I honestly don't mean for this to sound combative, but, if you're an employer who has an open position, are you going to promote the person who's willing and able to work harder over someone who isn't?
No, because I have a project management degree and I know that more time thrown at a problem does not mean anything about project efficiency. To me, a project that results in crunch means it is a project that had a management failure along the way.
If I hire someone to do a job for 35 hours a week, I expect them to efficiently be an adult and do those 35 hours a week. I don't expect them to work 40+. In fact, as a manager I actively discourage working more than your allotted hours and have pushed for and gotten my team time management training in order to help them not crunch.
I also make sure that they are given projects with realistic end dates. And, when all else fails, if we DO have to work extended hours on a project, I make sure they take those extended hours out of future days/weeks because they sacrificed for both the company and me, and its important to reward that.
None of this happens in the video game industry because crunch if embraced, championed, cheered and expected. Project management failures from up high snowball down to the minimum wage outsourced employees and hurt them the most. And I don't just mean the actual project managers, I mean the company CEO, shareholders and anyone else above the game project managers who enforce crunch on a project. Its a failure of management, and always will be to me.
Its why the industry needs to unionize at a wide scale and the fight for workers rights truly has to begin.
