Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#321

Post by babelfish » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #173

Veen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s bad for other professionals because it creates expectations that people will work for free and it reduces the amount other professionals can earn. That’s why it generates negative reactions and shaming in those communities. In the short term, that’s good for whoever gets a free service. In the long run, it’s not great for sustaining a population with a valuable expertise.

They're not working for free though. If you are a wedding photographer the value in saying "I did all the photographs for season X of " has huge monetary value. If the supply/demand economics were such that you still had to pay them $stipend/minimum wage/premium this would still be the case. Photographers are free to accept in-kind payment or not.

You can't pay rent with that.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#322

Post by hosh » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

SirSourdough wrote: post #140

hosh wrote: post #83

How well do you think a counteroffer for retaining all rights and a license for royalties for each use be received? Depending on how valuable exposure is for the photographer, the license can be exclusive or non-exclusive. I’m sure the brand for that show is important, so exclusivity is valuable. But minimum though is, if you are not paid for the work, then it should not be work-for-hire, and the photographer ends up…

The power asymmetry massively favouring the production house in this case is the reason they are able to make such an aggressive demand as having a professional work intensively for a week for no pay in the first place. I don’t think you would be given much space to negotiate because they would just move down the line to the next person willing to work for free but without all your requirements. It’s a very different…

There was an article series I once read about negotiating the terms of a software development job. There is asymmetry there, though not as lopsided for photography. The article also goes on to say how the run of the mill software developer are not getting as much as they could be getting.

I mentioned exploitation in my earlier comment. For me, this is part of a much larger issue stemming from the prevailing paradigm we have that attempts to extract as much value out of things. I don’t frame this in terms of abuse of power; how much leverage one brings to the table matters. Instead, it is the underlying paradigm that treats people as resources from which value is squeezed out of it. Whether we are talking about return on shareholder value, or using adversarial interactions and competition to maximize market efficiency, or maximizing profit, those are all expressions of Value Extraction.

To come back full circle with an alternative perspective: you might have a producer and a production company that enjoys fostering new talent and creative voices. Inviting a photographer to join, not necessarily for the exposure, but for challenging work that cultivates their art. What does a wedding really mean? How can photos be taken to express that? And so forth.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#323

Post by skipants » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #210

skipants wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be the fault of the organization. _Every_ intern!? I've worked at places where the onboarding was generally terrible and I'd still say 80% of the co-op interns we hired were value-positive. Although, when I do reflect on it, I suppose there was a lot we did right: - always willing to help newcomers - answering their questions - knowing when not to answer questions and let them learn through failure instea…

Even very senior developers are usually a negative value on a company for at least three weeks. There's usually a week for environment setup with any local tools being configured for the user and it's only after that that the best devs can hit the ground running and actually start comprehending the system, but that comprehension should come at consulting peers (if the new guy isn't asking any questions it's because t…

I generally agree.

One thing I'm still not sold on is that interns are a net loss. They would often get to do work that was novel to them and tedious to your full-time developers. Work that was nice-to-have but no-one-wants-to-do. It's hard to put a price tag on it. Especially with externalities that come with that kind of work; bad ones like killing employee morale for whoever has to do it and good ones like increasing the team's productivity. Interns, in my experience, are not prone to the former yet still contribute to the latter. Examples of such work are things like updating tests and documentation or tackling some not-so-urgent tech debt.

Assuming that they still create tech debt of their own because they probably were (and we all are, aren't we?) my experience has been positive.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#324

Post by Bukhmanizer » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #42

munk-a wrote: post #21

The US continues to support unpaid work in a pretty major way. I think unpaid internships being socially acceptable is one of the roots of this insidious habit. They've been illegal up here in Canada for a while and it hasn't really caused any economic disasters. It'd be a good change to advocate for down there as well. And, honestly, internships aren't free for companies unless there is literally nothing of value be…

>I think unpaid internships being socially acceptable is one of the roots of this insidious habit. When I worked with interns they were all paid... but every one was more time and expense to work with than any value they provided. In weeks they accomplished what I could do in an afternoon, and we spent WAY more than an afternoon of work with them. Amazingly many seemed to have a very high opinion of their productivit…

It all depends on the position and industry. In science a ton of menial data entry work is done by unpaid interns. Don’t get me started on my friends who work in fashion. Even in CS, we should strive to protect exploited workers in other industries.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#325

Post by tshaddox » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #305

bigbillheck wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US continues to support unpaid work in a pretty major way. One of the founding pillars of the United States was the support of "unpaid work in a pretty major way".

