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Analogue Pocket Hate Story

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Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#141

Post by matheusmoreira »

zackbloom wrote: post #85
matheusmoreira wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tried to stall the development of an open source GBA emulator. What's constructive about that? Where's the corporation's empathy?

We don't really know what happened here, because as far as I can tell the OP didn't actually engage with anyone to understand what was happening. It seems most likely that the company needed to focus more on one project than another for a little while. That is not the same as stalling something intentionally. It's hard for the company to have empathy if the person didn't elect to communicate their thoughts and feelin…

> We don't really know what happened here

First they said it wasn't going to impact the author's open source work.

Then they started talking about delaying mGBA development until the product was released.

Then they started talking about delaying mGBA development until many months after the product was released.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#142

Post by dayvid »

zackbloom wrote: post #3

This reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism. It sounds like this person negotiated their salary, and then decided the company didn't value them _because_ the company agreed to raise it when asked. If your goal is to have people throw money at you which you don't ask for, you are going to have a tough time working. A company that's willing to double your salary when you point out the offer is low sounds pretty great…

This is about business and not me or them. All that matters is that you're getting what you want out of a business relationship with someone else. In my brief experience as a dev consultant/independent business owner:

1. You should get the scope of work from a client before they throw a number at you. 2. You should then turn them back a proposal with an amount (based on some estimate of hours, or whichever way you prefer to bill people (daily, retainer, hourly, whatever)

In this scenario, they threw out a number and it set a bad expectation on the dev. I don't blame the author. This is 300-400 hours of your life you will not get back and it sounds like it's not competitive to them based on their situation. The business will have to try someone else or change up their approach.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#143

Post by kllrnohj »

emodendroket wrote: post #111
kllrnohj wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://anbernic.com/products/anbernic-new-rg351v-retro-game... Seems to be $120 for equivalent form-factor, but still missing a large amount of what the Pocket supports (such as physical cartridges, link cable, and TV output), and with a worse display and a smaller battery. And it's not like the Pocket is that much more expensive at $220.

On the other hand, I can't use the Analog Pocket to play PlayStation, Dreamcast, Genesis, etc., can I?

Irrelevant. Your claim was specifically that the only reason to get a Pocket was for people "hung up on software vs. FPGA emulation". I pointed out multiple unique features of the Pocket and differentiating aspects vs. a random Linux emulator handheld.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#144

Post by kllrnohj »

emodendroket wrote: post #94
kllrnohj wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

runahead is brilliant but it relies on save states being trivially fast to create, which isn't broadly true especially as you get to newer & newer consoles. And strictly speaking needs to be adjusted on a per-game basis as it really depends on the game's internal latency in responding to button presses. But that also doesn't necessarily offset the latency of getting inputs into the emulator in the first place or in g…

FPGA doesn't really solve your other two issues, nor is it practical for anything post-PlayStation/Saturn/N64, so those objections are not very strong. Past that point the games are designed more with a certain amount of lag in mind anyways.

Are you arguing from a theoretical or practical standpoint? In practical cases the FPGA products do solve my first two issues, as the video output path of the emulation goes directly to the display output in the FPGA. Meanwhile in all software-based emulation products, the video output path goes through a normal Linux graphics stack, which tends to be crap (and not getting better with the silly X11 vs. Wayland fight that keeps Linux's graphics stuck in a bad spot).

That's not an inherent limitation of software emulation, no, but for all practical purposes it is as nobody is doing specialized software emulation for a specific set of hardware to bypass the normal OS/graphics stack. It's instead "throw linux on it, and fullscreen an off the shelf emulator"

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#145

Post by aeone »

kbenson wrote: post #140
danShumway wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone else reading this, when you're negotiating salary information with a company, it is good for you to think about yourself, it's not entitled. You are supposed to advocate for yourself. I'm not sure if the parent comment realizes that the author didn't actually accept the job? It sounds like parent believes she cut off work or something, which isn't at all what the article describes; it describes a pretty st…

Honestly, it's not the looking out for yourself and not wanting to take a lowball offer that makes this come off as entitled to me, it's the idea that they were apparently so offended that they name names about the situation, and post what appear to be chat logs, just for what looks like a fairly benign negotiation fail. It's professional to treat yourself and your time and skills with the respect they deserve and no…

Without weighing in on the rest, I'd quickly note that the name of the post seems mostly to be a reference to an (unrelated) visual novel called "Analogue: A Hate Story".

