Live data from Hacker News

Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

latimes.com

311–320 of 513 posts

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#311
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> creating more opportunities for young new grads to break in Just going to point out, everywhere, I have ever heard of a union it generally made it harder for new people to come in, not easier, by increasing the commitment an employer is expected to make to an employee, and by making it harder to remove employees that need to be removed but can't because of their seniority with the union.

Just going to point out, everywhere, I have ever heard of a union it generally made it harder for new people to come in, not easier My observation has been the opposite. I believe because the unions have an interest in increasing their membership, not letting it atrophy and decrease due to time and deaths. A union that doesn't have a growing membership is a union that will disappear. In fact, some unions I've seen ha…

The only union I know much about is IBEW. My dad's family is huge, and everyone in it is an electrician basically.

The way it seems to work is that a contractor wants N number of electricians for a contract, so the first N electricians in the queue are laid off get dequeued and sent to work.

This is a really interesting system, and I think if there were subgroups of software engineers it would pretty much work fine. I think at the end of the day, SWEs tend to be picky about where they work, and employers tend to want SWEs with backgrounds that perfectly match their needs.

I dunno, I think if someone could figure out how to make a queueing system work, it could work for a lot of people and businesses.

It seems close to the agency model already. Only problem is, I don't see how you're going to get top engineers to join. Most of them are already making bananas money, and I don't see how highly compensated engineers would fit into this model at all.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Using revenue comparison is incorrect. Profit is more complicated because you have to add back in compensation (and if necessary be able to know when r&d comp is capitalized and be able to break out r&d versus sg&a if you only talking about comp for particular groups of employees) but it is the correct per-employee stat to compare. 2. Median employee salary is wrong, you should look at average salary if you are co…

That sounds insanely bad. Why should they get 40% margins? Form a union, demand more money.

>> Why should they get 40% margins? Form a union, demand more money.

Why should they pay you more? Form the next FB and pay your employees 3x what they currently pay.

Pretty ridiculous response, right?

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#313
post #131

How Americans can be so anti-union by default is really beyond me when looking at the facts at the ground: * A culture of overwork (especially in the game industry). * No vacation. * No parental leave. * No sick leave. * At-will-employment (which inherently causes massive under-reporting of things like sexual harassment in the workplace due to the fear of losing ones livelihood, and please spare me the "actually it's…

I have a non-gaming software development job

* I work 40 hours per week

* I have over a month of vacation and sick time, not including holidays

* 1 month 100% paid family leave, with 13 weeks at 80% pay and an additional 13 at 50% pay, not including New York City paid family leave.

* Sick leave is rolled into paid time off or disability.

* At-will employment works both ways. If I get a better offer, I can leave.

Vacation, sick, and parental leave policies are not up to European standards yes, but it's a hell of a lot better than most people's 2 weeks of vacation.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is waiting? Most people I know that didn't like the conditions got better jobs in other industries. Finance pays well and is cushy in comparison. Architecture visualizations, media jobs, programming roles are easier to find after obtaining the ability to outperform the norms for other industries. For most of gaming's history it has been a niche product without mainstream appeal. Do you unionize every fledgling in…

> The majority of bad sentiment has come in the past five years Literally the first 3rd party gaming company was because workers were unsatisfied with Atari.

The key engineers who left Ferrari in '61 became the key engineers that lifted Lamborghini into existence. They didn't start a union and stepped away from deaths of Ferrari drivers and verbal abuse to start something new with Lamborghini. Both companies survived and no unions were started.

https://www.gptoday.net/en/news/f1/207607/history-ferrari-an...

Disgruntled employees are the birth of something new, not a call to clamp down.

Who is calling for tech & gaming unionization because of the first 3rd party gaming company? It's not the majority of bad sentiment. It's not even news.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#315
post #5

I read all of this as "Major union seeks to extract rent from an additional sector". I agree that putting developers on death marches is antithetical to everything that is human, but it's not like you don't have options in this industry... Tech work isn't like coal mining where your health is legitimately at risk on a daily basis, and where the number of alternative options available to the average worker is low to n…

>> but it's not like you don't have options in this industry... Tech work isn't like coal mining where your health is legitimately at risk on a daily basis, and where the number of alternative options available to the average worker is low to non-existent

>> Anyone who works in tech on one of these salaries, and then turns around to complain about their collective rights...

I worked in the gaming industry and left. I’ve mentored several folks who made similar transitions. Consequently, I have perspective based on those experiences.

