More On Why It Stinks To Work At Zynga 325
bdking writes "If a recent internal survey and reviews left on glassdoor.com are to be believed, working at social games company Zynga isn't much fun. Zynga's competitive, metrics-driven culture may be scaring away potential acquisitions and forcing out employees seeking better work-life balance and less stress."
Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Funny)
According to the article, PopCap turned down their offer and went with Electronic Arts instead, because they thought that working conditions would be better at EA. Yes, read that last part again: they would rather deal with the working conditions at EA than work for Zynga. That's pretty bad.
Re: (Score:3)
Anything on EA's conditions?
I haven't heard anything about the working conditions at EA aside from jokes.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Informative)
The most visible citation is this: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
There's likely similar stories out there, with a little help from Google.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, they laid off a good chunk of their employees and closed a bunch of offices since then.
I thought they banned having spouses.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Funny)
I thought they banned having spouses.
Yeah, that's in the updated EULA every employee has to click-through on their first day.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EA_Spouse
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Informative)
That poor couple just can't catch a break!
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the wikipedia article uses her linkedin profile as a source. according to that, she no longer works at zynga.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Funny)
Probably fired her for poor work ethic.
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The best part of the (sorta) linked article is that the author of EA Spouse now works for Zynga as Lead Systems Designer.
That poor couple just can't catch a break!
The "poor couple" are idiots. Why would you stay in the games industry after that experience? Get out! Or at the very least refuse to do the overtime and leave if they force you out. If you have a passion for games, get working on an indie game in your spare time - who cares how far you get....or you know spend some time actually playing games others make.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
When you work in software development, like many other fields, there are times near a release (or whatever milestone) where you have to work a lot of overtime. It's simply a fact of life
Nonsense
If you have to do that, it's due to bad management i.e bad planning and a lack of "alignment" (*cough* - PHB speak) in the organisation.
Note that I didn't say "bad managers": they're only part of the problem.
Try a little bit of Scrum, Agile and Design for Lean Six Sigma.
If you can't handle 80 hour weeks
No one can honestly say that they can work 80 hours in a week. Sure, they may be physically present, but during at least 30-35 of those hours they will be producing next to nothing, and quite probably contributing more problems in terms of mistakes to the project due to fatigue.
You macho people need to get a healthy dose of reality.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
I mandated that all projects (we did implementations as well as incident support) would not be allowed to budget more than 35 hours a week (5 hours for overhead/utilization) of effort. OT would have to be approved by me directly. All OT had to be paid for by the projects submitting the work.
6 months later, we had regular 40 hour work weeks for 95% of the staff. OT dropped. And the best part? I got the cream of the crop from other departments requesting to work for my shop... they wanted the work/life balance. Normal hours were suddenly a recruiting feature.
Chronic OT is always a sign of either ineffective people managers, or a broken corporate culture. Always.
how much OT is from lack of staff? (Score:3)
As some times people end doing the work load of 2-3 people?
Re:how much OT is from lack of staff? (Score:5, Interesting)
Chronic OT is always a sign of either ineffective people managers, or a broken corporate culture. Always.
As some times people end doing the work load of 2-3 people?
I think GP answered your question. If your company needs 10 people to do a job correctly, and has hired 4 to do it, the fact that those 4 have to work ridiculous hours to get the job done is not a problem with those 4 people.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
ho much OT is from lack of staff?
As some times people end doing the work load of 2-3 people?
This is a management error.
If you permanently lack staff because your company/division/office can only be profitable with 60% of the staffing actually required, management has to realize that they are likely better off closing it.
If it is profitable at 100% staffing, but management want higher profits by running with 60% staffing, its management greed, and staff should consider walking out ASAP.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Interesting)
Scrum/Agile can also be as bad. My last job we had "Scrum meetings" and were confronted if we didn't get at least 6 hours of "work time" on any particular task per day. If we didn't log every single change we made in the issue software we were asked what we were doing during that time. They could have checked the commit logs to see what changes I made during that day, but that's apparently not in their report. Heaven forbid I have a slow day or a meeting that prevents me from logging my 6 hours of time.
