Re: "productivity, employee morale and retention"
They run, like some other industries like retail (for grads), a pyramid scheme. Suck in a lot of fresh grads. Pay poorly, work harshly, work long. Survival of whoever puts up with it. The rest quit.
Presto, you now have a promotion path to the next level up in org. Bump up survivors to the next paygrade. Run that same lil game at level 2, with the bait of level 3. And suck in the next batch for level 1.
I suspect a lot of this also boils to hazing psychology - “well, we had to do it in our time” - because the economics of running knowledge intensive workers at 70+ hr weeks are not clear. You can do it for a 2-3 wk burst but quality and creativity goes down if it’s institutionalized. c.f. medical interns, except there it can mean someone dying rather than a video game crash.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
