'Crunch Time' and health and well-being of developers

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

As easy for you to say as it is for me, since we're both first world citizens. And no, not even a whiff of SJW here; just wanted to point out that it's all very relative.

 

Even within what we define as the first world, certain industries lack that kind of mobility. Development sure is one of them. It's super easy to say that for me, a bachelor without any dependents outside of my fish. I'm also in aviation and I could easily find a new job else where for similar pay.

 

But, what about when you have kids to support? And you don't have the same sort of perks I have?

[Harlikwin]

To be fair it's outdated and harmful concept and very few reputable game dev companies would do it these days.

 

It's been proven over and over that crunch is counterproductive too.

 

Replace the words.crunch time with dcs core engine and you have a good argument. I personally dont care that the SC is delayed, but ED desperatly needs to "debugger" their "spaghetti" code, and the fact thay even talk in those terms is damning confirmation that their core code base is dire need of repair or replacment.

 

I thought for a time that the whole MAC deal was basically a rewrite of the core engine that the rest of DCS would expand on. But maybe im wrong. Maybe its vulkan, or whatver but the grim fact remains that ED needs a new engine that isnt as "spaghetti" as the current one.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Harlikwin

[Harlikwin]

With software development you have three levers to pull.

 

Time - you can fix a date

Cost - you can fix how much you want to spend on this

Scope - you can fix what it is you want to deliver

 

You can only have two of those three.

 

The crunch comes when people want to have all three of them, which, btw is an undeliverable dream/fantasy and doomed to fail. Proven to fail, time and time again.

 

Actually what it is is typically a failure of mangment and leadership. An out of touch manament team overpromising and devs underdelivering because of unrealistic management expectations.

[BeastyBaiter]

Generally crunch time comes from poor time estimates or scope creep. I think it's most prevalent in the game industry because it's a dream job for a lot of software devs, so they put up with stuff we wouldn't in other branches of development. In my branch it's almost unheard of (process automation). That said, it can happen anywhere in any job I suppose and sometimes it is simply unavoidable due to external requirements.

 

 

Prime example is the payroll protection program in the USA. That was exceptionally time sensitive (lasted only a week for round 1) and so everyone in my industry was doing 6 week projects in 48 hours or less. But as said, that was an unusual situation in my field. I would not put up with that on any kind of regular basis.