At my current location, the management doesn't attend Scrum meetings and it's night and day as far as what is reported. People here actually work together, but there is talk of linking "issue time" to "billed time" and I can see that quickly devolving into a pissing contest as well.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Insightful)
Scrum/Agile can also be as bad. My last job we had "Scrum meetings" and were confronted if we didn't get at least 6 hours of "work time" on any particular task per day. If we didn't log every single change we made in the issue software we were asked what we were doing during that time. They could have checked the commit logs to see what changes I made during that day, but that's apparently not in their report. Heaven forbid I have a slow day or a meeting that prevents me from logging my 6 hours of time.
They were doing it badly wrong. This sounds like old-fashioned managers who didn't trust their staff to get on with the job.
Their report? What report? They don't need a "report." That's the whole point. The progress is visible for everyone to see on the story board and the burn-down chart. If they want more data (they're mad, but...) they shouldn't be wasting developer time to get it.
At my current location, the management doesn't attend Scrum meetings and it's night and day as far as what is reported. People here actually work together, but there is talk of linking "issue time" to "billed time" and I can see that quickly devolving into a pissing contest as well.
I'm not sure how "billed time" comes into it. I've just been sold (with 600 of my colleagues) to an Indian outsourcing company. The understanding at the moment is that everything we do is for the customer (including investigating issues) so it all gets billed. We'll see how that changes over the next few months, assuming I don't get downsized at the end of January when my project goes to India, or assuming that I don't escape before then to a better job :-)
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Interesting)
We fill out a time sheet that requires 40 hours a week or it takes from our Paid Time Off. On the sheet is project time (billed to client) and non-project time (requires explanation.) I'm not a fan of the system, and I've been billing my full 8 hours/day to the current project but I was told recently that they were looking at comparing that time to the issue tracker logged time. The company is growing, so I hope I can nudge that aspect away from the thought process. I'm not holding up my hopes since I'm one of the "new guys."
What flavor of agile (Score:3)
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Burn-down charts are supposed to measure time remaining, not time spent working. They are most useful for avoiding situations where you suddenly realize that the project is behind schedule, at least short term. They are also intended for the team as a whole, not individuals (emphasis on the team is one of the core principles of Agile).
If you're tracking time worked as part of scrum, you're (probably) doing it wrong.
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Agile is not a silver bullet. It works for some environments but is an awful mess in others. Not everything can be broken down into tiny two week sprints, sometimes you need real long term planning (long term meaning a year or more). Agile is probably ok if people don't get religious about it but it's just so common for people to follow it religiously, hire a _full_time_ Agile coach and do everything this wannabe tells them to, etc.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I'm a software developer in a global organisation with 3600 permanent engineers plus contractors selling millions of products per quarter globally. I do C and C++ on Linux with TDD, shell scripting, Perl, Ruby... you name it. I've done a bit of scrum mastering myself and have been doing scrum for over 4 years.
If done properly, it works. And we always meet our deadlines, always, with the planned quality a feature set. I've never had to work more than 4 hours unplanned overtime in a week in all that time, and those occasions are only 3 or 4 times a year.
I've worked at mad 80-hour a week places before. They're a complete shambles, run by idiots who treat the engnieers like dirt. I'll not be going back.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth is somewhere in the middle. When everyone in the video game industry is used to 80 hour weeks (or worse) during crunch, then you've got a systemic issue or poor management. They haven't found a working business model where they can adequately staff and make budget. And given that consumers constantly expect more for less, and expect AAA titles to compete price wise with iPhone games. So management does need a better strategy for how their run their departments/businesses.
However, I question your claims of 3,600 engineers and never requiring unplanned overtime. It is impossible to plan for every single contingency. Things break and go wrong all the time in the universe. If you never, ever need unplanned overtime, then you must be severely overstaffed.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Interesting)
In my somewhat-out-of-date experience, _well designed, planned and managed_ medium to large projects can often be more predictable than smaller ones, as the stochastic variation of the many small component projects (some run early, some run late) can average out.
Unfortunately there is also a body of evidence that the larger the project, the more likely it is to fail - as of the beginning of this century, at about $5 million the probability of failure was getting over 90%. I don't recall the definition of failure very well, but I think it was being so seriously over budget and behind schedule that the project got cancelled.
