I remember news coming out about it in the early 2010s that a study showed that crunching reduces productivity drastically, to the point that even (only) two weeks of crunching will negate the additional work time. Curiously, some game companies at the time were crunching for a year or longer. I believe the statistic reported was that productivity commonly was reduced to 10% normal when crunching.
James Stephanie Sterling did a video about it, which is how the news came to me.
ETA: Typically, the problem is that game publishers will sometimes set impossible deadlines, or, if a game is on schedule to come out on time, the publisher will push the release date forward to an earlier release season. This was before the trend towards live service games, which was its own nightmare since the game would be released incomplete, but with a roadmap of expected features. Hence the development teams were perpetually behind and often were perpetually crunched. (/ETA)
Studies from the aughts (not necessarily related to game development) regarding the effect of micromanagement tools used on the workforce (e.g. mouse movement monitoring and keylogging) came earlier, noting that the time wasted by workers (under the label of time theft ) doing activities such as going to the bathroom, checking social media, talking to loved ones on the phone, getting coffee, etc. were more than offset by the increase in productivity when workers were allowed to do these things. (Slacking workers do exist, but they are starkly the exception. And large companies typically have a significantly greater number of bullshit jobs – workers tasked with busywork that doesn’t actually serve administration or the profit motive – than they have shirkers.)
For me, hopescolling (doomscrolling but looking for any reason to have hope) is a full time job regarding the political situation in the US. To that end, my regular resources are:
Ashley B: Ashley discuses US history, mostly black history, but not always, covering other issues such as J. Edgar Hoover, the scandals of past presidents, and black culture. She doesn’t hold back regarding the brutal details of slave history and post-bellum racial violence, and those videos can be tough to listen to.
Belle of the Ranch: The successor to Beau of the Fifth Column, Belle discusses particulars of current issues, explaining details of the economy, of the US war on Iran, and Trump telling on himself in his social media posts. While left leaning, answers a lot of comments from MAGA.
Climate Town Rollie Williams is a very watchable climatologist who covers issues of climate and government gone wrong, such as why Americans eat so much cheese, how the US doesn’t drive cars anymore (we drive Non-Passenger Work Vehicles, aka SUVs) and how the methane industry (natural gas) is the climate-killing dark horse.
Heather Cox Richardson: Richardson is a professor of American History at Boston college and does a lot of videos discussing current events and how they rhyme with past events in US history, which can be reassuring that we might actually get through this. I listen to her Letters From An American daily.
How Business Worked aka How History Works: This is the sister project to How Money Works (below). Which discusses history with a business slant. Recent topics of interest (to me) include No one wants to work anymore is a recurring theme and The Powell Memorandum and The myth of Hitler fixing the German economy. HBW is slightly longer form than HMW.
How Money Works: A (former?) finance bro talks about business and economic issues, breaking them down so that I (not a money guy) can understand them. Recent videos that are particularly edifying include why big tech now is hiring back its layoffs and how entrenched money is in US politics.
Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie: Jamelle Bouie is a NYT columnist who reads a lot of books, knows a lot about US government and has good insights into the thought processes of MAGA figures.