John Carmack on Work-Life Balance

[liquidsnake]

Carmack is the worst person to ask about this, his experience was completely unique. He's not lying, but he's definitely telling you "his truth" which only really applies to him and the reality that he knew at id Software. For him in those days it was all a personal passion project, he'd work 16 hour days gladly because he was having a lot of fun doing it, but that is a situation very unique to Carmack, it was his company, they were his pet projects alongside a tight crew of his closest friends, it's totally different than working on a massive corporation where you don't know half the staff and answering to other people's wishes and deadlines, some of which you've never even heard of.

Carmack's experience is a lot closer to modern indy gamedev than it is something like Blizzard or Ubisoft

[MoskHotel]

Never thought I’d see a Joe Rogan podcast with time-travelling space wizard and supergenius villainous overlord of our very own dimension John Carmack.

[DEBIEL]

While I respect Carmack a lot, I think he's forgetting the bubble he has lived in previously. He has always been able to work on things he was very passionate about, while also taking on leadership roles and then yes, putting in all those hours is great if you love doing that. On the other hand, if you are just a "normal" employee of a bigger game development company that does not get a say in what is being developed and the project is not THEIR passion project as others get to decide everything (especially if those others are business executives... looking at you post-2010s Blizzard/Bethesda), then it's a completely different story...

[Nanerbeet]

Just some of my experiences: At one gaming company, I worked from April to October without any days off (even weekends or holidays) at least 13 hours a day. I had to get a approval so I go home for Sunday dinners with the family and watch a new episode of the Sopranos before heading back to work for another 5 hours. As soon as that game was approved by first party acceptance we were all fired with 2 weeks severance. Another company literally locked the doors and wouldn't let anybody leave until 3am while trying to ship a game. That company stopped paying us because they ran out of money... and we kept working anyway. I've been stuck in the elevator overnight. Almost all of the companies I've worked for went out of business. Now that I'm out of the gaming industry I work a lot less and make a lot more. If I had gotten out a long time ago I'd be filthy rich from all the stock options I missed out on.

[zoeherriot]

I worked at EA, THQ among others and at various times we had to work 7 days a week 12-14 hours a day for months - and it wasn’t… optional as such. There was definitely a vibe of if you don’t do it, the project will fail - and we’ll all be out of work.

[apoth]

Along comes the boss from a completely different industry and sees among a team of 12 hour workaholics the one guy who wants to see his family after 8 hours of exhausting work...

[FranciscoFJM]

The thing is, people "chose" to work 12hs a day in game developement because most of the time publishers (EA, Activision, WB, Square, Atari, etc.) Gives them an extremely tight deadline to develop a product, with contracts that can be broken by the snap of a finger leaving you out of a job the very next day. There are some extreme cases where the suits come out to say "We dont FORCE people to be here 12hs a day" but you know damn well that if any employee decides to speak up, their contract gets canceled and they get blacklisted from working on the field ever again. This is one of the mayor reasons why crunching culture exists in the first place, because some people just cannot afford to lose their job and not be able to find anything else quickly, and that's how publishers have a tight grip on the employees.

[Ad-imne]

He _really_ doesn't realize the enforced crunch culture that plagues the industry sheesh

[anonanon]

Carmack= hero. My 3 cents (inflation): I think a lot of the problem gets down to project management. What always baffles me, is if you had never played the piano, you would not get promoted to concert piano player...or want to. But folks who have never read a book about project management often find themselves promoted to project management in a game company. A lot of hubris creates problems in the industry. I worked in the industry and at one company that got this part right, we had a very very very heavy load on planning in the start of projects with each person giving the hours they thought it would take to finish their tasks. We linked all the tasks together, identified missing resources and adjusted scope to get to wait for it... 7.5 hours of work per day...not 8-- left 30mins shy of 8 every day with an hour lunch break and beers available 24/7. We timed tasks to the 5 minute mark, and we it was exciting. I have never seen that level of project planning. We worked overtime probably 3 days, and I can only recall one of those specifically. We did amazing work as well. It was not perfect. We out shined our over sea's headquarter's team, and then headquarters put the screws on asking us to document our work every 15mins to see how we were so effective. We had to mark when we went to the bathroom. That level of supervision from afar destroyed the fast and furious but planned culture we thrived on.

[nerdiloo]

The creative / engineering types in the gaming industry are a different breed. They won't just make a game to meet the deadline - they'll want to make it the best they could ever make. So yes, because of passion they'll work around the clock, and even bring family in. If they're not aligned then its just a job and they'll want outta there to do their family thing. IMO.

[scotttallec]

John was working in a small team, in a company he owned. In this case, the work you do actually matters and in fact is a determining factor in the success of the company as well as your financial compensation. I think the morale of the story is if you're going to be a workaholic you better do it in a startup you co-founded or some endeavor where your compensation is proportional. As someone getting into the work, this is something that conflicts me.

[dropit]

Some people have more control over the creative process than others and probably feel more ownership of the product hence the passion. The majority of others that are talented and skilled in their own right who want to contribute but also realise life doesn’t begin and end with your profession shouldn’t be made to work on something without compensation. Burn out is too common in software development as is, it’s probably more endemic in game development.

[alan.smitheeee]

I have to disagree with John here. While studios don't demand that you work 12 hour days sans overtime every salaried worker has it in the back of their mind that they could be on the next periodic lay-off chopping block if they don't. WFH has helped mitigate some of this toxic mindset a bit. The people who choose to put in that time on their own accord are used as standards to live up to instead of exceptions to the rule.

[marcusrehn]

I simply think that if you do work that hard, you should be rewarded in stock.

[Yamagatabr]

No Joe, they do't requiere you to do 12h a day. They just demmand of you an work output that would take 18h of any good professional per day.

[siphillis]

I get Carmack's perspective on crunch culture, but I find it too limited and colored by his own experiences. 99.99% of game developers do not enjoy their work as much as Carmack, and have a far wider degree of interests, so it's a far bigger deal for them if working in games and pursuing any meaningful interest outside of it are mutually exclusive. Moreover, while few game devs are ever forced to work overtime, many find it impossible to hit deadlines and remain a valued collaborator if they work 9-to-5 while their coworkers stay late. At the end of the day, if you are the one person who causes the rest of your team to miss a deadline and lose out on a bonus or perk, that's going to be a permanent mark on your reputation. It's very easy and tempting to toss off any concerns about long-term physical and mental health when put in that position.

If gaming is to become a sustainable industry, it can't rely forever on developers who are clinically obsessed with work and nothing else. There's only so many Carmack's out there.

[Fu_XiaoChen]

"They are choosing to do this" fuck that, they are getting exploited

[El_Crazyknight]

You always don't mind working 60 hours a week if you are in a leadership position or ownership position.Maybe if you are really really passionate yes you don't mind neither but for the other 90% in the industry it is just a job that the upermanagement and leaders like Carmack that expect you to burn the midnight oil they don't enjoy it as you do, because you are either not getting paid the same or have no stock emotionally on it.

Is like when a CEO of a company expect you to work as hard as him and bleed for the company and doesn't understand why you don't ...well is not my company when I have my own business you literally are willing to bleed for it and do it with a smile because is yours.

[amans]

Jeremy, most low paying dirt work is like that only, like the man who picks the garbage 4 in the morning. He's basically saying don't confuse contribution with compensation. He's right. But that's with almost every other unskilled job.

[ValseInstrumentalist]

I would contest that making games is really, really hard. Any idiot can make a game. Including me. Some of them can even make pretty good games.

But making games the way Carmack makes them, building a revolutionary and extensible engine full of novel features and programming conventions that would continue to be used for decades, is really, really hard.