I have taken the liberty of distilling the contents of the letter. I haven't substantially innovated on the content or structure, so it is still poorly organized, but hopefully it will be easier to read. Don't be too harsh on the writer: she may be ESL or have an English degree.
Dear Rockstar Management:
We wives of Rockstar employees are contacting you to address poor conditions in the San Diego office.
Working conditions have deteriorated since March 2009, to the point where employees' lives and families are affected by them. The fault lies with management, though it is probably a result of ignorance rather than malice. Immediate steps must be taken to improve the office.
Employees have suffered stress-induced illness caused by pressure from work. Several employees have been diagnosed with depression; at least one with suicidal tendencies. Rockstar has provided a full-time massuse: this will not address the causes of the stress and is insulting to employees.
We understand that the video game industry experiences periodic crunch. Traditionally, teams were offered time to decompress after milestones. This policy has been abandoned. Managers at the San Diego office have instituted a de-facto policy of permanent "temporary" crunch. Employees currently work 12 hour days, including on Saturday, regardless of the status of their projects.
This infringment of our rights is unacceptable.
Employees seeking treatment for stress-induced illnesses have been forced to use leave to do so, because most healthcare providers are not open on Sunday. Management is dismissive of complaints.
In addition to pervasive crunch, the last year has seen benefits cut. Comp time and a week of post-Christmas vacation have been eliminated. Medical benefits have also been cut, which has exacerbated the stress-induced illnesses. Non-exempt artists and designers have had overtime pay eliminated on the excuse that they are "too senior" to be non-salaried employees. One manager cusses.
Our children miss their fathers.
Rockstar customarily pays employees predictable bonuses. The bonuses have become unpredictable and, when not eliminated for specious reasons, are not actually paid in a timely fashion after being awarded. Raises have been below inflation for each of the past four years. Employees have been told that this is due to Rockstar not being profitable, however, Grand Theft Auto had over a billion dollars in sales. Rockstar should share the wealth with its employees.
If working conditions are not improved immediately, we will be forced to sue Rockstar.
The original author would do well to read Strunk & White's _The_Elements_of_Style_. Using many words does improve communication.
Edit: Sorry, I meant, "using many words does NOT improve communication." (I guess using few words does not improve communication either if you mistype them.)
Organizational issues aside, I am moved by the sentiment behind the original author's words. Fred Brooks compared large programming projects to tar pits, wherein the thrashing of the largest beast only serves to sink it farther. It must be terrible to be constantly commanded "thrash harder!"
In regards to the poor English, I'm fairly confident the author may have been deliberately attempting to obscure their writing style.
It's very possible that the author feels her husband would not approve of (or consent to) publishing a criticism of his employers. I can fairly easily recognize the writing styles of several dozen of my friends, and I'm not married to any of them.
In any given essay/blog of that length, without employing deliberate obfuscation, someone looking for it would likely be able to spot a saying/phrase/crutch word that could identify the author.
The excessive use of the thesaurus is a pretty solid indicator that the author wrote their original draft, then went through and replaced words and phrases with ones of similar meaning.
For example, I wrote the above naturally, without trying to hide my writing style. Glance over the above and you'll probably notice; I have a habit of using indecisive adjectives in statements where I'm not confident that I'm 100% accurate. (Hell, I reflexively did so while writing the sentence talking about the habit!)
That kind of thing can be as good as a signature. When that signature could hurt your marriage or your husband's career, looking like a 6th grade poet is a small price to pay for some insurance.
I really don't understand why they don't quit. Maybe making games is their dream, but obviously it's not as good as they imagined. Switch to web dev and find work instantly.
Or go make their own games? If word got out a bunch of Rockstar employees broke off and started their own deal, it'd get loads of free hype and press. Maybe even enough to make it viable. Isn't that pretty much what the original Diablo team did with Torchlight?
This phenomenon is actually responsible for practically all of Vancouver's game industry presence - nearly every shop in town is formed by pissed off ex-EA employees. It is now almost expected for a junior dev to cut their teeth at EA, and graduate to one of these studios where they will be treated like human beings.
