Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Home time


Early on in my career, I realised that working late is an accepted norm. It took a small stint at a games company to see the flaw in it though. There, I saw a workplace where it was normal to stay until about 10pm just about every night. Anyone who left on time was seen as not really putting in the effort.

And yet, for a large part of the day, I saw people sitting around doing very little. Chatting about that club (Ministy of Sound I think it was - that may tell you the location of the company), about other games, about DJing and (yes, it's those lazy 3D animators again) waiting for their previews to 'render'.

But everyone considered themselves to be working hard because they were going to be there until 10. It was completely flawed. If they had accepted that they were to go home at 5pm, they would probably have got more actual work done and had the evening all to themselves.

Long after that, in television productions, I saw people working late mostly due to poor planning by producers. If your animators need to stay late on a regular basis, you need to hire more animators. Simple as that.

But don't judge me because I have Saw IV on dvd and I plan on actually going home at some point to watch it.

5 comments:

Andy Latham said...

When I was being interviewed for my current job, my old boss gave them a bad reference because I used to leave on time. Funnily enough, he never mentioned the fact that I was in early every morning!

I hate that it's considered the norm to stay late. It's like you're not allowed to have a life. Actually didn't one famous animator say "you can't immitate life if you don't have one"?

Toole said...

i think brad bird said that with an oscar clutched in his hand

Craig said...

I don't understand why working insanely long hours and having no life is considered to mean you are a good worker. One would assume that a person who can complete their tasks to a satisfactory degree in the time allotted would be considered the better worker.

Bitter Animator said...

Good point, Craig. I completely agree.

Toole said...

As a pre college student who's not employed or anything, I consider my days of working past midnight to be instances of poor discipline. It's not healthy and it makes poorer work.