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by gwbas1c
965 days ago
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> we aren't making air-traffic control systems here I also find that attitude troubling. I've worked on software that could loose peoples' cherished data. Now I work on software that could cause flooding if it misbehaves. Take a bit more pride in your work. |
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This was in the early 2000s in the games industry. I'm not sure if you are familiar with that culture, but it was a time when the engineers were working 12+ hour days for months at a time. People were pouring their heart, souls and sanity into shipping software, often working until they literally broke down. I remember one engineer boasting that he had worked for 2 months straight without taking a single day off.
In that environment the stress was high and technical discussions could often escalate into heated arguments. We often had to remind ourselves that we were making games and many people working there were supposedly living their childhood dreams. It was important to remember that.
The idea that we didn't take pride in our work or didn't do everything in our abilities to ship the highest quality software is beyond incorrect. It was that excessive pride that we needed to guard against by checking in to reality. It wasn't a call to laziness, it was a call to humility.