#2782

“Crunch”

If you thought the days of dark satanic mills were long behind us then think again.

You’ll hear developers, and particularly game developers talking about “crunch time” a lot.

Crunch (time): a critical moment or period (as near the end of a game) when decisive action is needed.
– Merriam Webster

As in, “Our team was crunching which meant management ‘asked’ us to work late nights and weekends’ so that we could ship in time.”

This has ramifications, such as:

“My team crunched really hard for several months. When I finally got home one night I discovered that I was the proud father of twin baby girls.”

“I was at work until 3am and was so tired and distracted driving home that I crashed my car and ended up in the ER.”

“I was expected to work as many hours as were required to meet the deadline. This exacerbated my existing health problems and I was found dead in the shower by one of my house mates.”

“When I leave the house in the morning my daughters as really sad because they aren’t going to see me for several days.”

Only one of these is made up.

As a friend of mine once observed “I used to think all software was written that way until I discovered agile.”

Picture by Adolphe Valette, French impressionist and teacher of J.S. Lowry. Both tried to capture life in the heavily industrialized north of England.