All the free press in the world won't pony up the 7 or 8 figures in capital they'd need to make a game, though. Imputed deferred wages if nothing else. Torchlight, for example, clearly cost over a million to bring to market. (Take a look at the length of their credits.)
I think it is just a bad, bad industry to be in... and yet I feel its siren's call for my next app, too.
"Now, why they don't line up another job is a good question."
Probably because most other studios in the area are just like this also - this is a persistent problem in any industry where there is a lineup a mile long of suckers who want the glamour of making video games.
Game studios in California typically have nasty reputations, in my experience. The rest of the industry isn't renown for good working conditions, but I can't think of many studios in CA with a good reputation. Could be that the huge programming and artistic talent pool in the state makes it easy for the studios to abuse employees.
I don't know since I'm not in the industry - but I can hazard a guess. Like Hollywood, California is essentially the birthplace of video games - and in many ways is still considered its Mecca. Like the other HN post about the aspiring web dev who moved to CA to "make it", I'm sure others do the same to break into the games industry.
Low supply of jobs + huge influx of desperate glamour seekers = massive drop in pay and benefits, and more incentive to abuse (there's a guy who's spent years honing his experience right outside the door ready for you to burn out and quit).
I agree, but it seems ironic since your chances of breaking in are probably a lot better outside CA these days. It's become common for studios to clamp down on hiring in high-cost locations, while ramping up in cheaper cities. If I was trying to break into games today, I'd go to Montreal - thanks to gov't subsidies, they're the cheapest place on earth to make games, and the studios have noticed.
FWIW, I have friends that work at game studios in SF, and they're generally happy (and mostly ex-EA employees). These are indie studios or companies that get contracted out by companies like EA to do "hard stuff".
That said, I don't know anyone who was happy working at EA.
Because you've accumulated experience that's most usable in game development. The procedures, process and even testing is quite different from other places.
Also it's not like that you decide to quit, and go to another work.
I have a friend that moved from Heavy Iron studios to that exact same one, and he drives 100 miles back and forth (Santa Monica -> Carlsbad/OceanSide/San Diego - not exactly sure where the studio is).
He moved away from Heavy Iron studios because they were told that all salaries would be halved.
He's with kids, and has to react quickly. He can't let himself be laid off (on half salary), and then search. He needs to quit (so no compensation) and has to find job in maximum one two months.
So here you go. He went over there, and although he's driving much - does he has much choice? Or should he start his vacation days back from a two weeks, until it accumulates to a full month and more? And at some point one would have to settle at one place - buy a house, etc.
This is standard fare for jobs in the video game industry. The only company that I've heard of that doesn't do this sorta of crap is valve where it is limited to about two months before release (The valve information is 2nd hand).
I know when I worked in the video game industry about 60% of the year we worked 12+ hour days. We were just testers not even the programmers who were often there longer.
You should know the score when you go into games programming. There is a lot of demand for those jobs, so the employers can push harder than they would otherwise. This is kind of like moving next to an airport then complaining about the noise.
You might be surprised by how much leverage games programmers with experience can have. Video games are like the movie industry - hard to break into, but once you're established (shipped titles) you can write your own ticket - particularly if you're willing to locate in areas with a shortage of experienced games programmers.
Indeed. The problem is that lots of young programmers want ot be game developers, thinking its a really cool job. The games companies know this, and fully exploit it, wringing as much work of of employees as they can, while the employee is still naive and doesn't expect management to be utter cunts. When the employee wises up, there's always the next generation of mugs to exploit.
How to fix this? I guess the important thing is to get word out that employers like Rockstar are scum who should be avoided at all costs. (caveat: I've no direct experience with Rockstar, my impression of them is based on a friend who used to work for them).
"There surely must be a limited supply of people who can do the really serious physics modeling or AI stuff. Are they subject to the same conditions?"
Yes, they are, because there are still more available than needed, and 'the best' is rarely a trait that games studios look for in hiring.
That said, someone with a SIGGRAPH presentation, or equivalents in AI or physics, WILL be treated with more respect in the industry. But at the end of the day, you'll still be a very disposable cog, that works the hours that management decries, or you're gone.
Most of the labor on these Hollywood-blockbuster-style games is in art production, modelling, scripting, writing, QA -- the engines are done by much smaller teams, often at third-party companies.
