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Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

bloomberg.com

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Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#11

Some producers and engineers at Blizzard can make well over $100,000 a year, but others, such as video game testers and customer-service representatives, are often paid minimum wage or close to it. It's about time this conversation entered the mainstream. It should go farther though — why shouldn't we all be able to buy Lambos or Teslas for the price of a Honda? Or, for that matter, Google shares for the price of GE?…

MMT itself does not yet understand an economy in an open system, which the US certainly is.

But then, your post was probably sarcastic.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#12

Whenever the topic of sharing salary information comes up I always bring up the algorithm for figuring out the average salary for a group of people without anyone learning anyone else’s exact salary: Say you have 10 people sitting at a round table. Person 1 picks up a piece of paper and on it writes a sum of their salary + randInt(100_000, 10_000_000) remembering what the initial random number was. We can call this n…

It’s also important to note that in the US sharing salary data is protected by federal law no matter what your employee agreement says.

That only matters if someone is dumb enough to fire you and writes down somewhere "s/he was fired for discussing salaries".

I can't remember the exact phrasing but years ago my boss said at the team meeting something about not discussing salaries, and someone said later "I don't think you can say that" and he was like "oh, ok". The message was delivered though.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#14
post #10

Whenever the topic of sharing salary information comes up I always bring up the algorithm for figuring out the average salary for a group of people without anyone learning anyone else’s exact salary: Say you have 10 people sitting at a round table. Person 1 picks up a piece of paper and on it writes a sum of their salary + randInt(100_000, 10_000_000) remembering what the initial random number was. We can call this n…

This is a good algorithm, but depends on using actual exact figures rather than rounded values and a secure RNG source of the nonce.

Person 1 is the secure source, as long as they subtract it at the end and don't share it with anyone.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#16

Some producers and engineers at Blizzard can make well over $100,000 a year, but others, such as video game testers and customer-service representatives, are often paid minimum wage or close to it. It's about time this conversation entered the mainstream. It should go farther though — why shouldn't we all be able to buy Lambos or Teslas for the price of a Honda? Or, for that matter, Google shares for the price of GE?…

The video game industry takes advantage of young people who have dreams of making video games, and think that suffering through terribly paying jobs is the way to make that happen. That illusion gives cover to the industry to perpetuate terrible working conditions by abusing low paying employees and then having new young people replace them. There isn't accountability when companies do not pay a penalty for the treat…

The video game industry isn’t alone in doing this. Basically every “glamor” industry exploits young people with a dream. Entertainment, sports, airlines. They all have young people working for less than minimum wage in hopes of a shot at the big time.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#17

Some producers and engineers at Blizzard can make well over $100,000 a year, but others, such as video game testers and customer-service representatives, are often paid minimum wage or close to it. It's about time this conversation entered the mainstream. It should go farther though — why shouldn't we all be able to buy Lambos or Teslas for the price of a Honda? Or, for that matter, Google shares for the price of GE?…

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Flamebait and/or trolling is not cool here, and will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't create accounts to do this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#18
> “ The anonymous document, reviewed by Bloomberg News, contains dozens of purported Blizzard salaries and pay bumps. Most of the raises are below 10%, significantly less than Blizzard employees said they expected following the study.”

When oh when are midrange tech companies going to get their shit together with raises and bonuses.

10% should be mostly seen as a (shock) _normal_ raise when the company is doing well, above and beyond annual equity and a bonus at least in the range of 10-15%.

Stop giving people reasons to job hop every few years. If you want loyalty and you want your investment in employees to pay off over time, give them good stuff! Give it to them before they reach any point of questioning if they want to go to the next company down the street for that extra 15% raise you were too stingy to give them on merit.

As a manager, I can safely say the worst compensation mistakes I made were cases of not giving enough compensation sooner rather than later, and giving good people a reason to leave over money.

I learned my lesson fast, and can say later in my career I take compensation planning much more seriously and absolutely do not ever settle for company pay band crap and scheduled 3% / 5% raise crap. If someone is doing good work for you, pay them!

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#19
post #7

Some producers and engineers at Blizzard can make well over $100,000 a year, but others, such as video game testers and customer-service representatives, are often paid minimum wage or close to it. It's about time this conversation entered the mainstream. It should go farther though — why shouldn't we all be able to buy Lambos or Teslas for the price of a Honda? Or, for that matter, Google shares for the price of GE?…

Just printing money is a great way to end up with runaway inflation and a worthless currency.

I can't comment on the original post because it's dead, but I'm trying to figure out if OP is genuinely so ignorant of reality that they actually believe the things they wrote, or if they are a troll.

It's so ridiculous I'm almost forced to believe the latter.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#20

Some producers and engineers at Blizzard can make well over $100,000 a year, but others, such as video game testers and customer-service representatives, are often paid minimum wage or close to it. It's about time this conversation entered the mainstream. It should go farther though — why shouldn't we all be able to buy Lambos or Teslas for the price of a Honda? Or, for that matter, Google shares for the price of GE?…

The video game industry takes advantage of young people who have dreams of making video games, and think that suffering through terribly paying jobs is the way to make that happen. That illusion gives cover to the industry to perpetuate terrible working conditions by abusing low paying employees and then having new young people replace them. There isn't accountability when companies do not pay a penalty for the treat…

Did you mean to say young and inexperienced people take advantage of the video game industry?

It's self-evident they couldn't get a better job anywhere else.

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