There's no easy way to say this • Hacker News Board

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#131

Post by bigiain » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #105

asimuvPR wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2400 a year? What US dev works for that in this market? You are better off at burger king.

A homeless beggar can clear $2400 a year easy; that's less than $7 a day. You're essentially working for free at that point. I don't understand why they ever agreed to it, at least not without some sort of profit-sharing thing.

Maybe because:

July 2015 - Oct 2016: Lead Engineer, Squad

Delivered Kerbal Space program version 1.2 on time and on budget. Managed team of 5 geographically distributed developers and graphic artists. Reduced defect count by 17%

Reads way better than:

July 2015 - Oct 2016: Panhandler, Mission and 16th

Achieved 11% month on month growth in revenue. Exceeded all set goals and milestones. Migrated from crack to high grade Bolivian cocaine without incurring mob debt or serious personal injury.

;-)

(Though with a little more polishing and embellishment, I bet you could get that second entry past a typical recruiter... Maybe change to "July 2015 - Oct 2016: Growth Hacking Contractor, Bay Area Startup still in stealth mode (under NDA)... " and "Migrated from legacy processes to best practice agile methodology without incurring technical debt or serious downtime." - there, that ought to do it...)

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#132

Post by x0x0 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:07 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #90

jonknee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except a version of the Peace Corps where the suits are raking in tens of millions of dollars on the back of your nearly free labor.

The Olympics and the NCAA. EDIT: I'm not saying its right, I'm saying it happens far more often than it should (as long as people decide not to opt out of being exploited).

The NCAA is far worse. KSP was exploitative, but at least these employees could quit and get a different job. If you want to play pro football/basketball, the ncaa owns you. And they're gonna make sure that everyone around gets paid (coaches, universities, chancellors, shoe sponsors) while the athletes stay broke, poor, and never really end up getting that supposed education either. With free risk of life-altering injury!

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#133

Post by ralonso » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:14 AM UTC

Zyst wrote: post #78

sulam wrote: post #54

At the risk of repeating a comment I made further down in a thread, the average QA Engineer salary in Mexico is literally 10X more than one of these devs was making. Anyone trying to justify this in terms of the Mexican minimum wage is trying to sell you ocean front property in Arizona.

Aye, copy pasting a comment I posted below: I live in Mexico, I've never seen anyone in Mexico make minimum wage, ever. And I do know people from all walks of life. As to what they earn, again, I live in Mexico, I am employed by a Mexican company, and work for Mexican clients. I make their yearly salary in 15 days or so. It really is disgusting that they would treat employees this way, specially when they were such a…

>I live in Mexico, I've never seen anyone in Mexico make minimum wage, ever. And I do know people from all walks of life.

Sorry, but have you really met actual working class people that work in "maquilas"? It is not uncommon to see people earning around 600 MXN pesos a week which is barely enough to count as minimum wage.

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#134

Post by asimuvPR » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:17 AM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #99

meowface wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, they know they were directly working on a game that made at least (1.5M * 39.99) ~60 million USD. I admire dedication to one's work and love of the game and all, but that's just not rational.

What about working for literally nothing? Like, say, open source?

In open source you keep the rights. Which for this game probably means millions. They did not get the rights or Rúe money. It just baffles me to no end.

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#135

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:24 AM UTC

rocqua wrote: post #63

speeder wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Squad own KSP ip. The original author quit several months ago. Squad is a marketing company, and let him start KSP as a counteroffer when he wanted to quit.

I don't see why squad didn't sell KSP before it came out of beta. They are probably not going to give it the attention it needs, leading to bad publicity. Meanwhile, I'd venture game companies'd be willing to pay a pretty nice sum for it.

Good they didn't, I'm pretty sure anyone willing to buy a franchise would just milk out every penny they could out of it and let it rot. KSP progressed pretty nicely out of beta and through several updates.

That said, it's pretty sad to see development stops. At least they AFAIR sorted out the modding API issues, ensuring a stable platform for the community to work on. Honestly, that's what makes me believe KSP will be still improving in the coming years - the modding community is strong and have already pulled off incredible feats of programming and science (this game attracts a really specific crowd).

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#136

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:26 AM UTC

Paul_S wrote: post #3

Ah, it's a pretty awesome game - the right amount of complexity and fun. If it was open source it could continue forever like OpenTTD. Then maybe career mode could be completed. Honestly, this is one of the very few games I've enjoyed in the last 10 years.

I'm pretty sure KSP will continue. The modding community is strong, and has already created several addons that are more advanced than anything the original devs ever wrote.

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#137

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:32 AM UTC

rhblake wrote: post #97

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, all the developers say they're sad about leaving, and really seem it. And I've never heard anything of the sort. Mind, they're an advertising company by business: this is their first foray into games.

It's perfectly possible to have suffered shitty hours/below minimum-wage pay/poor management/etc. and at the same time be sad to leave. (The sadness then being leaving a project you're proud of and the community that loves it.)

Indeed; it's the kind of project I'd be personally willing to work on for free as long as savings lasted. Whatever the crap is going on at Squad, there's no denial that this is one of the best video games ever, especially if measured by amount of kids who actually learned advanced physics in order to play it better.

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#138

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:35 AM UTC

erikb wrote: post #30

I spent less than 5 hours playing this game. But I think it is very, very important for gaming, for space travel simulation, flight simulation, and space exploration. Would buy it again and feel sad that development stops.

Play few hours more, and before you know it, you'll clock a thousand hours.

As a somewhat veteran player at this point, I confirm that this game is very important for space industry. It strikes the perfect balance between fun and science - making it easy to just eyeball your Mün missions and blow stuff up, while at the same time strongly encouraging learning real physics in order to figure out just what the fuck you're doing and how to hit your destination using less fuel.

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#139

Post by brazzledazzle » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:54 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #95

brokentone wrote: post #72

Can we change the headline to something less clickbaity? "Kerbal Space Program: There's no easy way to say this" etc...

Yeah, I originally thought that this was an announcement from reddit about getting hacked and loosing user data or something like that.

Literally seconds of our lives lost to this outrage.

Re: There's no easy way to say this

#140

Post by owlieowl » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 3:02 AM UTC

tropo wrote: post #123

whack wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably missing some back story here. Why did the developers agree to work for such low salaries? If they accepted the job knowing how much they will be paid, why are they upset about it now?

because games It's no different from people choosing a career in early childhood education. Some people insist on doing what they love, ignoring ugly financial issues caused by supply and demand.

+1