It's at the point where many of the better college programs oriented at the "you like playing games, so you'll obviously master making them" adolescents have given up the pretense of teaching CS or programming to their students.
Well no. You might as well tell your boss: "I'm no longer a team player. I am a family player right now". I've told that to my boss, because I knew my boss would understand me.
But not everyone is like that.
It's not manager problem. It's an industry problem. No silver bullet...
Indeed, this very strategy is recommended right up front in Secrets of Power Negotiating, where it is called the Higher Authority gambit.
"You should always have a higher authority with whom you have to check before you can change your proposal or make a decision. A negotiator who presents himself as the decision-maker has put himself at a severe bargaining disadvantage. You have to put your ego on the back burner to do this, but you'll find it very effective.
"...When the other person knows that you have the final authority to make a deal, he knows that he only has to convince you... Not so if you are telling him that you have to answer to a higher authority. Whether you have to get approval from a region, head office, management, partners, or board of directors, the other person has to do more to convince you... He knows that he must completely win you to his side so that you want to persuade your higher authority to agree to his proposal."
You also buy time to review any proposal that is made, or look for counteroffers, because that proposal has to be taken away behind the scenes and shown to the higher authority for approval.
Note, however, that your family isn't the best choice for this: "be sure that your authority is a vague entity, such as a pricing committee, the people back at corporate, or the marketing committee. If you tell the other person that your manager would have to approve it, what's the first thought that they are going to have? Right: 'Then why am I wasting time talking to you?'..."
Of course, the flip side of that is that a company might find it exceedingly awkward to demand that your wife come in to work and participate in the negotiations. Such things are just not done. So the "wife" version of the gambit does work better than the "manager" version, though nowhere near as well as the "ambiguous corporate overlords" version.
People often allege -- correctly, I fear -- that some companies prefer to hire single people rather than people with families. And here we have the reason: Having a family automatically, perhaps even unconsciously, puts you in a stronger negotiating position with your employer, not just at the beginning of the job but day-to-day. "Oh, how I would love to spend the entire weekend fixing my co-worker's bugs, but my child needs me." If you are a single person and your employer knows it I encourage you to invent some fictional relatives. For an astonishingly relevant guide to this, see Wilde, Oscar: The Importance of Being Earnest.
I don't know if I want to get caught inventing fictional relatives, but your general observation about higher authority is dead on.
Negotiation tactics exist in order for both parties to be able to pressure the other ones and find out more about their true position without the use of force. It's a dance -- sometimes a complicated dance, but a dance. You resort to higher authority, I pull a previously-made concession, you ask for a price, I give you one, you flinch, etc.
There are lots more tactics than just higher authority, although that is a good one.
BTW, great book and set of tapes Secrets of Power Negotiating. I used to read/listen to a lot of business books and tapes, and it was one of the few that really made a difference in my work.
Saying that yourself is one thing - having someone say it for you merely makes you look like a weak negotiator. Joe Programmer is a ball being tossed back and forth between his boss and his wife - he has set himself up to just go wherever the stronger player sends him.
'Zackly. His wife has the power to make him quit. His boss has the knowledge that he has already chosen not to use this power himself. To negotiate, everyone's got to have something that someone else wants.
This is interesting, because it's working conditions like these which preceded unionization of workforces in the early 20th century.
When I was made redundant last year they asked if I wanted to have a union representative present. It's just part of the standard text they have to say for legal reasons, but as far as I'm aware there are no unions related to software engineering. This is probably because the industry is still fairly young.
All the more reason why the industry ought to wise up before unionization starts to look like the better option anyway. Abusive management and powerful unions are a lose-lose situation for everyone.
It's basically the double-defect equilibrium in the prisoner's dilemma, which is where short-sighted self-interest so often leads.
Because of the teachers union the general population is dumb and uneducated. Because of the automotive unions, we have no decent public transportation. And because of the doctors union, large swaths of the population have no access to healthcare and doctors have so little critical thinking ability that it takes on average seven years to diagnose a disease.
