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[TRENCHES] Thursday, May 3, 2012 - Usurper
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Usurper
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/untitled70
Some Shorts!
Anonymous- We were told we were not allowed to talk to anyone outside QA for any reason, because it might offend them.
- Any time the company received free promotional items, they would send out 2 emails: one to the entire company saying “Come get your free stuff!” then a second to QA saying “not you”.
- Time for bathroom breaks had to be “made up” at the end of the week before you could leave.
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Man, what's with the QA hate?
The other stuff is pretty bad, and the last one may be illegal.
Many people see QA as a way into the industry. So you can treat QA staff like shit because there will be 5 people to replace 1 person who thinks "fuck this noise, I'm out".
I never had any direct contact with developers though, only via senior testers. Understandably, developers demanded absolute proof if any bug was found. And you had to reproduce it 5 times in a row before you could even bother a senior tester.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Or at least I can't really see its relevance to this strip.
Having to go through a senior QA person for work-related matters seems pretty normal, but I don't see why you couldn't, say, chat with non-QA people at lunch.
And why would the non-QA people be offended?
Plausible answer: If you make friends with a developer then it's possible for your relationship with them to cause you to not report bugs the same way. "Well, this isn't really major, and I was talking with Jim and he's been working 20 hour shifts..."
More jaded answer: "Don't let the riff-raff associate with our real employees"
Every bug that's discovered should be reported. Not every bug will be prioritized and fixed.
Choosing which bugs to fix, and in what order, is not up to the developer, and it's sure as hell not up to the tester.
If you think a bug isn't major, then report it and mark it as minor.
Reporting a bug does not necessarily create more work for any specific developer.
I've seen 2 happen a whole bunch, on both sides (where the call center is the majority of the company, so they will send out similar not nice emails that effect them, then we get immediate email to let us know it doesn't apply to the "office" workers.)
3 seems dickish, but alot of low level jobs do this, you get a break period, it doesn't have to be paid in some areas. and if you dont have your 40 at the end of the week, you have to work until you have 40.
"We have a leak, so you can't use your computer" "But, we need them to work" "Work without them!" "But we need...to...argh!*kaboom*"
I agree with you completely. That's not necessarily what the people that make up these rules think that testers think, if that makes any sense...
Is it just me, or was that post just one big QQ? :P
A Q QQ even.
The Strip: I love that mug and I want one
The story-lets:
1. Every company I have worked where devs and QA are able to talk to each other, we have created a superior product. Not all companies see it that way (especially the places where they just throw warm bodies at controllers, so QA is a hit or miss affair). I had one company where they actually kept QA in a separate room behind a glass door that we could not open. Only the devs/producers and QA leads could. We had our own exit so we could get in and out, but they didn't want us anywhere near the 'real' employees.
2. I get this at my current job, they have weekly happy hours and sometimes have free shirts and the like. It doesn't bother me I can't go. I'm a contractor, and there is a legal, if dickish, reason they don't let me go. I can't find an actual link for it but basically, there is legal precedent for a guy suing a company (Microsoft I think) that he was treated as if he was a full employee because he got all the same perks, and therefore should have gotten higher pay. So they never want contractors to feel like they were misled that they were full-time. It sucks, but I consider it motivation to get hired on.
3. I feel like that's illegal.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I sit directly across from our devs, as in, like 5 feet away. It works very well, but I am aware this is not usual.
As I said, especially at larger companies/publishers, they just throw people at problems, which leads to the hiring of a very wide assortment of QA. Some are good testers. Some are controller holders. I've met quite a few people over the years that I can understand a developer not wanting to be anywhere near them. Hell, I didn't want to be anywhere near them.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I'd can't to go into details, NDAs and all, but I can say that when you get a really solid QA team and developers with open minds, you're going to get superior results. That said, I've heard a lot of stories about devs who are really, really into themselves, and who take being questioned very, very poorly, though I luckily have no personal experience with that.