I think it’s a fundamental mistake to think that transitioning from the gaming industry into general tech is an easy transition. Most people in the gaming industry have a severe form of professional PTSD due to the expectations around death march development. They have strived for a career in gaming where employers see plenty of potential hires and can pay them less as a result. These people end up with limited financial cushions, burnout and depression. They end up believing their only options are to pick up and move to another gaming shop for shit money and the same working conditions. Stay in this “career” long enough, and you are almost guaranteed health complications related to obesity and drug abuse. Yeah, it ain’t glamorous to stay in gaming, but experience means they’ll be an easy hire at the next company and they’ll be able to continue covering the mortgage.

I am mostly anti-union, but I believe unions are actually necessary in the gaming industry. It is pretty shitty and deserves to feel the pain they’ve been inflicting in their developers, PMs, producers and testers.

The gaming industry should not be seen as a career destination if you aren’t in finance/marketing. It should be a stepping stone in a bigger career, but an extremely short one so devs can learn EVERYTHING THAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO IN PROGRAM MANAGEMENT, EMPLOYEE RELATIONS AND SELF-CARE.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We live at the absolute _extreme_ of capital power over labor power. No we don't, that is called slavery.

The definition of slavery changed over time. Be sure that salaried worker in a few centuries will be considered a mild form of slavery similar to indentured servitude, debt bondage or coloni's restriction of freedom under the Roman Empire. "Were they forced to work? Yes and no. What happened if they decided not to work? Weeeeell... if they were rich, nothing. If they were poor, they would have died."

> Were they forced to work? Yes and no. What happened if they decided not to work? Weeeeell... if they were rich, nothing. If they were poor, they would have died

Hasn't that always been true of society, across all government models (or lack thereof)? At best, you don't have the rich that don't need to work... but what are the situations where the vast majority don't need to work (as far back as hunting/gathering).

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#317

I would strongly consider supporting a video game union, if only to help formalize the things that the good shops do and bring those practices industry wide. Personally I haven't done a day of overtime in seven years and I feel reasonably compensated but there are clearly other places out there that are still exploiting their workers. Improving worker input into production schedules and creating clear guidelines arou…

I don't really understand this obsession with credits in the game dev industry. There's no credit list in GMail for example, and yet everyone is fine with it?

In some ways it's more akin to having a FAANG on your resume. Games are traditionally much more project-based than a service such as GMail and employers, colleagues will use it as a benchmark for hiring and networking.

I'm an example myself, as I started in the industry working on a strategy-genre game, and talking shop about the genre makes me more appealing to studios that serve that.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that running your own show or a show with other people you value working with does not need to be under the thumb of union rules or overarching corporate pressure. There is no scenario in entertainment where unions "keep to themselves". A union started will soak up the entire industry and now my show with people I respect, admire and fair equity shares now has time limits and controls none of us decided o…

> I am saying that running your own show or a show with other people If you're running your own thing then you aren't a worker. You aren't part of the union. Your input on union activities is not valuable, because you are the opposition. Sorry to be harsh, but that's the truth.

What argument do you have? I feel free to identify with and as a worker.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#319

No thank you. I don't want a union "representing" me or seizing part of my paycheck. Furthermore, if you examine history, all this will do is send jobs and opportunities elsewhere.

+1

Also, I have dreams of developing video games in my garage some day. I don't want to deal with the video games equivalent of a screen-actors guild telling me I can't give away my games for free or that I need to adhere to some outdated regulations regarding what friends I can ask to compose music for my game and how much I can pay them for it.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#320
post #5

I read all of this as "Major union seeks to extract rent from an additional sector". I agree that putting developers on death marches is antithetical to everything that is human, but it's not like you don't have options in this industry... Tech work isn't like coal mining where your health is legitimately at risk on a daily basis, and where the number of alternative options available to the average worker is low to n…

> but it's not like you don't have options in this industry... The games industry over the last decade has been experiencing an incredible amount of consolidation so options have been if anything narrowing, as more and more game development jobs rely on working for Big Corp Publishers. Game development is a unique ecosystem of tech. Sure programmers can pivot to working at Facebook or whatever, but lets be honest tha…

> Also worth noting that there's more to coders in games. What about the artists, producers, qa and other workers?

Thank you for pointing this out. Even within the dev-team side of game production (leaving out legal, marketing, sales, operations etc) the coders are typically 1/3 or less of the team size. Programmers can pivot (with varying amounts of friction) in to other areas of tech. For the designers, testers, producers and artists there are fewer options to use their skills outside of games.

Post reply on HN