I ran one project where we got budget approved for six engineers and two years, for converting a multi-language, multi-platform system with several bleeding-edge components and (IIRC) 300,000 lines of code. And within a week the marketing team had promised delivery of a working system in two months to General Electric. Then our budget got cut to two people. This was essentially the final straw, and I left the company. I learned later that, with the connivance of the department at GE, the company delivered two non-working systems so the customer could sign off on delivery. Then they spent the two years hacking up a POS, not converting but merely porting things, smooshing things together and finally trying unsuccessfully to make it work. I think GE finally sued them.
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The truth is somewhere in the middle. When everyone in the video game industry is used to 80 hour weeks (or worse) during crunch, then you've got a systemic issue or poor management. They haven't found a working business model where they can adequately staff and make budget. And given that consumers constantly expect more for less, and expect AAA titles to compete price wise with iPhone games. So management does need a better strategy for how their run their departments/businesses.
However, I question your claims of 3,600 engineers and never requiring unplanned overtime. It is impossible to plan for every single contingency. Things break and go wrong all the time in the universe. If you never, ever need unplanned overtime, then you must be severely overstaffed.
Well, he did say this (which is different from what you were questioning):
I've never had to work more than 4 hours unplanned overtime in a week in all that time, and those occasions are only 3 or 4 times a year
Also, I'm not sure if he was referring about the OT or lack thereof for himself or for the total 3,600 engineers. Some projects, specially DOD-related, are somewhat over-staffed on purpose, following a rigid waterfall or waterfall/spiral hybrid model to ensure a uniform scheduling (and typically to charge more - sadly, and also because the requirements are incredibly fixed and non-volatile). Groups like that can churn out results at u
and I suspect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Interesting)
Billing 80 hours is not the same as working 80 hours. Especially for a landshark. With minimum billing increments, travel time and air-phones a shyster can bill an easy 5 billable hours/hour. 2 billable hours travel as has 2 clients issues in the same direction (e.g. east) plus 3 billable hours in 6 5 minute phone calls at .5 hour bill increment. At a 1 hour increment it gets real fun (for them).
A lawyer dies and goes to the pearly gates, being a shyster he knows he's going to have to do some fancy lawyering to get in. He starts by pleading that he died very young; he was only 34. St. Pete looks up from his book and says, 'that's funny, according to your billable hours you were 82.'
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, the thought of going to a doctor who works an 80 hour week scares the hell out of me. You can't possibly do your best work under those conditions. The problem is not that folks at computer game manufacturers are forced to work ridiculous hours. The problem is that there are any employees in the U.S. who because of their "exempt" status are allowed to work such unhealthy hours.
I'm okay with having an exemption to the forty hour cap for highly skilled workers, but there should be a 60 hour cap that applies for everyone, and a maximum of 50 hours average over the course of a year, above which the employers should start having to give comp days at a rate of one day per eight hours of additional work over the limit. Period.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
The most I've ever worked was only about 80 hours, and I've only done that once or twice, and only for a week to get past a major crunch. If memory serves, I ended up taking a sick day afterwards in both cases. Even knowing that the end was in sight, with a clear goal, I was physically exhausted and ended up getting ill as a result. The human body just was not built to work 80 and 100 hour weeks.
Your body needs eight hours of sleep, plus time to travel back and forth to work, bathe, get settled down for bed, eat breakfast, etc. This means that you cannot realistically budget fewer than ten hours per day away from work. If you try, you'll likely cause serious and, in some cases, permanent damage to your employees' health. This only leaves 14 hours per day, or 98 hours per week as an absolute maximum that the human body can realistically endure over an extended period of time, even if you have no outside activities at all besides work—no family, no church, no hobbies. And psychologically, all work and no play isn't healthy even in the short term.
In general, above about 50 hours per week, productivity is flat, and it starts to taper off way before that. You can do more than that for very, very brief periods—a week, maybe two if you use enough caffeine and are really, really excited about what you're doing—but it simply is not sustainable in the long term, and this has been proven by countless studies. In short, anybody who works their employees for 80 hour weeks is a complete f**king idiot who should not be allowed to manage the animals in a local zoo, much less the employees in a major corporation.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
When you work in software development, like many other fields, there are times near a release (or whatever milestone) where you have to work a lot of overtime.
