Microsoft Workers Doing 80 Hours a Week After Microsoft Culled Their Colleagues
This is apparently considered "common" or "normal" now (in some particular divisions and geographies). Why have a life? A better-paid sweatshop role is still a sweatshop role.
Coming up in the next batch of Daily Links [1] is a report about how Microsoft dooms the life of DOOM developers. A couple of weeks ago we published "Microsoft is 'Angel of Death' to Developers (Even Its Own)"; yesterday we published "Microsoft: Work Weekends Too" and "Essentiality of Rest and Killing Oneself for Vicious Companies" (some people are overworked until they literally die at Microsoft).
"Alex St. John said if you don't want to work 70 or 80 hours a week sometimes," Ryan notes, "don't work in the gaming industry."
According to [2], there are days when they work 17 hours a day (barely any time left to sleep and eat) and work starts at 5AM.
Dream job! █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations DLC Reportedly Marked Worst Series Crunch To Date
Some Devs Worked 80 Hours A Week To Ship The DLC!
[...]
Doom: The Dark Ages may have been one of id Software’s most recent releases, but following the title, the team has faced major layoffs under Microsoft. Despite the Revelations DLC also performing well, the team is now much worse off than it was only a few months back.
[...]
As per former producer Andrew Willis, the developer was clocking in 12 hours at work during this time. However, he even worked for 17 hours for a few days, leading to most of the DLC being made in just a few months.
The developer noted that the crunch was so bad that many id Software employees were sometimes working up to 80 hours a week. He even went into the office at 5 AM on certain days as a result of this crunch.
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"Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations" Devs Hit 17-Hour Days During Crunch Before Layoffs
Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations is the only story expansion ever launched for The Dark Ages, and it was well-liked by the community, scoring a "Very Positive" review rating on Steam. However, as revealed in a new Insider Gaming interview, the expansion's quality came at a cost to its developers.
According to former Id Software developer, Andrew Willis, "There were two months where I was working something like at least 12 hours every day. I know I hit 17 a couple of days. It was brutal, and the majority of the game got made in three or four months." He adds that the crunch affected everyone on the team, however, he explained that the crunch wasn't mandated by company policy, but that developers were given a workload that was impossible to complete without the crunch.