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Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

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Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#141

Post by kevincennis »

patja wrote: post #110
yakattak wrote: post #4

Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.

I am curious about the use of the word "adjacent" Do you think people writing game software are not software engineers?

They also used the term "subfield".

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#142

Post by Manuel_D »

RupertWiser wrote: post #16
thunky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.

I’m not sure it’s fair if the product ends up making a boat loads of money. Games are high risk but a very lucrative industry. Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.

Lucrative for a select portion of games. Like music or acting, video game is a winner-take-all marketplace (or rather, winner take most). The typical video game developer outside a well-known studio is working long hours for comparatively little pay because it's very likely the game is not going to make very many sales and there's plenty of passionate people willing to make sacrifices to work on video games.

As other commenters pointed out, it's not like playing in the NFL. It's more like being a high school football player trying to get into the NFL. Or an actor trying to get a part in a Hollywood movie. The chances of a company becoming lucrative off games is slim.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#143

Post by rayiner »

camgunz wrote: post #100
lettergram wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking to European models would be great. Europeans on average earn half of Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_b... Software engineers make 4x or more their European counterparts If unions were effective I’d expect at least somewhat comparable wages… but that’s not the case. Is it time off it optimized for? I mean tha…

Incomes are generally lower, but EU residents generally have a higher standard of living than US residents according to Human Development Indexes. Life expectancy is also better, infant and maternal mortality are lower, test scores are higher, etc. This is because of the prevalence of socialism, which came about because labor broadly won in Europe. I think Europe's example makes the benefits of unions clear.

The difference in HDI between the US (0.921) and say Denmark (0.948) can be entirely explained by the fact that a large portion of the US population is a formerly enslaved minority, and an even larger portion is recent immigrants from the developing world: https://measureofamerica.org/10yearsandcounting. That has nothing to do with socialism, but historical and geographic factors unusual to the US.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#145

Post by thfuran »

speeder wrote: post #137
yakattak wrote: post #4

Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.

I try to work in the game industry when possible. Unions on the game industry would never work, reason why game industry is so abusive is two fold: 1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit. 2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, l…

>Very few companies (because of previous point 2) can afford to pay good wages and benefits.

Well, it's not ideal, but it's fine if only a few companies can afford to operate in a given field.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#146

Post by dismantlethesun »

thunky wrote: post #8
yakattak wrote: post #4

Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.

> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.

Musicians and people associated with film media also have collective bargaining via unions.

For example the musicians have the AFM which helped force labels and radio stations to pay royalties to artists.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_Music...

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#147

Post by Manuel_D »

coldpie wrote: post #67
gyulai wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else are they going to say in public? "Our plan is to engage in union-busting as much as we can legally get away with"? And what one company said is then compared to what another company actually did? Come on! This statement doesn't make MS an outlier, it's simply devoid of information content.

> What else are they going to say in public? Microsoft recognizing the union instead of fighting tooth & nail to destroy it is genuinely novel behavior. They could refuse to recognize the union, or sue to invalidate the ballot, as many, many companies do: "Activision Blizzard did not respond to workers’ request for recognition of a union formed by quality assurance testers at Raven Software" https://www.washingtonpos…

It's all talk until union negotiations actually start. Talk is cheap, increased wages and benefits are not. When Microsoft is met with demands that will actually cost them, we'll see for real whether Microsoft's actions will comport with their words.

I'm not optimistic. As other commenters pointed out, this union is limited to QA testers who don't have all that much leverage in the company. The people who do already have better paying positions, and aren't all that interested in unionization.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#148

Post by Manuel_D »

tchaffee wrote: post #123
trashtester wrote: post #69

The 70s are back. We're approaching a period of strong unions, huge labor conflicts and eventually rampant inflation. At least in Europe. I've been thinking that the USA would be affected less than Europe, due to weak unions in most sectors, but it's certainly possible for unions to form.

The 70s when one earner (even a factory worker) could still afford a house and kids and wealth gaps were way smaller? Better times for sure unless you're very rich.

Being able to afford a house back in the 1970s was less due to factory jobs paying better, and more due to houses being a lot cheaper. Some goods, like computing information systems, have gotten a lot cheaper. Other goods, chiefly housing, education, and healthcare have gotten a lot more expensive. And it's not any easy path to making the latter less expensive: land is finite, a there's a much bigger proportion of people entering college than in the 1970s, and the population distribution is skewing older.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#149

Post by Manuel_D »

ctvo wrote: post #116
nonethewiser wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not only is it consensual, but developers are actively sacrificing things to be in the game industry. When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited.

> When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited. That's a narrow definition. Perhaps a better definition is when the other party knows you don't have leverage and takes advantage of it, you're being exploited. Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation. Horrible working conditions, wages, and abuse knowing you're an illegal immigrant with no recourse? Explo…

> Horrible working conditions, wages, and abuse knowing you're an illegal immigrant with no recourse? Exploitation.

Yes. This scenario includes factors that are depriving the worker of agency, chiefly the lack of recourse due to their illegal immigrant status.

> Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation.

No. If the worker is passionate about their job and is willing to tolerate low wages and long hours that's their decision. Agency is not being deprived. The worker should rethink whether working in their dream field is a good decision, and change jobs. If enough people do it, then the company will not be able to fill positions and will have to change labor practices or close shop. But, chances are, there's plenty of people willing to fill this role and the company is simply following the labor market.

> Knowing you need the job for visa purposes and asking you to come in for a 2am code review because a new CEO wants to feel like an engineer? Exploitation.

Maybe. Was this part of the job description? Some companies are upfront about expectations around crunch time or oncall responsibility. Others are not. Are there factors limiting a worker's agency? I'd say it'd be exploitative to change the work responsibilities on someone who has limited agency to change jobs. An H1B worker whose residency is tied to employment, as you suggest, I would consider exploitative.

Most video game development falls in the middle category. The whole industry has a widespread reputation for demanding crunch time - I don't think one would reasonably say they were deceived if asked to crunch near release. They also have skills that are in demand with plenty of other fields. Heck, the company I work in now acquired a video game studio to work on a 3D Geodesy UI, and everyone's salary basically doubled and they were able to work roughly 9-5.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#150

Post by advisedwang »

speeder wrote: post #137
yakattak wrote: post #4

Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.

I try to work in the game industry when possible. Unions on the game industry would never work, reason why game industry is so abusive is two fold: 1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit. 2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, l…

> 1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit.

> 2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, literally thousands games are released yearly that nobody ever heard of or bought.

These are both true of movies, but that is a heavily unionized industry.

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