That was...not a founding pillar of the United States. It's fairly well documented that the Founding Fathers were pretty much all opposed to slavery, but saw it as a huge political shit sandwich that would jeopardize Federalization. The United States is one of the only unions on the planet in which every single member state (without exception) voluntarily ratified and agreed to join. Had the Founding Fathers pushed f…

Literally everything you describe in that comment after the first sentence is in accordance with slavery being a founding pillar of the United States.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#326

Post by applecrazy » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #308

jakelazaroff wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your college analogy doesn't make sense. Students are the "customers" of the college, not the workers. Or, to put it another way, they're paying for their professors' labor.

My point was that, just because they're doing work as an intern, that doesn't mean they are doing work they should necessarily get paid for. Both college and an internship are situations where - the junior individual (intern, student) is doing work - the junior individual expects to learn during the experience - the senior entity (college, company) is expected to put effort into making sure the junior has learning op…

> The thing is, "accordingly" is open to interpretation and, in some cases where the intern is getting a lot more than they give, it's reasonable to argue that it is "not at all".

This depends. I am a student and at my last internship I was given work that nobody really had time for but ended up (towards the end) becoming a key part of a revenue-generating, customer-facing feature. While a senior could have done the same stuff in less time, I feel like the fact that this stuff was initially something nobody at the company had time for initially provided some sort of value to the company.

And the pressure to deliver only increases when talking FAANG internships, which pay (hourly) at the same rate as a junior engineer. It seems absurd to me to pay an intern that much to deliver negative value to a team, don't you think?

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#327

Post by bhupy » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #325

bhupy wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was...not a founding pillar of the United States. It's fairly well documented that the Founding Fathers were pretty much all opposed to slavery, but saw it as a huge political shit sandwich that would jeopardize Federalization. The United States is one of the only unions on the planet in which every single member state (without exception) voluntarily ratified and agreed to join. Had the Founding Fathers pushed f…

Literally everything you describe in that comment after the first sentence is in accordance with slavery being a founding pillar of the United States.

With respect, that's a pretty asinine reading of the comment. Slavery was not a founding pillar of the United States, any more than monarchy is a founding pillar of the European Union just because some of its member states happen to be Constitutional monarchies.

In fact, it should be quite clear from that comment that not only was slavery NOT a foundational pillar of the United States, it was the opposite of a foundational pillar since its abolition was a long-run goal, the Founders placed Federal incentives to drive its abolition, and ultimately hoped that later generations would be able to do so across the entire Union once and for all.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#328

Post by minimuffins » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #155

duxup wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think unpaid internships being socially acceptable is one of the roots of this insidious habit. When I worked with interns they were all paid... but every one was more time and expense to work with than any value they provided. In weeks they accomplished what I could do in an afternoon, and we spent WAY more than an afternoon of work with them. Amazingly many seemed to have a very high opinion of their productivit…

No HR person would allow unpaid intern positions in 2021. It's very clearly illegal in the United States. When I mentor college students, the only times we hear about unpaid internships are: 1) Unfunded wannabe startups or small family businesses who don't understand what they need, but they assume they can convince some naive kid to do it for free. No one with actual skills or prospects takes these jobs. Job boards…

> No HR person would allow unpaid intern positions in 2021. It's very clearly illegal in the United States.

Unless this claim is scoped to the tech industry, it's absolutely wrong. Frankly I don't know the actual legal status but it's standard practice in a lot of industries, esp. things like publishing.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#329

Post by erehweb » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #123

mc32 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Photography is one of the lowest paid professions so of course you’ll have people tripping over themselves over the opportunity. Question is should Netflix who are flush with cash be a participant to this Gladiatorial Theater? This is kind of grotesque coming from a company with very deep pockets.

As the article mentions, this is not Netflix. It's a third-party production company that is producing content for Netflix. It's extremely likely and almost guaranteed that Netflix has no idea they've been asking photographers to work for free.

Netflix can set the terms and conditions of how their third-party production company works - e.g. requiring that everyone involved gets paid a wage.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#330

Post by tshaddox » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #327

tshaddox wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally everything you describe in that comment after the first sentence is in accordance with slavery being a founding pillar of the United States.

With respect, that's a pretty asinine reading of the comment. Slavery was not a founding pillar of the United States, any more than monarchy is a founding pillar of the European Union just because some of its member states happen to be Constitutional monarchies. In fact, it should be quite clear from that comment that not only was slavery NOT a foundational pillar of the United States, it was the opposite of a founda…

Was monarchy essential to the socioeconomic system of the EU members? The point is not that slavery was a founding pillar simply because it existed at the time of founding.