No, not true. Furthermore, in most other fields, if you end up working overtime, you're usually compensated for it. There is absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER why software engineers should not be compensated for excess overtime.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Informative)
The reason is because we're legally exempt employees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exempt_employee [wikipedia.org]
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There is absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER why software engineers should not be compensated for excess overtime.
Of course there is a reason: programmers haven't walked off the job and demanded to be compensated. A union of programmers would be unstoppable. You can't just hire a scab when the only people who know how the software works aren't willing to cooperate.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Informative)
A union of programmers would be unstoppable.
You're right that that's the correct solution. But it would have to be an international union in order to function, and would (like other unions have in the past) have to make extraordinary efforts to prevent scabs from coming in and breaking the union.
Plus there are a lot of programmers out there who hate unions for reasons which have nothing to do with enlightened self-interest.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at Team Bondi as an example of how to run a team into the ground. The grind went on for years. People left because of the pressure and toxic atmosphere. The net result Bondi had a constant turnover of burned out angry staff and had to work the remainder even harder to make up for lost time. They were so deep in the red by the end that even when they released a product they got shut down. It does no one good to work in that kind of atmosphere. Not the games company and certainly not the employees. It's not the norm in any other form of software development and it really shouldn't be the norm for games development either.
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They were so deep in the red by the end that even when they released a product they got shut down. It does no one good to work in that kind of atmosphere. Not the games company and certainly not the employees.
I disagree. I'm sure the CEO got paid plenty of money before the company went under.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe me, EA_Spouse's husband may have been working in one of the worst places but the basic problems are common throughout the industry. And the really bad thing - it doesn't work!
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Interesting)
I can think of a few reasons to challenge the 40 hour rule. One, you're doing an unhealthy amount of sitting. Two, we already know people aren't doing 8 hours of work during an 8 hour day. Not even close, in most cases. Three, 8 hour days are usually out of sync with school schedules, for people who have kids (I don't, for the record). Shouldn't we at least talk about it? We know 80 hours destroys people. Why are we so quick to assume 40 is OK?
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want the opportunity to make a six figure salary, you're going to have to be prepared to make some sacrifices.
I make a six figure salary without having to work 80 hours every week, now or at any point in the past. So do many other people I know, working at Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
Face it, you're just regurgitating the story that has been fed to employees so that they can be squeezed for a little while longer. Come to think of it, how many Zynga employees actually earn six figures?
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Interesting)
I was one of eleven programmers on a millon+ unit game and its expansion. Only seven of us were actually working on the game full time, though admittedly we had the benefit(?) of a lot of legacy code from the previous game in the series.
I got paid considerably less than a six figure salary. I don't remember the exact number, but i believe i started out slightly below the median five figure salary and ended up slightly above the median five figure salary by the time i and a lot of other people were laid off, shortly after finishing the expansion.
I don't remember exactly which point we started working 80+ hour weeks, i might be able to dig up some old references in emails and such if i start checking, but i know it was for several months before the release of the main game and at least a month before the release of the expansion.
After getting laid off by EA i then went to work at another game company that wasn't as successful but had pretty much the same practices. After getting laid off by that company (again after finishing up two products in two years) i ended up getting a "boring" job working on business software. Except now i'm an hourly employee and i get paid more than i did in the games industry (though still not six figures) and i've been here for over five years without a single round of layoffs. On the two occasions where overtime has been required it was for _far_ less than 80 hours a week and and it was only for a week or two each time. And wonder of wonders, i got paid time and a half for that overtime! (Funny the correlation there, the company demands less overtime when it means paying me more.)
Night of the Living Sock Puppets (Score:3)
I think you either need to talk to more people or get more experience yourself before pretending
Because obviously my work experience is limited, and I've never worked with small tech start ups, nor IT/Enterprise Computing nor with defense contractors, or with any type of company, small or large for that matter. I have no clue on how to run a business, I have never been an hourly paid contractor in at-risk projects with aggressive schedules, and have no experience giving or receiving orders.
