High rate of employee/employer turnover

[Atreides]

I've been reading through some dev credits and I'm surprised how almost everyone's been at so many companies and sometimes spent relatively little time at said companies.

 

Why's that and what do you guys think about it?

[Hydrogen]

Consider also that games take a few years from conception to publication, so it may seem like they have been somewhere less time than usual. Also, many companies will ramp up on help when they are in crunch times, then after a game has shipped, if they don't have another one to put people on right then and there, they let the people go... usually these are known as intern jobs, but not always.. sometimes they are truly contract.

[kirottu]

Nah... Developers are just pain in the ass to work with. That

[Brian Lawson]

This "problem" is the result of a combination of a number of things. Primarly it's due to the fact that the gaming industry in general is still kind of young. I say "kind of" because it's definitely starting to grow up.

 

Through the 90's people would hop jobs left and right for more pay here or more pay there. It still happens today. However, certain studios and companies have by now (in some cases) earned themselves a reputation. In some cases it's a good reputation and in others it's a bad one.

 

At this point though, I think it's still fair to say that the number of "bad" studios and companies still far outweighs the number of "good" ones.

 

Bad meaning companies that abuse their employees with insane demands, work loads, working conditions, unrealistic expectations, poor project management, laying people off after they've got what they needed out of them, etc.

 

Good meaning reasonable demands and work loads, good working conditions, realistic expectations, and good project management, etc.

 

While it may sound simple...it can't be THAT hard to do all of those things...right?? Well, there are plenty of people in this industry that will/can tell you first hand just how difficult doing the "good" things can be.

 

However, even the companies that fall under the "bad" category can still manage to survive because there are always newbies lining up to get their start. So, unknowingly...or even knowingly they will endure those types of environments just to get the experience. The problem with that though, is that when you're constantly hiring on junior and inexperienced talent, it eventually starts to reflect first hand in the product.

 

Anyway, I think things are slowly evolving in this industry to more sensible and mainstream work environments. I could go on and on...but that's just my brief opinion. :cool:

[Moose]

EA - Ten hour shifts, one twenty minute break

 

Sounds fantastic

[Kor Qel Droma]

How many hours per day/week do Obsidian devs put in on average?

[kirottu]

As far as I understand it isn

[mkreku]

As far as I understand it isn

[kirottu]

No, it

Edited December 16, 2005 by kirottu

[Nathaniel Chapman]

We actually do have a pretty cool coffee machine, but it is neither rigged nor haunted.

[Colrom]

I once interviewed for a job working on the development of military hardware and sometime in the middle of the interview decided that what the company was running was a high tech sweat shop - which wasn't anything I had in mind. I told them so and left.

 

I imagine that game development can be much the same.

 

Lots of really smart people doing creative work - but sometimes being treated badly by bad companies.

 

But there are also good companies - here and there.