Good luck to them, but why would you want to work for such an awful company anyway? Even in the 3A (or "4A"...) space, there are much better studios, in Europe and elsewhere. Preserve your sanity and quit.
Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
21–30 of 190 posts
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#22I'm consistently impressed by French solidarity to just go on a strike until they get their government (or a company in this case) to start treating them fairly. I wish that could work in the UK, but alas, we don't do that here.
To nitpick: It WOULD work, but alas, you don't do it. This is also why the USA has all those anti-strike laws, especially regarding railroads.
It might have something to do with being chased by brutal horse-mounted police and beaten up in the past.
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#23I'm consistently impressed by French solidarity to just go on a strike until they get their government (or a company in this case) to start treating them fairly. I wish that could work in the UK, but alas, we don't do that here.
To nitpick: It WOULD work, but alas, you don't do it. This is also why the USA has all those anti-strike laws, especially regarding railroads.
> It WOULD work, but alas, you don't do it. This is also why the USA has all those anti-strike laws.
My mom did it reasonably often as a teacher. The state made it illegal for her to ever strike again. Maybe not being willing to go to jail for refusing to work is why she doesn't do it? It's crazy to me that the law is basically "show up to work for whatever we decide to pay you, or go to jail" (via contempt of court, usually, if they continue to strike after a judge orders teachers to go back to work and fines them for each day of missed work).
So the other option is to "strike" by quitting and starting over in a completely new career. Enough people have done that that some schools are having trouble opening[0]. Somehow even that doesn't seem to raise wages. So -- for teachers at least, striking literally doesn't work. Enough teachers quit that schools can't stay open, and yet the wages don't rise to hire enough teachers. It's insane.
0: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/us/teacher-shortage-lowering-...
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#24French Software Engineers make $60k per year. I'm sure they wonder why and think striking / unionizing is the answer
What sorts of salary should French software engineers be making then? $80k? $100k? $200k?
As freelancer in The Netherlands it’s easy to earn 100.000 EUR a year. Can’t imagine it would be much different in France as freelancer.
However, as freelancer it’s your own responsibility to save money for holidays, pension, sick leave, transportation, etcetera.
However, in the end you should still be financially better of than a “wage slave” so to speak.
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#25French Software Engineers make $60k per year. I'm sure they wonder why and think striking / unionizing is the answer
Is 60k bad? Pretty sure it's the average salary in the entire Europe.
60k EUR before taxes and healthcare + retirement deduction I suppose.
So after taxes and mandatory deductions it is 45k USD, which not that much if you are in a city like Paris.
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#26French Software Engineers make $60k per year. I'm sure they wonder why and think striking / unionizing is the answer
Is 60k bad? Pretty sure it's the average salary in the entire Europe.
Average salary isn't an excuse if it's unlivable.
It's hard to live on 60K in Europe when a goddamn power cord costs 15 Euro
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty low for a software engineer, this is coming from a Swede. I know people inside Ubisoft and they have notoriously low salaries. I work in telco and we pay our developers more than Ubisoft does.
Gaming salaries are shit because everyone wants to be in gaming. Why would you pay $100k to someone if there's like three other kids in line that would do it for $70k?
I know from people at another Ubisoft studio in the EU that they keep losing senior developers when they get tired of the crunch and go next door to write boring business software for 30-100% more money.
Throwaway because my user name can be associated with said people.
Edit: I wonder if HN could have an option to post without your user name for cases like this... maybe allow 3 anonymous posts per month per account? Or one anonymous post for every 10 posts with your user name?
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#28French Software Engineers make $60k per year. I'm sure they wonder why and think striking / unionizing is the answer
French employees are generelle low paid in cash. however, a big part of the compensation is through labor protection - something that is not worth a lot to a software developer.
currently, France had a serious issue with brain drain. software developers move to Germany or the UK to get higher salaries.
This gives a situation where all advanced jobs move out while simpler job stay back with really expensive labor protections.
IMHO, France need to assimilate more with the countries they live among, or other countries need to adopt better labor protection systems - this is solely a comparative thing. as an employee myself, I would hope for the latter.
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is 60k bad? Pretty sure it's the average salary in the entire Europe.
Only making the avg salary after some fairly technical education is pretty bad.
As someone with a B.Eng in Information and Communications Technology, I don't really think the education part is that impressive really. Pretty sure there's a lot of programmers in my company that do not actually have an engineering degree.
Meanwhile the nurses who did a 3.5-year program (as opposed to our 4-year engineering program) at the same campus probably make less than half of what I make.
Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike
#30Meta: typo in title; last word should be "stRike" obviously.