It's like... you know me, and you can attest as verifiable fact that I need to get more experience on the subje
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:4, Informative)
Anything on EA's conditions?
I haven't heard anything about the working conditions at EA aside from jokes.
I haven't seen much lately, but in 2004 it was alleged that EA sucked the soul (or at least any semblance of work-life balance) out of its employees... http://news.cnet.com/Electronic-Arts-faces-overtime-lawsuit/2100-1043_3-5450316.html [cnet.com]
They settled a couple of years ago for millions, no word on whether conditions have improved. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/26/business/fi-ea26 [latimes.com]
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It is my understanding [based off pure guessing] that their working conditions have worked incredibly from a PR perspective, thanks to their new NDA and lawsuit weavers that employee families must sign when they are hired, get married, adopt kids or plainly have kids.
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The nightmarish working conditions at EA are legendary. Those "jokes" you've heard? Probably real-life anecdotes.
The game development industry as a whole is a shitty place to work though, EA is just widely known as the worst of the lot.
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The game development industry as a whole is a shitty place to work though,
That's sad, I really hoped things would have gotten better by now. Back in the '90s-'00s I was so heavily into gaming that Charles Broussard and Warren Marshall were on a first name basis with me (I ran a popular Quake site). I talked with both gamers and game devs, and was always glad I didn't go into that business.
I'd hoped they might have matured some since then. I see they haven't.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Informative)
From what I'm told by a friend in the business, it's still common for devs to hop from studio to studio on loan or being laid off from one place to the next because they finished X project. What I hear is that it's a crap shoot if the studios will keep you after release.
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Not accurate unless you're a contractor, and I think the best advice that I can possibly give as someone who's been in the game industry for over 6 years is to not be a contractor in the game industry. You don't get as many benefits, you're typically given less consideration than "real" employees, you barely get any equity (if at all), you don't get paid time off.
To be perfectly honest, EA has its shit together nowadays. Although a number of their releases are lukewarm at best, they've done a good job at ke
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The nightmarish working conditions at EA are legendary. Those "jokes" you've heard? Probably real-life anecdotes.
I find http://trenchescomic.com/ [trenchescomic.com] to be one of the best reads out there now. Not for the comics but for the anonymous stories.
Sure there's the potential people will start to exaggerate to make the story more interesting (who doesn't?) but I've heard enough anecdotally from the industry that truth is always stranger than fiction. And the earliest stories collected before the site was launched are nuts too. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. If it was honey and roses there wouldn't even be a debate.
If I do pur
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Funny)
According to the article, PopCap turned down their offer and went with Electronic Arts instead, because they thought that working conditions would be better at EA.
Well, there was also the problem that, with Zynga, you're always last in line at the conference registration table - all the good swag is gone long before it's finally your turn.
Absoft wasn't interested in acquiring PopCap, so EA was the best they could do.
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I just don’t get why they wanted to be acquired. They had a darn nice business there, making fun games and from all my understanding doing a darn good profit. Why pursue selling that off?
I understand if you are relaxing at a company picnic one day and being offered hundreds of millions of dollars and not being able to resist temptation. But from what I hear they actively pursued selling the business.
Re:Pretty bad when EA seems more appealing (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're the founder and CEO of a company, what else can you do when you get tired of your job? Selling the business is often your only reasonable exit strategy when you just want to change jobs or retire. For smaller companies, it can be the only real paycheck the founder will ever get.
nice comments (Score:4, Insightful)
*Stop asking if Mark is a good CEO on a company survey that people fill out over their company-issued computers. Everyone assumes it can be tracked.
* Expect to find yourself micromanaged by someone much less skilled than you, and who also has no skills in management.
Quelle surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm equally shocked that a company whose business revolves around getting money from people via human Skinner boxes masquerading as games might be a bunch of worthless dicks and not that much fun to work for.
Re:Quelle surprise (Score:5, Informative)
As much as I don't like Zynga at all, I'm going to have to ask you to explain how what they're doing is writing human Skinner boxes. Please do so in a way that does not include the output of the video game industry as a whole, or, in fact, the very concept of risk and reward, as an abstract Skinner box.
