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Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

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Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#161

Post by kelnos »

sytelus wrote: post #105

Unpopular opinion: For big companies, if you take all of the exec pay (C suits) and give it out to rest of the employees, the average employee income only rises by 3-5%. While CXX packages are extra-ordinary, one has to understand that its often drop in the bucket for big balance sheets and even less relevant when you have couple of hundreds of thousand employees around. So the metric of disparity we should use is no…

I don't understand why you'd think that's a good metric.

If the Cxx team each makes 100x what the average employee makes, it doesn't matter if there are 10 employees or 10,000. There's rampant income inequality either way.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#162

Post by tluyben2 »

setr wrote: post #141
Mandatum wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is possibly the most exploitative form of compensation I've heard of in the Western world.

Then you dont know your western history :-) There used to be whole towns where you'd get entirely paid in, and shop with, corporate funny money https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip

> hen you dont know your western history

Seems not too many tech people like history: if they did we would not be looping Greenspuns 10th rule derivatives on everything ; nosql, microservices, js, query languages, etc.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#163

Post by tyrust »

gnicholas wrote: post #144
tyrust wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rank service workers' tips counting towards their minimum wage a worse practice.

At least tips are in cash, not funny money.

With this practice, your total pay is always equal to the minimum wage. You get minimum wage even if you earn no tips. In other words, the tips are worth zero to you, they just save your employer money.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#164

Post by puranjay »

donatj wrote: post #25

So possibly unpopular point of view here, maybe not on HN, but I think pay discrepancies can be entirely fair. I'm almost certain my pay is different from my colleagues, but I've bargained like hell to get it. When I was hired, every time we've been acquired. I'm no executive either, I'm just a developer with a proven history of give-a-damn. I think it's perfectly fair game in a job where it's hard to replace individ…

What if you were as competent as your better paid colleague but were just in a situation that limited your bargaining power at the time of hiring? Say you just had a baby or you're suffering from a disease and depend on your employer's insurance? You can't afford to not have the job, while your better paid colleague could walk away.

Every negotiation favors the person who can afford to walk away from the deal.

In a salary negotiation, this puts healthy, young, and single people at an advantage. It penalizes people with disabilities, disease or dependants - the most vulnerable groups.

That's where the demand for open and fair compensation comes from.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#165

Post by baron816 »

xenihn wrote: post #122
daenz wrote: post #73

>Several former Blizzard employees said they only received significant pay increases after leaving for other companies That's the key quote in the article for me. If you feel that your compensation is below market rate, switch jobs and prove it.

Riot is the only videogame industry employer I can think of that tries to pay fairly. My friends' Riot SWE offers are the only ones that I've seen come anywhere near FAANG compensation. Sadly they still fall short due to no RSUs, but at least they try. Riot offers are ~75% of FAANG TC, and on par with SF/Bay Area base salaries, while Blizzard offers are more typical for the industry and approach 40% of FAANG TC at be…

Someone should do a study comparing the two labor markets. There’s definitely a thesis somewhere in there for an economics PhD student. How is it that two very similar industries that nearly share the same talent pool can have radically different outcomes for their employees?

Imagine how many game devs there are who are roommates with web devs, or who went to college together. How is it that the web devs don’t tell their friends “you need to quit that awful 90hr/week job that pays you shit and come work at my company”? Or why don’t startups try to lure game devs? I’m sure many of them could figure out Rails or React in no time. They would surely be able to offer slightly lower wages in exchange for a (comparatively) better work life balance.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#166

Post by pembrook »

sytelus wrote: post #105

Unpopular opinion: For big companies, if you take all of the exec pay (C suits) and give it out to rest of the employees, the average employee income only rises by 3-5%. While CXX packages are extra-ordinary, one has to understand that its often drop in the bucket for big balance sheets and even less relevant when you have couple of hundreds of thousand employees around. So the metric of disparity we should use is no…

If I embezzle $10,000,000 from a giant company like GE, its also a drop in the bucket on their balance sheet. But that doesn’t make it right.

American public company executives are grossly overpaid, and there’s been numerous studies proving this. Both historically in the US (exec pay has ballooned here since the 1980s) and currently in most other developed countries, companies with lower exec compensation don’t show lower ROE when sorted by industry.

Exec compensation in many American companies is basically normalized theft from shareholders given the revolving door of incestuous boards and C-suites and the constant conflicts of interest.

However, the money execs are looting from American companies doesn’t belong to employees. It belongs to shareholders. So a metric of giving that money to employees is irrelevant. Employee salaries are (and should be) set by broader market demand.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#167

Post by BadassFractal »

Interesting that their senior software dev is in the 140-170k range, which isn't too far off what you would be making at mid stage startups. Sure, it doesn't compare to FAANG, but most jobs don't, especially if you factor in the "startup tax" or the "passion tax".

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#168

Post by vkazanov »

vvanders wrote: post #33

The game industry as a whole was pretty fucked when I left. I remember doing the 40hr+1.5x overtime calculation and realizing that if I wasn't salaried I'd be making $4/hr with the mandatory hours we were working(70-90 hrs/week). I tossed 2 months of PTO to leave that industry(yay Washington laws) and made up the difference in the first 2.5 paychecks of the new gig. Be careful of industries that over-index on "passio…

I have a somewhat similar experience!

For a while I was working as a server-side programmer for a major gaming company making a MMO game based in Eastern Europe. The background of my manager was network programming, and they did a lot of network programming, so he hired me as network programmer, not a game programmer. Salary was world-class.

Then for personal reasons (got married) I moved to London, UK. The same company had an office in London but they were only hiring gamedevs for the same job. Those guys were offering less money in London then I had back home.

Long story short I do my server-side programming in a social network company now.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#169

Post by thaumasiotes »

tyrust wrote: post #163
gnicholas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least tips are in cash, not funny money.

With this practice, your total pay is always equal to the minimum wage. You get minimum wage even if you earn no tips. In other words, the tips are worth zero to you, they just save your employer money.

No, your tips can exceed the difference between the tipped minimum wage and the regular minimum wage, in which case you'll be making more than minimum wage. That's the norm.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#170

Post by JamesBarney »

tptacek wrote: post #114
gibba999 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the other thing though. Law suits are expensive. Law suits burn bridges (you'll never get a recommendation from an employer you've sued). Law suits prevent future jobs (would you hire someone who sued a previous employer?). And wrongful termination isn't the end. And things are rarely black-and-white. If your boss thinks you're a douche, it will hurt your career. If your next performance review is a 7 instead…

Here's the other other thing, though: lawsuits are expensive. Employers settle them routinely. I've seen frivolous suits settled for real money, just to get them out of the way. Legal expense probably scares most employers a lot more than it scares former employees. Getting fired for sharing salary information is not high up on my list of concerns, in part for that reason.

On the other end there are companies that fight every lawsuit tooth and nail, even if it's more costly and they know they're going to lose because they don't want to get a reputation as easy pickings among employment lawyers.
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