass doors, in one case)
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Yeah, it's an interesting insight into the same role in different industries. I find I'm reading a lot of the 'Tales' stuff and thinking (and occasionally saying here), that I just don't understand the gaming industry as an industry. Your QA people are there to help you. Ignoring their input in favour of a ship deadline is...understandable, I suppose, but some of the behaviour and work conditions outlined are, honestly, shocking (on both sides). I've never been more glad to be working corporate.
I just wonder how much it's symptomatic of:
a) QA as a discipline
b) Gaming as an industry.
Is there a reason that the guys over in the gaming sector get the short end of the stick so often? Is it because they're preceived to "play games for a living"?
Edited for crappy spelling after a day at the office.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
It mostly boiled down to two things.
-people who like the conditions in the industry stay, and the ones who know better go to elsewhere. The ones that stay are senior and usually run things
-there is a strong sense that the employees are easily replaced by people who are new to the industry and/or are willing to work in the conditions that exist, and it's true for the most part.
On the bright side there are some studios that do ok, well in comparison to the rest of the industry. On the down side the studios that do ok only seem to change after losing a lot of workers after a particularily bad crunch or people start getting carted to the hospital.
Then there are places like radical that just fire their whole workforce on a regular basis... I still can't figure out why people apply there, everybody should know better by now
The main reason is because games are entertainment: nonessential programs. Having bugs in them will very rarely cause "real" problems like an essential program (i.e. a spreadsheet program used by banks or a radar program used by air controllers) having bugs would. Since QA isn't as required for games the culture surrounding them is that QA is a necessary burden rather than them being an absolutely required asset.
That's completely ridiculous. There is an element called professional pride, and if that really is the common attitude then it's clearly lacking.
It must be hell to work anywhere where they replace the workforce like that... Not just for fear for your own job, but because every game you start must be a new uphill climb.
My initial reaction was to agree; I'd certainly say that any QA with pride in their product and their profession ought to be fighting their corner, and altering the perception of the role of the department. But, on the other hand, I can understand that if you're only working minimum wage, you're less than keen to make that leap.
On the other hand, I'm surprised at the suggested attitude from the studios - whilst games may not be vital in the same way as other products, they do:
a) cost millions on millions of dollars
b) have an extremely broad audience reach (especially these days).
So whilst the impact in terms of money or lives lost if a defect slips through is minimal (one hopes), the impact financially of a major issue slipping through could be large, and the impact on the reputation of a studio or a development team could be irreversible - you only have to go back to the Battlecruiser 3000 days for an example of that sort of self-immolation.
Is it reasonable to suggest some of this is because people come into QA either to:
a) test their favourite games
or
b) 'work their way sideways' into development roles?
I know that the games industry isn't the only one to do b), but having a team of QA guys who actually want to be developers propbably isn't good for instilling a solid culture.
Incidentially, @Juc, if you know where to find that Gamasutra article, I'd love to read it. Might pass it round the team here!
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
Ugh, I was searching for a good half hour and I'm damned if I can find it. Maybe it was all just a crunch dream ...
But I ran across a lot of other related things when I was looking it up.
Article from 2006 re ea spouse (I've heard that rockstar is worse but there's very little said about it even after an ea spouse like thing came out a couple years back)
http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/1771/1893
An IGDA thingy regarding quality of life
http://www.igda.org/articles/codonell_global
Quality of life, does anybody still give a damn
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3656/quality_of_life_does_anyone_still_.php
Regarding the high amount of people young to the industry.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidMarcum/20100621/5412/A_Young_Industry.php
a thingy about rockstar in sandiego
[url="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26803/Controversy_Erupts_Over_Rockstar_San_Diego_Employee_Allegations.php
"]http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26803/Controversy_Erupts_Over_Rockstar_San_Diego_Employee_Allegations.php
[/url]
is the game industry a happy place
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29292/Analysis_Is_The_Game_Industry_A_Happy_Place.php
I just want to re-iterate, it really depends on the company/studio. There are places where you can fight for the quality of the game. Then there are places that just want to shove it out the door and complaining too much gets you fired.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Yeah, as an industry veteran who left for over 10 years and came back only recently I fully expected the writer of this story to get the ax before the jerk did. After all, I'm sure as far as the suits knew the jerk was just "team building" and the author wasn't being a "team player". The jerk must have done many other jerky things for him to get the boot. I work for a place now that believes strongly in "butts in chairs" for team building reasons and even if you can do your job better without the distractions of the office you couldn't get to work from home 3 days a week without a very good reason. Like a 3 hour commute or something. And even then I'm pretty sure they'd rather pay for you to move closer than have you out of the office that often.
And for reference "Golden Master" is the build that the developers believe is the final version ready to be released (or that is going to be released, ready or not). It was so named because back in the olden times writable CD's were gold in color. It was a BIG deal in a development house when the Golden Master was burned and handed over to a courier to be taken to the duplicator. There was nothing much to do after that until the disks hit the public and bug reports started coming in, which was usually a month or more later. You'd get a break for a week or so after the inevitable crunch that lead up to the Golden Master (and back then you didn't have to worry so much about getting laid off after the launch). At 4am once there were no couriers available so I, as the most sober and awake person around, got the job of driving the Master down to San Jose to be duplicated. It was like embarking on a pilgrimage. We even had a little ceremony.
Also back then the only way to get patches out to people was to burn a new disk (or floppies) with the patches on them and physically mail them out. That was expensive and time consuming, so the pressure to NOT ship bugs was huge. Not like now when you can push a patch out every day if need be.
/oldfartrabling
Seriously, that whole Golden Disk thing is interesting.
Thanks! I've thought about it, maybe I will.
Yeah they were, and the burners were big and touchy. Waiting over 45 minutes for a burn only to have someone bump the table and have the burner spit out the disk with an error was maddening. After that happened a couple of times we put ours on a welded metal table bolted to the floor, but then we had trouble with static discharges. So we put it on a rubber mat on the metal table bolted to the floor and STILL it would spit out the disk sometimes if someone slammed a door too hard in the building.
It's hard to believe how easy, fast and cheap it is to burn a DVD these days. But why even bother? It's even faster and more convenient to put the stuff on my $10 8gb flash drive. Or my phone.
I had been employee #5 at the company, and had more leeway with the CEO than the CTO, the "jerk" in question. I had some sway, basically, and I used it in protest by working from home and avoiding weekends.
It worked for a while, then I got sucked into the vortex, started hating life, and arguing with my wife, etc. I was fully ready to leave, and they knew that, and as soon as the product "shipped" (it was a single-site web product), they canned the CTO and life went back to normal.
It was a different job market then, if I had gotten the ax I would've found a job (probably with a signing bonus) within days. I know it's hard to imagine if you weren't around at the time, but the balance of power at the time leaned more toward employees than employers.