[TRENCHES] Thursday, April 11, 2013 - Overworld
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Overworld
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/overworld
Contract slavery might not be the worst thing.
AnonymousLong hours are required in game development. That’s just the way these projects end up. Producers have to schedule a way to create the best game possible before the entire team gets sick of it and quits, which means lots of stuff gets pushed to the last minute, and QA can’t test something that isn’t created yet.
Because QA comes in at the tail end of a production schedule, they have the final deadlines to hit. While your bosses might not say it outright, you are discouraged from being anywhere but at work for the (your) duration of the project. The large majority of Quality Assurance Testers work on a contract basis, around 6 months to a year in length, and often a month or six will go between contracts. While this can get hard financially, the (f)unemployment period between each contract can be seen as merely unpaid vacation time.
If a tester gets hired on full-time by a company, they will be working on this project and then right on to the next project. If a tester is made a Lead Tester (a supervisor) they are expected to be around ALL THE TIME during every project. No turning down overtime, no days off for recouping your sanity because you’ve got a team to lead. The pay grade doesn’t go up much, though.
I have to ask myself, are those couple thousand extra dollars a year worth giving up my sanity-saving vacation time? Do I even WANT to leave entry-level contract work? If game publishers/developers respected their QA, it might be a job I want all year.
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You mean the conduit.
The breaker must have tripped, they should be drenched in wires right now.
kingworkscreative.com
kingworkscreative.blogspot.com
When I moved my business into its new location, the ceilings were just full of this. Three networks of conduit, all clearly labeled color coded, and carefully run so that you could potentially run a line down from it to any point in the building if you wanted to add additional outlets, ethernet, phone lines, whatever. Even had wires running through it with little things at each end so you could clip a cable to it and use the existing wire to draw it through. Very well thought out, very convenient.
Then, right on top of the carefully laid out networks of conduit, was an untraceable fucking ratsnest of wires that were just haphazardly jammed up into the ceiling and clipped to whatever was convenient with hooks normally meant to attach Christmas lights to gutters. It had clearly been so bad that when they replaced an ethernet line, they just cut it at each end and shoved a new one through instead of trying to extract it from the mess.
If theres one thing Ive learned from years of doing electrical, don't expect most cable installers (I have met exceptions)to actually do anything resembling work, much less taking pride in it. If theres one thing they love, its pawning their workload off on us every chance they get.
//The only people I hate worse than data guys are the sheet rock crews.
The story is kind of dumb (hate it when they get all flowery... just tell a story, don't turn it into a soap opera)
My comment still applies to Tuesday's, though.
But I hope the fellow got another job. It may never be as good as that first job, the same way new love is never as transporting as the first flush, but a gig's a gig.
I mean
wow
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
It had a theme song too. Which is now stuck in my head.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
And you have to watch sheet rock crews like a hawk. We recently kicked a crew out for trying to steal furniture.
Decided in a fit of boredom today to give it another chance and lo and behold, I've really enjoyed everything that followed from the point I gave up! Huzzah!
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Same here. I'm a writer and one of the things about writing is that you don't want to start at the beginning, you want to start in the middle. Get going with the story, and then drop explanations as needed. Like with a screenplay, they always say cut the first ten pages. Too many comics were spent setting things up, but they never gave a reason for me to care about what they were setting up. I was thinking earlier today about how you could cut everything from him going to the interview until pretty much him in the bathroom at work where he thinks its a unisex bathroom, but its really the women's room. That's like a month of comics. But once you push past all that, it ends up being a worthwhile read.