Note that no credit will be given for any answer that asserts microtransactions to be the primary differentiating factor. Demerits will be handed out if the answer asserts microtransactions to be inherently evil, as that is not the topic at hand.
A great game (that is not a Skinner box) should have the player constantly facing new problems and asking, "How can I solve this? What tools have I got? What have I learned from previous challenges that I can apply here?" Portal is a good example of that kind of game. Some games involve insane amounts of repetition but also involve reasonable levels of new problems to solve (WoW might fit this category). Zynga games just have the insane repetition.
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Zynga games just have the insane repetition.
This is crazy talk... obtw, could I friend you on Facebook, so that I could get another friend for Farmville? Oh, can you also water my crops for me?
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> As much as I don't like Zynga at all, I'm going to have to ask you to explain how what they're doing is writing human Skinner boxes.
Do you even _actually_ understand the difference between a Game and a Toy ?? Since you seem to be totally ignorant of the subject here is the "Cole's" notes of Fundamental Game Design:
A game _must_ have (in order to be a game):
* a winning (and by definition a losing state)
How do you "win" at Farmville or any of all the other shit they produce?
Please come back when you und
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I don't think Zynga makes very good games, but the elitist snobbery of gamers against them is irritating. It's like more 'hardcore' videogamers are trying to redefine the definition of the entire media so as to exlude Zynga just because they don't like them.
Zynga threatened to sue me (Score:2, Interesting)
for distributing some javascript that ran in greasemonkey which clicked buttons in their game. Fuck Zynga.
It smells like (Score:2)
a disgruntled employee.
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
It *should* suck to work in that stupid place. If you're doing something that is a parasite on society to make a living at least at least you should have a miserable time doing it. Do something productive instead like, I dunno, deal heroin or something.
http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/chapter/2/ [insertcredit.com]
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Mod up!
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Yes, they sure do deserve to suffer for the crime of making something you don't like. Because it is inherently immoral to not plan your career around what Slashdot poster joss approves of.
And yes, that IS literally exactly what you meant.
Another data point (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend from church mentioned to me a while ago that Zynga had been trying to recruit his son, a 16 year-old junior in high school. That really made me wonder about the company. The kid's smart, no doubt about it, and a decent coder (his code is functional, but not particularly clean or maintainable -- pretty typical for a bright novice), but I can really only think of one reason why a company would want to hire a 16 year-old, put him up in an apartment in NYC and make him write code full-time: To exploit his willingness to work insane hours for peanuts until he burns out.
If they really thought he was brilliant and a great long-term hire, they'd offer him an internship and help pay for his college education in exchange for some work now and a lot more work after he gets some CS knowledge to go along with his coding skills.
His parents refused to let him go... they didn't like the idea of turning a 16 year-old loose on his own in NYC, for some reason. I'm encouraging him to apply for a summer internship at Google. Most of those go to college students, but I think he's good enough to make the cut, and a summer internship will pay him well for a great learning opportunity without compromising his continuing formal education.
Re:Another data point (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like the parents are pushing this kid kinda hard to begin with... Why would you even try and send a 16 year old into a program designed for college students?
Take a deep breath. Slow down. Relax.
Is anyone actually surprised? (Score:3)
Mod down. Goatse (Score:2)
see subject
Re:Metrics are a synonym for Hell (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, lines of code per hour is an absolutely terrible metric to measure performance. It does not take into account the type of problem or how difficult it may be to engineer a solution for that problem. Also, once it becomes apparent that people rewarded for producing a larger number of LoC per hour, they'll start to produce more lines of code, whether they're necessary or not, often to the detriment of readability.
There's nothing wrong with measuring things like this, and many software development methodologies use metrics such as LoC to provide feedback for the project, but in no way should they be used to evaluate employees. Many of the attributes that make up a good employee cannot be quantified by simple metrics. Metrics are just another tool. Using them correctly is necessary to get anything meaningful out of them.
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Sadly, I still hear many otherwise intelligent people using lines of code from time to time.
