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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

#251

Post by bdowling »

Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #184
JamesBarney wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

100% confirm these exist. When I first came to California, I worked for a computer repair shop in Sacramento as my first gig with a "budding software division". Place was a bait and switch on what they had me doing. Market took a downturn just after I moved so I was stuck in the job. They pressured me into doing full on software architecture but paid me like an intern for it. Eventually went from bad to worse. It was…

> After giving me more than one death threat, I finally quit and sued.

Threatening to kill you is probably another claim beyond failing to reasonably accommodate your medical condition. It may also be a criminal threat that a prosecutor would be interested in. I would think that would strengthen your case.

> Pro bono, of course, since I had no money.

> ... My lawyer was unbelievably startled by this, and immediately dropped the case after.

Depending on what type of pro bono attorney you had, that may have been reasonable. For free legal aid type attorneys, litigation is out of the scope of what they can help with.

What you probably wanted was a lawyer who would take the case on a contingent fee basis. That means that they don't get paid anything unless you win, but if you do win they take 30-40%. Many plaintiff-side personal injury and employment lawyers like to work contingency because if they're good at it they can make way more money than an attorney working for an hourly rate. It's often a good deal for the plaintiffs too because they may get 60-70% of a much larger settlement amount.

It sounds like you got some bad advice.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#252

Post by maerF0x0 »

zxcmx wrote: post #192
sytelus wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are responsible and accountable for $5B revenues and associated decisions, won’t you agree you deserve 0.5% of that revenue? This is generally accepted reasonable management fees for things like index funds. Your credit card company or your iOS platform or Uber takes much bigger cuts.

Maybe we should give the president a share of GDP?

Recently I had been thinking what if we pay all elected officials this way, except as something like a multiplier on the median income in the country... GDP growth could be few getting a lot richer or many getting moderately richer.

Their pay increases would be inflation indexed and tied to "rising tides lift all boats"

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#253

Post by JamesBarney »

bdowling wrote: post #251
Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% confirm these exist. When I first came to California, I worked for a computer repair shop in Sacramento as my first gig with a "budding software division". Place was a bait and switch on what they had me doing. Market took a downturn just after I moved so I was stuck in the job. They pressured me into doing full on software architecture but paid me like an intern for it. Eventually went from bad to worse. It was…

> After giving me more than one death threat, I finally quit and sued. Threatening to kill you is probably another claim beyond failing to reasonably accommodate your medical condition. It may also be a criminal threat that a prosecutor would be interested in. I would think that would strengthen your case. > Pro bono, of course, since I had no money. > ... My lawyer was unbelievably startled by this, and immediately…

Most employment lawyers would be very reluctant to take a case like this for 5-10k.

Litigating against a company like the one he described would cost more than he would make even if he was paid on 100% contingency fee.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#254

Post by pests »

vincnetas wrote: post #180
pests wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you get more tips to push you past minimum wage.

I assume parent meant that if you do not collect enough tips to reach minimal salary, employer pays you more to reach minimal salary, but if you collect enough tips, employer adds nothing.

I don't think so. His first statement is that with this practice, total pay is always equal to minimum wage.

But it's not, because tippers can push you past minimum wage.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#255

Post by falcolas »

onemiketwelve wrote: post #222
john-shaffer wrote: post #9

I boycotted Blizzard after their censorship regarding Hong Kong. It was a great decision since it saved me from the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires that was Warcraft III Reforged [1]. I would strongly suggest that if anything about Blizzard pisses you off, just be done with them entirely. The people who created the great games of the past don't work there. Blizzard is no longer capable of producing good produ…

Isn't it going to be hard to stay away from both blizzard and Activision? They made/make really good stuff. The concept that if anything about x pisses you off, just be done with it entirely would be great in theory if a large portion of the market felt the same way but in the end it's vidja games and a lot of people are sucked in and don't want to give up something fun for some high minded ideal that doesn't really…

It’s not hard at all. While they make (some) good games, they’re hardly the only videogame creators out there. Even should you discount the thousands of indie creators (and you really shouldn’t), there’s several dozen AAA creators that you can still pick games from.

If you can avoid the COD and “Blizzard games are always the best” hype trains, there’s a lot out there to play, and a lot of games which respect your pocketbook.

Boycotts work. I enjoy playing competitive FPS shooters occasionally, and I’ve personally been able to stay away from COD since the private server debacle with no issues. To claim that their games are so good no boycott will ever work (so why bother) is conceding defeat before you’ve even tried.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#256

Post by overgard »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #138
overgard wrote: post #132

At risk of sounding like a mercenary, in my experience the only realistic way to get paid your market value is to be on the market. It's just way easier to get a pay bump by switching jobs. If you wait for your employer to give you a raise, they usually will drag their feet for as long as possible and then give you something disappointing. One consequence of this is, in companies that are willing to do it, it can be…

>The cost of recruiting and interviewing candidates, not to mention training new hires, is huge. Clearly it's not more than the cost of providing higher pay. Most people would rather not switch jobs as there is considerable risk involved if you're not performing labor that results in very profitable sales. People would rather work with the devil they know than the devil they don't, so unless they're in upwardly mobil…

I think it's more likely this: calculating the cost of giving an employee a raise is very simple. Calculating the cost of finding a new employee is extremely variable (how long does it take and how many people are involved?) and also involves metrics that are very hard to measure (how much more would the team lead and the team members have gotten done that week if they weren't interviewing candidates?)