Good point, this is the other aspect of it. Devs are people too, and sometimes have flaws. I've worked places that refused to accept bugs that were 'phrased negatively'. IE, instead of writing "The build should not crash" you write "The build should remain stable". Negative words were forbidden.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
To be fair, you do sometimes run into the problem of 'QA guys who obviously want to move out of QA and into design', who will subsequently write lengthy bugs about not much of anything which seem specifically designed to show off how smart they are. And, sometimes, when you've been in crunch for five months and all you really want to do is go home and get more than five hours of sleep, even the most seemingly innocuous remark can set you off - the latter is where the 'no negative words' thing comes from, I imagine.
I've got a fairly thick skin, and have always advocated for more QA involvement. Others do not necessarily have the same thick skin, though - those are the people who didn't come up through QA like I did :P Or, didn't spend four years selling televisions and computers at Best Buy.
However, I also get paid more than an Employee..
I also have really shitty benefits to offset that.
In the end, it's a complete wash.
We were told we cannot speak with the govt employess about anything other than work, and can'tt fraternize outside of work.
Don't get me wrong this isn't criticizing the guy who post this, but the industry as a whole.
What about hiring full time employees for lower tier jobs, especially if these positions are always available in a big company? Well apparetly it seems cheaper to throw people into these positions, who think that working anywhere in the game industry is the hot shit. Personally I would like to know how a company can keep productivity in these departments, if they have to rehire and relearn new people every few weeks?
Keeping the right people avoid lots of the "keep them seperate" issues. You have loyal, well paid people who can work closer with other teams and who won't spill company secrets. You can also use tier or layer based system, so that the newly hired worker doesn't have access to certain data in a certain time period.
Its still a dickish way to handle this and it most likley reduce productivity or even disrupt the work of the affected people. Especially if they can send a targeted 2nd email to just _that_ department. If you don't want to ruin the "yay, free stuff" vibe of the email with including people who don't get these, then don't send it @ mailinglist-lowest-tier-slave-worker.
I won't even comment on the bathroom section of the previous "story".
At the end I think such a corporate culture is based on ignorance. Ignorance of the people who want to desperatly work in the gaming industry that they accept every shitty environment with delusions of "I can work my way to the top" and ignorance of the people who create and run said enterprises.
This seems like a good idea in the long run. If flexibility is important, you could always have some full time employees and some contractors.
That way you'd retain the knowledge and experience that builds up in the team, and it might also be easier to train new employees/contractors.
At least that's how we do it at the software company where I work, but that's not a game company.
There might be a more long-term view in non-game software.
Agreed, it is not that hard to create distribution lists.
Number 3 falls into the not enough information category. The company could be unreasonable. Or maybe this employee takes longer breaks than the rest of the team. Or maybe they have metrics and the employee is expected to be at his desk X% of the day.
Number 3 sounds like a guy who always goes on smoke breaks while everyone is working, then cries when he is singled out for taking too many breaks.
edit: The problem I have with some compaies is, that they don't realize that they don't gain extra productivity if they continue treating the employees like second class citizens on a marathon race - especially if they are already doing a monotonous and unrewarding job. If, I for example, have to take a longer bathroom break then it is so - I can't turn my human biology off.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
1) A QA person talked to someone outside their department and offended them. Maybe they were being super clingy and basically stalking someone, perhaps looking to get promoted out of QA. If this happened more than once, or offended someone high up on the food chain, the rule got implemented.
2) QA originally had access to promo materials, but one of more QA members abused this access, perhaps taking more than their fair share. Perhaps QA was quicker to get to the promo materials. Developers and others got upset because they lost out due to not being able to leave the task at hand as readily. So ban QA.
3) I'm guessing QA is paid by the hour. Again, someone could've abused their "bathroom breaks" to get out of work while still being paid. So they announced that they don't pay for any breaks, lunch, smoking, bathroom, etc. You don't necessarily have to "make up" the time lost, but if you don't you don't get a full 40 hours pay.
If individuals are not behaving well (abusing access, or being clingy, or abusing bathroom breaks), you don't say "fine, now everyone in your department has to suffer, even if it hurts us as a whole". You sit the people down, tell them this is unacceptable behavior, and make sure that everyone knows that it's not acceptable (not just QA). Maybe you incorporate it into your training materials for QA if you're finding new QA employees often behave this way.
"One or two people are abusing bathroom breaks so we're going to treat everyone in the group like we don't trust any of you" just seems like it comes from a general disrespect of the group in question. You wouldn't do that to the employees you respect, right?