Even taking vacation time while at Bethesda didn’t really feel like vacation, Purkeypile told me. “That’s not really time off. You come back and have like, 1000 emails you have to respond to, and you’re like, oh, I just pushed work down [the road]. It’s not a real vacation, right?”
Having worked from Europe for a US tech company, that’s the norm. I had about 15 Americans reporting into me and I required them all to take a minimum of 20 days off. Most of them found this confusing at first, like it was a trap or something, and I had to insist. My peers in leadership in the US could not understand how my employee retention was so good.
Pretty much the norm for office work if we’re being honest…
People who have never worked a job where the tasks are the same every day probably don’t understand how nice time off can be because you can just disconnect completely. Reverse is true as well, people who have never had a job with ongoing projects can’t understand how stressful it can be to go on vacation…
I used to have a job like my first example (repetitive tasks, no long term projects) and being able to leave for a whole month without caring about what happens at work… Damn it felt great.
I don’t work in the gaming industry but this hit home. It really does feel that way.
I know… reading it i was just like “mood”
Man, 14 years is a hell of a long time in one place.
Been at my place for 5 and even that feels like a long time in this industry.
Too scared to move in this climate, though.
It used to be the norm that people would work their whole career in the same place… Hell, if I had started where I’m working now back in my 20s I would probably have worked for the same employer until I retire…
most I ever had was ten but that was at a public institution. My average is five or six.
It sucks to hear the reality of working within the industry. I grew up on Morrowind with (wholly unpursued) dreams of working for Bethesda. I couldn’t think of anything more incredible than to be a part of that, building and cluttering those environments, and possibly even writing the lore for The Elder Scrolls. I was so involved in those games. I knew how to use the Construction Kit, and contributed here and there to the modding community. I never took any actions to set me on that career path, but that was my childhood dream.
I’d still jump at the chance to do it now, but I know it wouldn’t be the experience I imagined it to be.
It’s really not limited to the game industry. A project of any kind with 10 people vs 100/1000 people is going to be a very different experience. It’s just human nature - there’s more planning and communication required, and more personality types involved.