Usually if you're debating management, especially non-technical management, solid numbers win out over hand waivey numbers, even if the hand waivey numbers are representing something far more important and the solid numbers are representing something in a very limited context.

An example: Tom is a mediocre programmer, but he's worked for the company for 5 years and has a lot of institutional knowledge. He wants an above average salary now. Should we give it to him? The obvious answer would be to let him walk, he's asking for more than he's really worth. Ok, but how much does the equation change if we factor in that it's going to take 3-5 months to hire his replacement, and you'll need to interview about 20 candidates, some of them for multiple hours, not to mention potentially flying them out? Also now Tom is walking with his institutional knowledge, and the bugs that used to go to him are going to someone that doesn't have the 5 years working with the system he does, so whoever has to pick up his slack is going to be slower than Tom is even if they're a better programmer overall.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#257

Post by falcolas »

pandaman wrote: post #238
vvanders wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to factor in the 1.5x overtime that's standard on hourly. I went back and did the numbers, it was closer to $6hr but well below minimum wage for a dev position. From the little bit of salaries I heard art, design and test had it even worse.

80 h/week at 1.5x overtime for 40 hours = 100h/week * 50 weeks (less holidays) = 5000 hours a year. At $6/h it makes 30K/y. This looks very low for the US tbqh, even for a non-programmer. When I started at my first job in the US game industry in the late 90s I've made 75K in a small independent studio. I had probably 3 years of experience at that time but no shipped games, I also was a foreigner on a temp visa so I d…

EA, about 15-20 years ago, was paying $35k for programmers, and working them ~80 hours a week. It was so bad that EA lost a lawsuit that cost them about $90k per impacted employee, since the courts ruled that they were being treated as hourly employees, not salaried.

That is to say, due to “passion”, entry level game programmers aren’t making much more than $40k a year. They have no negotiating power going in, since there’s a hundred others who will willingly take their place at the low wages, just to be in the videogame industry.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#258

Post by pandaman »

acituan wrote: post #119
rosywoozlechan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information. If I'm making more money than everyone else and the consequences of sharing salaries is equity than it is in my rational self-interest to keep my salary hidden because I'm unlikely to get any kind of raise until equity is achieved whereas I may continue to get raises otherwise. You know what those top earners are going to do then? Quit. And then you end up w…

> It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information Maybe one of the biggest myths is that we can appraise performance objectively and that pay is nothing but a function of that performance. In reality, this is nothing but price discrimination for the price of labor; just like it would be in an airline's best interest to squeeze the most individual dollar amounts out of every individual passenger for the sam…

The employer is buying labor and "price discrimination" is a seller's strategy. Offering different salaries to different people is just regular shopping around. You are likely guilty of it yourself. Do you buy the first airline ticket to your destination you get in the search or do you choose among several alternatives with the pricing in mind? Do you ask businesses for quotes? Do you go to a particular store for some specific products? Oh horror, you are shopping for the best offer too!

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#259

Post by kasey_junk »

JamesBarney wrote: post #253
bdowling wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After giving me more than one death threat, I finally quit and sued. Threatening to kill you is probably another claim beyond failing to reasonably accommodate your medical condition. It may also be a criminal threat that a prosecutor would be interested in. I would think that would strengthen your case. > Pro bono, of course, since I had no money. > ... My lawyer was unbelievably startled by this, and immediately…

Most employment lawyers would be very reluctant to take a case like this for 5-10k. Litigating against a company like the one he described would cost more than he would make even if he was paid on 100% contingency fee.

I’m not sure how you made that determination. I’m no employment lawyer and facts differ by locality, but where I am there are tons of contingent lawyers who’d take that case just based on discovery costs.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#260

Post by pandaman »

falcolas wrote: post #257
pandaman wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80 h/week at 1.5x overtime for 40 hours = 100h/week * 50 weeks (less holidays) = 5000 hours a year. At $6/h it makes 30K/y. This looks very low for the US tbqh, even for a non-programmer. When I started at my first job in the US game industry in the late 90s I've made 75K in a small independent studio. I had probably 3 years of experience at that time but no shipped games, I also was a foreigner on a temp visa so I d…

EA, about 15-20 years ago, was paying $35k for programmers, and working them ~80 hours a week. It was so bad that EA lost a lawsuit that cost them about $90k per impacted employee, since the courts ruled that they were being treated as hourly employees, not salaried. That is to say, due to “passion”, entry level game programmers aren’t making much more than $40k a year. They have no negotiating power going in, since…

Do you mean the ea_spouse lawsuit? I don't know what EA cost had been but seeing that affected people were paid 5-15K I doubt it was 90K on the front end. As for $35K for programmers - maybe in Canada? I don't believe for a second EA could get any significant number $35K programmers in their main studios in the US (CA,TX) or even Florida. And when I worked there 15 years ago they equalized salaries across the internal studios with COL adjustments.
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