Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article states that the minimum wage in Mexico is $100/month ($1,200/year). My guess is he moved to Mexico to work on this and gain experience. Pay sucks but the game is successful and if he didn't publicly come out against the company it would have likely led to higher paying jobs in the states due to association. This may not be popular to many people but I'm sure it's well known on on Hacker News by now. Long…
Did you mean "intents and purposes" or did some wordplay go over my head?
There's no easy way to say this
41–50 of 237 posts
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
>“$2,400 was my yearly salary working a full time eight hours a day, 40 hours a week job.” Why would you ever choose to work there in the first place?
The article states that the minimum wage in Mexico is $100/month ($1,200/year). My guess is he moved to Mexico to work on this and gain experience. Pay sucks but the game is successful and if he didn't publicly come out against the company it would have likely led to higher paying jobs in the states due to association. This may not be popular to many people but I'm sure it's well known on on Hacker News by now. Long…
Excuse me? For all intents and purposes $2400 a year is less than I spend on parking every year. This is not a "startup" salary, this is less than 1/10th the salary of your typical QA engineer IN MEXICO.
I see a lot of posts in this thread that seem to be trying to whitewash the work hours and the pay as somehow reasonable. They're not, not even for the notoriously-bad-to-work-for game industry.
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
$2400 a year? What US dev works for that in this market? You are better off at burger king.
This is $200 a month; unless you work part-time, it's likely illegal.
Jurisdictions are quite important when deciding whether something's "illegal".
Seems like that's twice the minimum wage where it happened (just from reading the post/comments), so it's extremely unlikely to be "illegal" where it happened.
(it's a curious question as to whether there's anything illegal, and if so, on who's part, if a Mexican business is paying above-local-minimum wage salaries to people who are not local. If you _accept_ a remote job where the renumeration is disclosed but below your local minimum wage - I wonder if any law has been broken, and if so, by who?)
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#44First the lead, now half the team. What is it with people jumping ship on KSP?
There's a lot of rumors of shady practices at that developer - shitty hours, below minimum-wage pay, poor management, intern exploitation, threats of litigation against ex-employees, profits being poured into pet projects of the founders... Generally, but not always, these kinds of stories aren't told about well-ran shops. But hey, it's video games, so who knows?
OTOH, all the developers say they're sad about leaving, and really seem it. And I've never heard anything of the sort.
Mind, they're an advertising company by business: this is their first foray into games.
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#45Background: http://www.develop-online.net/news/squad-devs-blast-kerbal-s...
$2400 a year? What US dev works for that in this market? You are better off at burger king.
Using current exchange rates that's about 3850 MXN a month.
That sounds like what my friend made as a cashier here in Mexico.
Very shitty payment, even for this country. A good entry level job starts at about 10k a month.
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#46First the lead, now half the team. What is it with people jumping ship on KSP?
I have 0 context and background info, i'm not even into the game, but maybe it's just people moving on. I can see they have created a truly amazing game and now they are looking for new venues, new challenges. Considering the success they had I wouldn't be surprised most of those people are also getting some sweet offers.
That seems to be likely.
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#47As a casual fan of KSP, I'm not up to date on all the haps. Can someone tell me what to expect in the future? Will there be more development work done?
Apparently, yes. http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com/
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have 0 context and background info, i'm not even into the game, but maybe it's just people moving on. I can see they have created a truly amazing game and now they are looking for new venues, new challenges. Considering the success they had I wouldn't be surprised most of those people are also getting some sweet offers.
Nope - read up. The (unverified) claim is exploitation by the game studio.
Given what I know about Squad, that seems unlikely. Well, unlikely beyond ordinary levels, anyways. This is video games.
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#49First the lead, now half the team. What is it with people jumping ship on KSP?
Squad isn't a games company they are just awesome and backed an employees drive to create the game. I suspect the staff who work at Squad are attracted to all kinds of projects they're contracted for. As ksp peaks and slumps perhaps they don't want to just be in the maintenance game.
"Isn't a games company" that stumbled across KSP and gave it up is kind of like Amazon deciding they weren't an IaaS company and giving up AWS.
Talk about your failed opportunities to pivot.
Re: There's no easy way to say this
#50I would have thought some wealthy game company would want to buy the company behind a game this popular.