Your Benefits Package is Great, But Does It Include Unpaid Overtime?
A jaded and seasoned AAA game developer's rejection letter to a potential employer speaks to big changes in the game development industry.
Johannes Stephenson, 37, of Roanoke, West Virginia broke the mold this week with an open rejection letter to Analog Extremes, one of the most sought-after game dev companies to work for. Analog is famous for bucking traditional trends like unpaid overtime; They push for a fresh take on work-life balance in ways most devs couldn’t afford. A catch by any standards, Johannes has worked on backend design for systems in World Of Battle with Slizzard Entertainment and the culinary exploration game, No Man’s Pie with Goodbye games. His resume is impressive, but the reason we are talking about him today is because of his now virally iconic rejection letter to Analog Extremes, The creator of Starframe:
Dear Analog Extremes Hiring Team,
I regret to inform you that I will not be accepting the backend developer position at Analog Extremes.
Many potential applicants will decline a position due to poor benefits, pay, or a history of poor culture. While I understand the benefits package and pay to be well above industry standard, and more than sufficient for my needs, I wanted to express a different concern as the reason for my declination: The excessive focus on work-life balance.
The best work comes from gut-wrenching stress, deadlines that mean what they say, and paying $2.35 for coffee in your break room. The evidence for this is overwhelming, but I’ll distill it: It draws out the best in your team. Their unified suffering builds camaraderie. That sacred solidarity in hatred of the brass ships product. I ship product.
The overwhelmingly gorgeous workspaces also influenced my decision. The distraction and rapture impact deadlines and throughput. Your facilities lack the inspiring doldrums of barebones work desks and green-tinged fluorescent light. If it doesn’t look like the administration office for an Eastern European breadline, it just won’t do. I can work from anywhere and have. I debugged the procedural generation backend for No Man’s Pie during my brother’s wedding. The flower girl handled the rings… and the speech.
I wrote the lion’s share of the code for the World of Battle Trade Network while passing kidney stones into my wife’s petunias.
I ship product.
Coffee bars make breaks excessively long. And nap rooms? Really? How am I supposed to massacre bugs and shred backlog while I sleep? I sleep during the commercials on Frasier, as God above intended, because I ship product.
The last point I want to cover is the lack of crunch. For those reading, that means a condensed work schedule where employees are not encouraged, but compelled to work more upwards 60 hours a week to ship on time with no increase in pay. This is one of the greatest institutions of the industry, and its sunset spells doom for the true heroes of gaming, the devs. With their spark and hunger sated with complimentary gluten-free salmon canapes and chic overhead lighting, crunching is the last holdout of the driven and talented.
Without these hallmarks of the titans of our industry, the perfect become passable and the overwhelming become “mostly positive”. Imagine what fantastic outcomes the developers of Stardew Valley and Balatro could have if they properly motivated their teams to the level of greatness required. Sure, they made games, but as for me…
I ship product.
Best Regards,
Johannes
P.S. I might have considered it, but the free pilates class you oferred me on the way out of the interview was the final nail.
This letter indicates a stark change from the motivations of talented developers of previous generations, and one that I am sure many production studios will find amenable. Some might say that The Mind Salad is at best cherry picking, and at worst completely fabricating favorable material to reduce their overhead.
Formally, we offer no comment on the issue, but readers would be intrigued to know that we are reporting higher-than-expected Q1 earnings, mostly through charging my wife $2.35 for her morning coffee.
We at the Mind Salad look forward to the promise of vastly improved quality and development speed. Our investigative team will stay hot on the case to bring you the latest in technology and gaming business news…
Because we ship product.