From Valve, the makers of … well, rather a lot of acclaimed, massively profitable, hit games (Half Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead) … This was leaked/posted widely last week: Valve’s new “Employee Handbook”. (although “leak” is probably the wrong word – it’s part of a wave of “Valve is a great place to work” events recently, suggesting a guerrilla recruitment drive).
Nicely written, this is more of a “cultural” doc than a “legal” one. Here’s what they say on Crunch:
“While people occasionally choose to push themselves to
work some extra hours at times when something big is
going out the door, for the most part working overtime for
extended periods indicates a fundamental failure in planning
or communication. If this happens at Valve, it’s a sign
that something needs to be reevaluated and corrected.”
Taken out of context, that quote can be read both ways – either “Crunch is normal, and OK, and we don’t mind it, unless it gets REALLY long” … or “Crunch is wrong, shouldn’t be done, should be stopped whenever it starts”.
Within context, though, most of the doc touches on similar subjects by strongly implying what’s intended, without explicitly saying it. There’s a lot of sly “you’re smart; you get the joke, dear Reader, but fools might not” comments in there.
It’s great that they come out and describe Crunch as “for the most part … a fundamental failure”, but it’s a great pity that they didn’t (in this particular doc), come out and say “Crunch is always wrong”. There’s more than enough wiggle-room in their statement to allow bad companies and poor managers to find a pro-crunch message.
7 Responses to “Valve’s Employee Handbook wavers on Crunch”
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Valve Employee Handbook. Here is a PDF of the wonderful new Employee Handbook for Valve, the video game development company behind Steam, Half-Life and Portal.
I’m a bit confused. Which part of this statement could anyone use to *promote* crunch ? It seems like the language explicitely tries to differenciate between “occasionnal overtime” (the rare but not unseen “10pm miracle”) and “working overtime for extended periods” (aka crunch). Or it there some subtelty in the language that would confuse a non-native english speaker like me ?
Thanks !
@phtr compare their statements to those of some of the other people who are anti-crunch.
Where others say “Crunch is bad, it is not “a tool”, it is “an abuse” – it doesn’t work: don’t do it” … Valve says “Mmm,K? Crunch is kinda bad, maybe? But it’s kind OK, maybe? Mmm, K?”.
In context … it comes across as sitting on the fence: a refusal to commit to an opinion one way or the other (why?).
@adam from what I read, they say “overtime happens. Crunch is ‘a fundamental failure’ “.
To me, they were trying to make the difference between someone who works late on his pet feature, or make final touches near a deadline, and all-night-out-months of crunch.
Now, that actually leaves it to the judgment of the coders, to make the difference between one and the other , and that could be dangerous. But then again that’s the tone of the whole document….
Thanks !
Yep. c.f. last paragraph of the original post.
I understand that it’s Valve’s style to be non-prescriptive about techniques “let the team choose the right tools for each job” etc.
But Crunch isn’t a tool, it’s a failure. I would prefer them to say: “We never crunch. Nor should you. If we find ourselves crunching, we stop. Anyone who finds themselves crunching can immediately refuse to continue”
Adam, I’m a native English speaker and I’m with @phtr Neither in or out of context does the phrasing does imply that extended overtime is OK. I feel as if you’re projecting or twisting words here.
Here are the key words:
- people choose to work some extra hours
- working overtime for extended periods indicates failure
- If this happens, something needs to be reevaluated and corrected
The “context” is the overall situation of Crunch and how it is perceived, how it is described, and how it is handled in the industry.
The three points you listed CAN BE AND ARE used by some of the more cunning of the crunching managers to disguise their abuse. They are not problematic per se; they are problematic because they have turned out to be so vague and hand-waving that they have no prescriptive power.
In particular:
… “people choose” (heard this MANY times from massively abusive managers)
… “working … for extended periods” (I’ve seen managers who define “extended” as “anything more than 3 continuous months of 60-70 hour weeks”
… “something needs to be [done]” (I’ve seen this used plenty of times to avoid actually doing anything; if you say “something will be done” then you can carry on doing it while waving your hangs in the air and chatting)