Re:Metrics are a synonym for Hell (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with measuring things like this, and many software development methodologies use metrics such as LoC to provide feedback for the project, but in no way should they be used to evaluate employees.
Evaluating software developers is hard. So, just as companies would like to use software generating tools to de-skill the programming positions, they'd also like to use metrics to de-skill some of those pesky high-paid management positions. Both attempts to substitute automation for human skill work about equally well ;-)
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Re:Metrics are a synonym for Hell (Score:5, Interesting)
It's best when you write -2000 lines of code [folklore.org] during the day.
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A good programmer can reduce the number of lines of code in a project.
Re:Metrics are a synonym for Hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Metrics are one of those things that sometimes set me off. The main problem is, you have to know what you're measuring. You're measuring number of lines produced per hour? That's fine. But do you know what you're measuring? You're measuring the number of lines produced per hour. You aren't measuring the quality of the code or the productivity of the programmer. The number of lines that a programmer produced may have some relation to the programmer's overall productivity, or it may not, so you are *not* measuring overall productivity with that metric.
Same goes for other metrics. Know what you're measuring. Don't rely too much on a metric to give you a value for something that it doesn't measure.
Re:Metrics are a synonym for Hell (Score:5, Insightful)
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The only microscopically more intelligent metric of executable file length at the output of the optimizing compiler can also be successfully gamed... Let me write my own implementation of Quicksort, my own implementation of AES, etc.
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LoC is lines of code? Damn, I thought it was Library of Congresses. I should slow down
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I've seen metrics for customer support and IT that include number of tickets closed as a metric. Having them reopened by a disgruntled customer because the problem wasn't solved means you get to close it again and get your metrics even higher. As soon as there are metrics people will work to maximize the metrics rather than maximize their productivity or increased revenue. Sort of the workplace equivalent to "teaching to the test".
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I agree. That's why I work in the US. No metric system here.
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In the US we measure productive in terms of gallons of code.
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A dozen teenagers being exploited by an employer doesn't worry me much, it's normal for most industries.
I'm more worried that people are throwing away their lives playing crappy Zynga games. How much is *that* costing the economy?
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A dozen teenagers being exploited by an employer doesn't worry me much, it's normal for most industries.
I'm more worried that people are throwing away their lives playing crappy Zynga games. How much is *that* costing the economy?
According to some gaming news Mark Turmell (NBA Jam) is there. Not quite a teenager anymore.
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I'm betting:
a) He's not working 80 hour weeks
b) He leaves right after the IPO
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A dozen teenagers being exploited by an employer doesn't worry me much, it's normal for most industries.
And that's a fucking problem. The fact that people consider that "acceptable" is absolutely disgusting.
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> It is possible to have a market economy under an authoritarian regime as well.
Taiwan and South Korea in the 80s. Seems to have worked very well for them.
Also, to some extent, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and modern pseudo-communist China.
But it still does not excuse the totalitarianism.
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> but that's only because most socialist nations can't afford to shoot everyone who doesn't meet their production metrics.
Well, yes, they eventually stabilize at that point, but it can be fairly hairy on the early, steep end of the curve.
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You're confusing socialism for The People's Republic of China and the scare stories about Russia in the 1980s as told by Americans to other Americans.
Places like Denmark, Finland, Sweden, France, and Germany are phenomenal when it comes to variety and choice in job.
Perhaps a bit of world travel and turning off Fox News would do you good.
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Perhaps a bit of world travel and turning off Fox News would do you good.
He's living in the Capitalist's Free Market paradise. He can't afford those sorts of things.
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Should those 12% that are too disabled to work be abandoned to the winter and the wolves? Should the government shut down just so those 30% can hold their heads high while they starve, thankful that they aren't doing something so terrible as working for a government?
The things shared in common by Linus Torvalds and the founder of SpaceX is that they were both already economically mobile and had the money to move to a different country. The US is a great place to be if you are wealthy, as there are very few
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Re:Ah, capitalism. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, you're quite confused about two very, very different terms here -- which might be understandable as European political systems are impressively more complex and varied than the "Two Parties - plus various nutjobs" system that seems prevalent in the United States (from a European point of view).
