[ionwake]

Isnt management at Rockstar the same poeple who:

A) Allowed a bug in the code make all GTA5 Load times on every single copy on every platform take exponential times longer to load, for YEARS, unchecked or investigated, until some random kid FIXED IT by reverse engineering compiled code?

B) The bug was a simple and unneeded look up for SHOP items

C) The never rewarded the kid, with say a job or something worthwhile for him like 100k ( when they earn billions ). I mean even this decision ALONE is such terrible optics clearly mgmt were AFK.

D) They then came onto HN to argue with me in the comments about how " its not nice to say mgmt responsible should have been fired over this"

I mean Ive had my share of almost blinding incompetence, but the one that really bothers my crumpet, is when they come on here and start denying things.

Im for the union, Rockstar North made one of the greatest games of all time. It will probably result in an inferior product but crunch is unethical and always due to poor management. Ironically it was probably mgmts' own incompetent hiring policies that resulted in a union being formed.

PS - I got a bit heated and have edited this comment so its readable apologies.

PS - All of this can be verified in previous posts on HN regarding both the bug and replies

PS - And to whoever is downvoting me, feel free to reply and tell me what I am wrong about

[flohofwoe]

This JSON-parsing problem is the least of Rockstars problems I think.

But I bet it happened like this:

- when the game was still in active development, it was maybe anticipated that the shop might have a couple dozen items, no problem even when the JSON parsing is extremely slow

- game is released, a separate maintenance team takes over, online mode is running for several years

- over time more and more items are added to the shop, and now maybe there are a thousands of items in that JSON file

- ...and when there's some 'accidental exponential' code in the JSON loader/parser the loading time gets worse and worse, what once was a few milliseconds is now minutes, but there was never a sudden regression after an update, just every week a little bit slower

- depending on the churn on the maintenance team, the current people on the team probably don't even notice an increase in loading time until they leave again for greener pastures, e.g. for them "it has always been that slow"

- management probably first read about the problem in the news ;) (which of course is a problem on its own - but as long as the money keeps flowing and the curves in Tableau go up and up, why should they even care... players apparently also endured it without bringing out the pitchforks)

[vouwfietsman]

Although this is possibly true, at any time the dev team could've gone: "loading is slow man, can we just profile it and see if there's anything obvious?". To someone with access to the source code and a debugger, that's probably less than 30 minutes of time to go from zero to hero.

I've done this kind of stuff many times, and something like a json array taking minutes to parse would likely be very very obvious when looking at a trace.

[oreally]

The dev team is usually under immense pressure to deliver. This probably slipped under the radar to let all the other features get through.

The maintenance team probably maintains other games as well.

Then you add in the knowledge loss through the churning of developers and over time the organization forgets how things should be.

[vouwfietsman]

Again, you're not wrong, but none of those things are insurmountable. If the team is really so stressed it cannot spend 30 minutes, over the many year of the existence of that bug, that seems like a development environment close to hell.

Knowledge loss is precisely my point: there is very little a-priori knowledge needed to solve this, the guy who found the bug proves that.

[oreally]

Yea development environments are close to hell in game development, won't argue that.

[ionwake]

Thanks for your insight its appreciated. I know I come across mean but Im just reminding everyone of simple facts that atleast contributed to all these problems.

I have nothing to do with Rockstar and wish them well, Im just saying that if I were management during these situations I would have quit or made a public apology. Its just what I feel I would have done. Regardless of the salary. I mean if one is mgmt they should take responsibility.

But maybe in late stage capitalism that is both an abhorrent and illogical idea.

[matchbok3]

If this "management" is so incompetent and ineffective, the workers shouldn't need them, right? They should just start their own company.

Didn't think so.

This simplistic view of "management" is detrimental to a productive conversation and doesn't reflect reality.

[ionwake]

A comment from a new account with Negative inference statements.

This is the kind of weird ass replies I just said appeared last time.

PS - You are editing your comment which is fine, but in turn I have to reply. If it is not reflective of reality feel free to add to the discussion and explain what is false. Also ironically your statement doesnt add to the discussion by elaborating on any part of it. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that doesnt help anyone learn any lessons. its just random insults.

[matchbok3]

Your avoidance of answering my question provides me with more than enough knowledge about your capabilities regarding engaging in this topic in a thoughtful, intelligent manner.

[Capricorn2481]

This is a puzzling comment. Are you asking why the famously underpaid game developers don't bootstrap their own company? Because the answer seems fairly obvious, and it says nothing about the quality of Rockstar's management.

Does the concept of redundant middle management scandalize you? It's a relatively common experience, even if it's sometimes exaggerated. It actually takes a lot to be a good manager, and most people are not self aware enough to be good at it.

[matchbok3]

I am directly responding to the claims that management is useless and not needed. It's not puzzling at all.

[ionwake]

Its actually brilliant I mentioned someone behaved like butthurt management last time and now its happening again with random insults and platitudes.

Now we get to hear about how obviously great management at Rockstar is compared to the worker there. Apparently its just obvious because otherwise, those workers would be management themselves.

If I was younger i would think this was a troll but Ive genuinely met managers like this. They think they are just better than people who are not themselves managers. Which literally makes no sense. As if the only purpose in a career is rank. They take no responsibility and feel personally attacked when its suggested.

[matchbok3]

Nobody is butthurt, kid. I responded to a specific claim. Instead you throw around insults like a child.

Literally nobody, including myself, is claiming anyone is "better".

Again, again, again. If you still management at these companies is not a key reason for their success and are instead redundant, useless, or otherwise not important, it should be trivial for competitors to do a better job. It's not that complicated.

[ranguna]

I don't think it's the need for management that makes devs not start a new company, it's the huge amount of money and connections needed. You don't need someone managing you to get connections and money, you just need the connections and the money.