Is it possible that unions made wealth more equally distributed and thus increased growth? Yes. However, using unions to increase distribution of wealth is pretty much worst imaginable way to do it.
The only company that took the EA wives scandal to heart was EA - from what I hear from people inside it's now a much better place to work than before.
Well, much better than slave work is still kind of shitty, but...
Perhaps because that just happens to be the make up of the company? Nothing wrong with female devs, but if Rockstar happens to only have male devs, then yes the wives are going to be the ones complaining.
Game developers(slightly less so publishers) are almost uniformly male-dominated. Some of it is the internal culture of most companies; some of it is external motivations and expectations that filter out women at an early stage. There are occasional efforts to seek a balance in hiring, but the market really doesn't make it easy.
I found this comment insulting. Why are they dumb for working on something that they love? Just because you (heck, or even the developers wives') can't calibrate the passion for video games doesn't mean no one can.
The dumb part isn't working long hours for a job you love. The dumb part is working for terrible wages in awful conditions and letting the value you create be captured by other people.
Whomever wrote this is fluent and has idiomatic English. That is the best part about this: she believes she a gifted poet, but she really should know better.
English second language speakers (like myself) often use words out of place or the wrong words. The reasons for that is simple - often you think of something but there is no direct translation (there aren't a one to one mapping between words in languages). Another reason is that you have to keep on using new words - otherwise you will end up with the vocabulary of a five year old.
I take it that there is no right language, no right accent.
I can't speak for Bulgarian, but English has standard rules of grammar, spelling, and usage. Anyone who's made it through K-12 public education in the US should be able to help you with those rules, if you ask them.
If you're trying to communicate, why not make the marginal effort to do it right? Or is that an ethic only native-born English speakers should adopt?
I'm from England and I sometimes struggle to make myself understood here in the US! I'm a lot more sympathetic to my colleagues who have English as a second language now, it's far from a 'marginal effort' to do it right.
I'm grateful that people are making an attempt to share something in a language I can understand, I don't see the gain in making them feel bad if they break a few grammar rules in the process.
Hah. Perl-esque - awful language, but huge library. Not the same - ahem awful language might or might not mean intellectual lightweight - it could be intellectual drunkard - but HUGE LIBRARY (cpan that is)...
Oh boo hoo. Really. Sounds exactly like every programming job back in the 90's, except these lucky bastards somehow found the time to meet girls, date them and get married.
Dear Rockstar Management:
We wives of Rockstar employees are contacting you to address poor conditions in the San Diego office.
Working conditions have deteriorated since March 2009, to the point where employees' lives and families are affected by them. The fault lies with management, though it is probably a result of ignorance rather than malice. Immediate steps must be taken to improve the office.
Employees have suffered stress-induced illness caused by pressure from work. Several employees have been diagnosed with depression; at least one with suicidal tendencies. Rockstar has provided a full-time massuse: this will not address the causes of the stress and is insulting to employees.
We understand that the video game industry experiences periodic crunch. Traditionally, teams were offered time to decompress after milestones. This policy has been abandoned. Managers at the San Diego office have instituted a de-facto policy of permanent "temporary" crunch. Employees currently work 12 hour days, including on Saturday, regardless of the status of their projects.
This infringment of our rights is unacceptable.
Employees seeking treatment for stress-induced illnesses have been forced to use leave to do so, because most healthcare providers are not open on Sunday. Management is dismissive of complaints.
In addition to pervasive crunch, the last year has seen benefits cut. Comp time and a week of post-Christmas vacation have been eliminated. Medical benefits have also been cut, which has exacerbated the stress-induced illnesses. Non-exempt artists and designers have had overtime pay eliminated on the excuse that they are "too senior" to be non-salaried employees. One manager cusses.
Our children miss their fathers.
Rockstar customarily pays employees predictable bonuses. The bonuses have become unpredictable and, when not eliminated for specious reasons, are not actually paid in a timely fashion after being awarded. Raises have been below inflation for each of the past four years. Employees have been told that this is due to Rockstar not being profitable, however, Grand Theft Auto had over a billion dollars in sales. Rockstar should share the wealth with its employees.
If working conditions are not improved immediately, we will be forced to sue Rockstar.
Sincerely,
The Wives