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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:27
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Not paying their employees is already bad, but what's really stupid is that they stress them so much and make them work when tired, and that doesn't get good software produced. They would probably get as good games if they spent less time coding but more time really managing their projects, as the author points out.
The problem in my opinion is that those people in charge of development of games are in a young industry that still has a lot to learn in terms of project management and quality insurance. They think they can compensate lack of quality by adding quantity of work and fail to realize they are actually hurting themselves.
I wish I had bookmarked the story of a prorammer who said he had had a good manager on his game project, and there was another project that started at the same time. His manager managed to get the game made andout in time. The twin project was late, so the manager had to ask for extra hours, extra work, got late, but finally managed to get the project out (late) because she spent lots of work (both hers and her team). She was rewarded by the firm, as the top management siad: "Look, she's a good manager, she'll spend extra hours to get her project out." Obviously, she was the bad manager since the other one, on a similar project, had managed to get his project faster and with less stress for everyone involved. But executives always think people who work more work better, which is not necessarily true.
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:27
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quote:
Part of the reason US companies would rather work one person 70 hours versus 2 people 35 hours is the large cost of benefits that companies provide, such as healthcare. |
That shouldn't be an issue. In France, the sirms probably pay more to healthcare than in the States, but it's proportional to the salary, and then goes into a pool. If you employ 2x35h or 1x70, it costs the same.
There are some moronic laws that don't help, though. I know a bartender in Boston who once explained me he paid taxes based on the number of his employees. No matter that they were mostly students doing part time, so a 48h employee was in fact very much better than 3 16 hours employees (which was rather the norm). This encourages to make a high number of hours for absolutely no good reason. I don't know if these taxes are (were?) only in the Massachussets or something federal.
I also want to add that programmers don't have to work that long hours even the U.S (from what I know of my colleagues who program over there). It's the game market that seems to demand it, and I think it's in part due to the fact the managers are too young to know how to manage a project properly. Making extra hours is seen as "working hard", and that's generally seen as a good thing. But in fact wen programming, working when tired usually just loses time and increases the number of bugs. A good manager is one who gets the job done in time, but a praised manager is the one who managed to squeeze a lot of work out of his team, no matter that he did a worse job at keeping delays than the 'good' manager. That's a real problem in this field: Quantity is often preferred over quality because, especially in terms of management, it's easier to measure and see.
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MRT144
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Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:27
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i hear all this *****ing about EA's game quality, but are you seriously telling me that they shouldnt release madden every year? are you guys really idiots?
secondly, everyone has teh right to walk away from a job that they dont like. no one is forcing this on them.
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MarkG
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Grand Lord of Apolyton, Owner of all this land as far as the eye can see
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quote:
EA Los Angeles Cuts Staff in Restructuring
According to multiple reports, 60 developers at Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio were let go today in a restructuring-related layoff. The staff members were pulled from the various projects at the LA offices, rather than being confined to one or two specific teams; Neil Young, overseer of the LA studio, was careful in his statement to dispel the rumor that the layoffs were related to sales performance of EA LA's GoldenEye title in late 2004.
"It has nothing to do with GoldenEye or titles we've shipped in the past and a lot more to do with where we want to take this studio in the future," said Young in a statement to consumer site 1UP.com. Instead, Young emphasized the need to reconsider the amount of staff employed as the overall company prepares for next-generation systems, such as the successor to the Xbox expected to be unveiled soon. "It's a studio-wide thing to reset the business fundamentals and get the studio to the next level."
Whether this return to "fundamentals" means the cutbacks at the LA offices will soon be replicated in EA's other studios such as Canada, Tiburon, and Redwood Shores, was left unsaid. However, the LA studios have hardly been gutted, with 320 staffers remaining to continue the EA Trax, EA Publishing, and EA mobile gaming divisions in addition to console development. |
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06-02-2005 00:15
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