WomenGamers.Com had the pleasure of interviewing Bonnie Ross, Director of Production for Microsoft Games Studios Publishing. Ross will be discussing quality of life issues at the Women in Games International Conference on September 16th in Seattle.
In your career, have you personally run into quality of life issues? If so, can you elaborate and discuss how you resolved the situation?
Yes, several times. In fact, I just recently returned to work from a maternity leave a few months ago and I am still struggling to manage work and quality of life balance---I'm hoping I have an answer by my keynote next month. J In the game industry, crunch times are a reality of the job. And depending on how long those crunch times are or how many games you are working on, it can make finding a work life balance very challenging. I’ve had to reassess my priorities and my time at work several times during my career in the game industry. And sometimes I’ve been more successful than others. The last time, it came down to a conversation my husband and I had six months after we were married (four years ago). He commented over a very late night dinner one week night that he had married two people---me and Microsoft and that three was a crowd. It was a good wake up call for me to make some changes. We agreed that over the following six months that I needed to make some changes to gain back some of my personal work life balance. I had to set boundaries for myself. I minimized the time I socialized at work on non-work issues. I set hard stop times two to three nights a week. I worked with my management team to take turns working weekends or late nights during each of our games crunch times. This enabled me to leave work at a reasonable time a few nights a week and then stay as late as I needed to on other nights. I was able to give support to my teams during crunch time, but also balance weekend time at home. For me, doing work at home after dinner was also part of the solution---I’m not sure that is really balanced, but it was manageable for my life and enabled me to spend more time with my family.
Depending on what you do (work on one game, work on multiple games, manage people managing multiple games, etc.) and where you are in your personal life (single with no dependents, single with dependents, married or with a committed partner, or married/with partner and children) I think the challenges and the solutions are different. An important starting point is having a company and a management team that supports quality of life and a healthy work life balance, which I am lucky to say I have both at Microsoft. That being said having a supportive company and manager is great, but my job still requires a lot of hours----and so does my life. So I think it is about being aware of what it takes to do your job, what you need to have QoL, and continually re-evaluating, re-prioritizing, re-balancing, and trying new ideas.
How would you suggest people approach companies in the interview process about the company’s QoL standards?
Personally, I would ask work life balance questions directly. I would ask questions about the company’s policies (vacation, maternity/paternity, time off without pay, flexible work arrangements, etc.) and for examples about what has and hasn’t worked. However, if you don’t feel comfortable asking these types of questions directly in an interview, then I would ask questions about the company’s management styles and project management cycles to help understand the company's values and production processes. I would ask the interviewer to walk me through a typical product life cycle to help me understand how the company allocates its resources and time (how do they spend their time in planning and design, preproduction, production, balance, close down, test, post-mortems, etc.). I would ask about how they balance the quality, time, and money triangle with their products---what is most important to them and how do they attain those results? Everyone knows the games industry has serious crunch times. I would ask how they keep the teams fresh and prevent burnout. I would ask if they have any flexibility on non-core work hours and locations. Lastly, I would want to understand what is important to the hiring manager in terms of values and expectations for both the company and his/her employees. From the above types of questions I think I could assess how well a company managed its products and people and make an evaluation of how they value and manage for an employee’s work life balance.
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