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#146

Post by rumori »

I wonder if people here actually read the Discord chats. There's literally nothing there that warrants outrage. Speak up if you want different terms, the Analogue guy asked her multiple times for estimates/terms/cost and preferences. If someone is an expert in a field she/he should be able to communicate the cost clearly. It seems to me she just got upset at a lowball offer, let tension build up and then backed out. Not very professional and honestly quite misleading. Maybe Analogue should have known better but I don't blame them, this is regular business negotiations, you should not take it personally. Just say no and move on or name your price.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#147

Post by hitekker »

kbenson wrote: post #140
danShumway wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone else reading this, when you're negotiating salary information with a company, it is good for you to think about yourself, it's not entitled. You are supposed to advocate for yourself. I'm not sure if the parent comment realizes that the author didn't actually accept the job? It sounds like parent believes she cut off work or something, which isn't at all what the article describes; it describes a pretty st…

Honestly, it's not the looking out for yourself and not wanting to take a lowball offer that makes this come off as entitled to me, it's the idea that they were apparently so offended that they name names about the situation, and post what appear to be chat logs, just for what looks like a fairly benign negotiation fail. It's professional to treat yourself and your time and skills with the respect they deserve and no…

Yeah, how dare the OP warn us that a fly-by-night company is trying to lowball and screw over engineers. Or that this company has failed to deliver on a project for 2 years because they can't find people willing to accept terrible offers.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#148

Post by kabdib »

kllrnohj wrote: post #73
kabdib wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$20K is at most 100 hours of consulting time in SV. Probably less [it's been quite a while since I was in that market]. Analogue was hoping for a screaming deal on this software. He was right to walk away.

Analogue isn't an SV company, so why are you using SV rates?

Specialist knowledge. Hard problem. Company is located in Seattle.

Someone capable of doing a good job on this can make FAR more doing something else. $20K is a joke.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#149

Post by kbenson »

hitekker wrote: post #147
kbenson wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it's not the looking out for yourself and not wanting to take a lowball offer that makes this come off as entitled to me, it's the idea that they were apparently so offended that they name names about the situation, and post what appear to be chat logs, just for what looks like a fairly benign negotiation fail. It's professional to treat yourself and your time and skills with the respect they deserve and no…

Yeah, how dare the OP warn us that a fly-by-night company is trying to lowball and screw over engineers. Or that this company has failed to deliver on a project for 2 years because they can't find people willing to accept terrible offers.

Do you really need to be told about every company that could conceivably offer to pay you too little? I've go news for you, you won't be able to read that list as fast as new entries get added.

Telling people to value their time and effort is laudable. Lambasting some company or person in public because they offered you less than you were worth is not. If I contacted you in private and offered you $1000 to design a GBA emulator (not quite the same thing, I know) and you thought that was far too little money, is that worth posting screencaps of, or maybe you should just tell me "really that's so low of an offer that whether you intend it to be or not it's sort of insulting, as I would be working for so far less than I value my time"? That seems like the most useful thing to do for all involved. Maybe something good comes of it, maybe nothing changes, but at least it's not just one person pointing at another and doing the equivalent of saying "look at them and laugh because they had the temerity to try to pay me for work, but just not enough". I mean at some point the person she's talking to literally says in the screencaps "No hehe this is just a personal conversation".

It's not screwing someone over to make an offer of work, no matter how low. Some people are happy to do certain types of work for free. Others want to be paid. The amount they may want to be paid might be based on many things, including market rates and cost of living in their area. Making an offer to someone is never screwing them over, nor even trying to, as long as they can freely reject it. The whole idea that them making an offer, no matter how low, is some sort of way of screwing someone over is just totally weird to me, and I'm not sure how people are even coming to that conclusion.

Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story

#150

Post by emodendroket »

kllrnohj wrote: post #143
emodendroket wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I can't use the Analog Pocket to play PlayStation, Dreamcast, Genesis, etc., can I?

Irrelevant. Your claim was specifically that the only reason to get a Pocket was for people "hung up on software vs. FPGA emulation". I pointed out multiple unique features of the Pocket and differentiating aspects vs. a random Linux emulator handheld.

OK, I take it back. It's for those people, and also people who have a bunch of Gameboy cartridges but no Gameboy.
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