You have to understand the fundamental difference between socialist -- which is the political system that Karl Marx described as the dictatorship of the masses to break the hold of the few over production -- and social democrat, which realizes that dictatorships are bad, but also that having more should mean that you can also do more for those that have less.
Further more, there are conservative central parties -- that mostly believe that social responsibility is a worthwhile goal, but should flow from moral responsibility and incentives instead of direct governmental pressure. Then there are right-wing conservatives, that are mostly like the central conservative parties as far as their social approach is concerned, but put more pressure on morals, up to reaching semi-tacit demands for more socio-moral homogeneity. In themselves, these conservative parties are not actually economically more conservative. At best, they are more open towards working WITH big companies to reach a particular goal instead of AGAINST them.
But mostly, the economic outlook depends more on whether you adhere to the more liberal wing of your chosen political stream, or the more social/rightist (as in rights of the people, not right as in right vs left).
In Europe (and especially Germany from which I hail), you can be a liberal conservative, a social democrat, a liberal, a conservative, a green, a leftist, a socialist, a communist, a liberal-economist, a rights-liberal, a rights-conservative, an extreme leftist (note: != socialist or communist), a green, a leftist green, a liberal green, a conservative green, a liberal social democrat with ecological interests (a.k.a. green); and so on. Ohh, and you can of course be a neo-fascist, if that's to your liking.
And the best: Depending on where you live in Europe, all these streams (except for maybe the neo-fascists and extreme leftists) are represented by parties that have between 10-25% of the popular vote with actual voices in the respective parliaments -- and sometimes governments.
Compared to the US-System, Europe is a melting pot of political ideals, where you can be in a conservative party which collectively tries to keep Nuclear Reactors running while allowing gay marriage, wanting minimum wage, and trying to introduce religious lessons in school. The same applies to leftists, liberals, greens, etc. to the same degree.
Isn't having a (non-exclusively) plurality vote system great?
Re:Ah, capitalism. (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that in capitalism you have the choice of not working for such a company
And this is the largest problem with those that religiously worship capitalism. Whether or not you have the "choice" to work for this company is irrelevant; the fact of the matter is that this bullshit should not be allowed, period. When you start to allow companies to act like total assholes because "people have a choice," then if they get successful, then all the other companies will start to emulate that. Look at what happened with retirement plans: Most companies used to offer pensions, which were great for workers. Then a few removed them and went to the far shittier 401k plan. This was deemed acceptable because "you have the choice to work for a company that provides a pension." Fast forward a few years, and now it's almost impossible to find a company that offers pensions to it's employees, unless they are a union job. So don't give me that bullshit about "choice of working".
Re:Ah, capitalism. (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean to suggest that if a socialist system (or any other for that matter) were used, stupid management would suddenly disappear?
Stalin's approach of shooting those who couldn't meet the required metrics at least ensured that management became smart enough to fiddle the metrics.
Re:Ah, capitalism. (Score:4, Interesting)
You maybe haven't heard of Employment Tribunals then?
Rgds
Damon
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And... this is part of what's wrong with healthcare in the US. You're probably working like that because all the other men in the medical fraternity got hazed even worse than you did.
Meanwhile, medical mistakes kill... how many people every year?
Meanwhile, the number of smart people who decide not to become MDs is... how many each year?
Re:That's it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You work 12- hour days and you're complaining? I'm a resident physician and work 12 hours shifts everyday. Plus, I have to take call which translates into 30-hour shifts on occasion. My personal record is 32 hours awake in the hospital---and that's after Congress stepped in and created the work-hour limitations.
The medical industry is severly broken. You wouldn't let a truck driver operate his vehicle 12 hours straight, let alone 32. If he did and he had an accident he'd be imprisoned. Yet doctors do insane shifts. That is just plain ridiculous. You need to have your shifts limited to 8 hours in any 24 hour period and train a lot more doctors. The reason this isn't happening is your medical associations artificially limit supply of doctors to drive rates up for the elite specialists. Again ridiculous. How many people have died because a doctor has been too tired to do their job properly and has made a mistake. Do I dare ask you if you've ever made a fatal mistake due to fatigue, and how you live with it?