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The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

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Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#131

Post by selimthegrim »

EarlKing wrote: post #99
teg4n_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not actually $40 an hour in my experience. It’s closer to $25 and even then the amount of stress and responsibility you have is absurd for being a lowly contractor.

Then don't work there, or do as I directed and leverage time there to get better work elsewhere. A company that is determined to treat people as "human resources" will not be deterred just because you complain. It will be deterred only by failure. So let them fail and in the meantime use their failure as a means to get a leg up yourself.

Gee I’m sure my managers at Intel as a green badge would really have appreciated that waiting to fail speech from me when I was getting paid $35/hour (with some benefits, I’ll admit) in 2013 via W-2 contract.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#132

Post by AmericanChopper »

shadowgovt wrote: post #129
AmericanChopper wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s how pretty much all of my contracting engagements work.

You are in a radically different industry from game testing. Game testing is taking advantage of loopholes in contract law and the naivety of a relatively young employee base.

What loopholes do you think they taking advantage of specifically? Because the article doesn’t describe any. It’s mostly about how they’re treated like “second class citizens” compared to the permanent staff. Which is exactly what contracting is, and exactly how it works for me. In reality, contractors aren’t citizens at all, and not being allowed to use the nice facilities, or eat the free snacks or whatever is just a part of the role. Whether you’re a games tester or anything else.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#133

Post by heavyset_go »

EarlKing wrote: post #90
heavyset_go wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's this. Think Cognizant, Accenture, CyberCoders, etc. They aren't making $200+ an hour as contractors, they're being paid like $40 an hour without any benefits and are treated like garbage.

$40 and hour is still $40 and hour. Live like a Bohemian, pile up your cash for a year, two years, four years... and then bounce to something better. Learned helplessness and expecting a daddy to come along and fix everything for you is not productive.

Weird that you think it's learned helplessness when I'm advocating on the behalf of others.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#134

Post by EarlKing »

shadowgovt wrote: post #130
EarlKing wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITT we learn that making intelligent decisions that require sacrifice is somehow "privilege"... but whining about making bad decisions isn't.

The key piece is "require sacrifice." It is privilege to have something you can sacrifice, and not just be trapped.

...in which case exactly 1% of the population are unprivileged enough to not have family, friends, or choices. This is literally an excuse for people who don't want to even try.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#135

Post by brnt »

cwp wrote: post #74
blintz wrote: post #17

I suppose this is run-of-the-mill for the video game industry, but man, it's sounds so hellish; people deserve not be humiliated like this at work. Isn't the solution unions, akin to the heavily unionized movie / TV business? Short of that, Nintendo deserves some bad PR for this at least; as long as people keep leaking their crappy workplace conditions to the press, the execs will have to keep reading these articles,…

The solution is go find another job. Everbody, but everybody, is hiring.

trouble is, over here in Europe, nobody is paying.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#136

Post by pjerem »

EarlKing wrote: post #118
Dylan16807 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's exactly the word they're not looking for. They don't want to admit that they made poor life choices and paid for them. Why are you making this personal? > Once you hit the age of majority you're a functioning adult and you don't get to make excuses anymore. If you make a bad deal then you make a bad deal. That's a very cruel way to look at the situation, when many new adults have zero negotiating experience.…

> Why are you making this personal? Why are you avoiding responsibility? You don't control the world. You only control yourself. Change the things you can change. > That's a very cruel way to look at the situation, when many new adults have zero negotiating experience. Almost no adults have any negotiating experience. That doesn't change anything. You're still responsible for your own actions. You will make mistakes.…

> You will make mistakes. You will fail. You're still expected to get up and try again.

Ok true. Nobody said otherwise here. But are you implying it’s ok for companies to exploit this natural naivety ?

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#137

Post by Dylan16807 »

EarlKing wrote: post #118
Dylan16807 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's exactly the word they're not looking for. They don't want to admit that they made poor life choices and paid for them. Why are you making this personal? > Once you hit the age of majority you're a functioning adult and you don't get to make excuses anymore. If you make a bad deal then you make a bad deal. That's a very cruel way to look at the situation, when many new adults have zero negotiating experience.…

> Why are you making this personal? Why are you avoiding responsibility? You don't control the world. You only control yourself. Change the things you can change. > That's a very cruel way to look at the situation, when many new adults have zero negotiating experience. Almost no adults have any negotiating experience. That doesn't change anything. You're still responsible for your own actions. You will make mistakes.…

> I find it interesting that teaching people how to take advantage of the present system and better themselves is viewed as "making this personal" and somehow a bad thing, whereas complaining and accomplishing nothing is not.

Yeah I sometimes find stuff I completely imagined interesting too.

The 'making it personal' part was the part I quoted. You took a general comment about contracting relationships and turned it into a claim that pjerem specifically "made poor life choices and paid for them".

It wasn't about anything else you said.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#138

Post by henriquez »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #28
henriquez wrote: post #12

Quoted post unavailable.

If you want this to not be a strawman, you have to set it up so the other construction workers in your house are allowed to do that.

No I don’t. I hire a contractor and they do the work and get out.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#139

Post by shadowgovt »

EarlKing wrote: post #134
shadowgovt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key piece is "require sacrifice." It is privilege to have something you can sacrifice, and not just be trapped.

...in which case exactly 1% of the population are unprivileged enough to not have family, friends, or choices. This is literally an excuse for people who don't want to even try.

Hello should that number be before we as a society accept it?

1% is staggeringly high. That's one and a half million people. If our system operates on exploiting one and a half million people, we should change that system.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#140

Post by InitialBP »

beebmam wrote: post #16
gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The startup I currently work for has (IMO) a reasonable number of benefits - weekly lunch - get drunk on the company a handful of times a year - dogfooding our product for free - certs + professional development A company offering substantially less than that I’d consider stingy or too up tight. Not appreciative of the workers. Look at low margin industries like the warehouse. A company offering more, Id feel good ab…

I have a hard time taking any company seriously that facilitates the consumption of alcohol during work hours, with the exception of parties/celebrations.

I've worked for plenty of places that facilitate alcohol during work hours. For 99% of people that work there they enjoy a beer after lunch while they knock out some evening work or internal meetings, or just choose not to participate. Some people like to casually drink and while that isn't true of all individuals, depending on your team that might be a big morale boost for people that can drink responsibly in the workplace.
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