It's like new lawyers or investment bankers
The video game industry is horrible towards unsuspecting starry-eyed new grads who don't understand that they're being taken advantage of. Lots of IT and dev jobs are similar, but video games is the only one where you have a constant backlog of 500 sacks of fresh meat outside the factory gates will will gladly replace you if you don't want to work another month of 90-hour weeks. I don't care if game dev is the most exciting industry sector out there...working people to death in knowledge work positions is NOT normal.
I live near NYC so our comparatively-tame workplace gets a lot of refugees from investment banks and law firms. Associates there have a similar problem according to the IT bods we've hired. Exclusively Ivy League finance/MBA grads and the top 10% students of the top 14 law schools in the country are hired on annually to associate banker and associate lawyer positions. It's kind of like a graduation present for spending the money and making it into the Ivy League schools. At one end of the pipe is school, at the other is a life of luxury where you never have to worry about money again once you make partner/managing director. It's a once-in-a-lifetime shot at Easy Street, but inside that pipe is a miserable existence of years of toil. They work bankers and new lawyers to death. At least there's a reward at the end...I'd love to have my only worry to be whether to take the Bentley or the Rolls to the club. Game developers just get abused until they give up, then a new one takes their place.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
