Crunch & Overtime

Crunch is what tends to happen at the end of a project when the team is asked to work longer hours to complete the game. Crunch used to be very common and it still happens today. You really shouldn't be asked to crunch for more than say 25% of the time. The thing to remember is that after your current project there will be another one and then another. If you are in constant crunch you will eventually burn out.

If your project is exciting, you will find crunch doesn't bother you that much and you may even enjoy it. Great! No problem then.

I'm of the opinion that if you produce 8 hours of focussed work, you've done enough. For programmers, productivity drops anyway. Most people just can't work in a focussed manner for 12 hours/day.

When I just started with dma-design, I worked until 3 in the morning a couple of times. The following day I found my code to be riddled with obvious bugs. It just wasn't working.

I believe even during crunch there is no need to work during the weekend.

If your company culture is one of permanent crunch and you're not enjoying it, you should probably start looking for another position.

If you work for yourself or in a small group you'll probably end up working more than 40 hours/week to be competitive. It won't feel that bad as you're working for yourself and the work is likely to be more varied.




Comments

  1. Faguss13 December 2023 at 08:21

    "Crunch used to be very common and it still happens today" - so is it less frequent today or the same?

    ReplyDelete

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