> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job.
Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.
Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.
Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.
The situation is a bit like cabs in NY city before Uber/Lyft - the medallion owners were the ones who were making the real money.
In this case they are the product, and there are a lot of customers. Plenty of people working on the things that make those players valuable, building and staffing stadiums, and filming and broadcasting events worldwide, that don't get a share. Because they aren't the product.
They wouldn't have those jobs if the players or the league did not exist. That's their share. They make a lively hood off the product's operations.
We're talking about professionals. If the Chiefs could replace Patrick Mahomes and save themselves $450,000,000 without impacting their business, they would.
It's not really a fair comparison. The NFL is a monopoly, so there is no way for athletes to vote with their feet. At various times in the past, in order to negotiate the NFLPA has had to decertify in order to sue the league.
The NFL is also not a good proxy, because the average career for an NFL player is 2-3 years, and it is a physically dangerous job.
However what we are discussing is rather the levels of money at the top of such an industry and that concept applies to both sports. Where Ronaldo can earn £25m in a year at Manchester United while still having his "dream job". Football in Europe since the Bosman ruling has allowed its players to share in the wealth of the industry; one could argue that programmers in the gaming industry are not afforded that same. It remains an interesting discussion as to exactly why that is and I think the risks that workers take are not as relevant to the amount of money available in the game and scarcity of the best employees available; which results in such inflationary salaries for the very best employees.
As other commenters pointed out, it's not like playing in the NFL. It's more like being a high school football player trying to get into the NFL. Or an actor trying to get a part in a Hollywood movie. The chances of a company becoming lucrative off games is slim.
There is some outliers, but simply most games either are not popular or even if they are they also take huge amount of labour to develop.
My current work is pretty boring to other people, but I like it. Would it be right for someone in my role who hates the work to make more money?
That's a narrow definition. Perhaps a better definition is when the other party knows you don't have leverage and takes advantage of it, you're being exploited.
Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation.
Horrible working conditions, wages, and abuse knowing you're an illegal immigrant with no recourse? Exploitation.
Knowing you need the job for visa purposes and asking you to come in for a 2am code review because a new CEO wants to feel like an engineer? Exploitation.
Yes. This scenario includes factors that are depriving the worker of agency, chiefly the lack of recourse due to their illegal immigrant status.
> Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation.
No. If the worker is passionate about their job and is willing to tolerate low wages and long hours that's their decision. Agency is not being deprived. The worker should rethink whether working in their dream field is a good decision, and change jobs. If enough people do it, then the company will not be able to fill positions and will have to change labor practices or close shop. But, chances are, there's plenty of people willing to fill this role and the company is simply following the labor market.
> Knowing you need the job for visa purposes and asking you to come in for a 2am code review because a new CEO wants to feel like an engineer? Exploitation.
Maybe. Was this part of the job description? Some companies are upfront about expectations around crunch time or oncall responsibility. Others are not. Are there factors limiting a worker's agency? I'd say it'd be exploitative to change the work responsibilities on someone who has limited agency to change jobs. An H1B worker whose residency is tied to employment, as you suggest, I would consider exploitative.
Most video game development falls in the middle category. The whole industry has a widespread reputation for demanding crunch time - I don't think one would reasonably say they were deceived if asked to crunch near release. They also have skills that are in demand with plenty of other fields. Heck, the company I work in now acquired a video game studio to work on a 3D Geodesy UI, and everyone's salary basically doubled and they were able to work roughly 9-5.
That kind of thing (collusion by big players to keep wages low) strikes me as exploitative.
You choose your job, though. I'm not overly passionate about what I do, but do it for the stress:compensation ratio.
Same thing happens in fashion, media and entertainment.
And many of those industries unionized to prevent the systematic abuse!
If there was a headline
"Abuser abused many girlfriends in a row" you'd excuse their behavior saying there are plenty of other guys out there they could go with instead.
Where was I excusing it? I was simply laying out the market reality. If you want to say certain classes of professions "deserve" less or more money, then shouldn't we expand this discussion to all professions (teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc.)? No one is really saying they deserve less, but rather that this is the market reality.
If gaming devs want to unionize then that's their prerogative.
If there are 200,000 devs who want to work in game dev and 4,000 roles then wages will be depressed by over-supply. This is observable in all sorts of industries, often bordering on exploitation of people who desperately want to work in a specific area and are willing to work on low/no wages to get experience.
You'll also see companies over-paying when key skills are hard to source as the natural complement.
It’s not about correcting a cosmic wrong, it’s about people wanting more power and using a tool to get it.
https://cei.org/blog/biden-says-he-wants-to-be-the-most-pro-...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/12/adversarial-labor-law...
https://www.dailywire.com/news/bidens-pick-for-labor-secreta...
"Biden has already publicly declared he supports changing federal policy so that “there is no Right to Work (laws) allowed anywhere in the country.” President-in-waiting Kamala Harris, likewise, was bitterly critical of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME, which outlawed mandatory union membership and payment of dues and/or so-called “agency fees” for government employees."
These laws and actions don't make the world more just. On the contrary, they just add new injustices on top of the old ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4
"Your job is fun/cool/meaningful whereas my work makes me hate myself. Therefore, I deserve more money than you" is an awfully sour worldview.
Working conditions or health and safety, are not up for debate no matter how amazing or terrible the job is.
Reread your sentence and think real hard about it because you're saying the same thing, you're just conflating the premise. Gaming devs ARE based on supply and demand. As one of the other comments points out, the demand is outsized relative to other developer positions (e.g. SaaS dev). Simple supply and demand tells us if the demand is higher, then the price goes down. There ya go.
> Therefore, I deserve more money than you
No one is saying this.
I understand the effect of passion on supply. You might think I'm making a distinction without a difference but I disagree. We shouldn't normalize the idea that well-paying work has to be unpleasant. "It's called 'work' because it's not fun" is a harmful idea.
> No one is saying this.
Read the comment I originally responded to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34245152
Otherwise, I'd already be working on the exact things I want to work on, and earn almost nothing (for maybe a long time).
I quit my boring job as a dev in the banking sector to work in agriculture, hours are longer and money is tighter but it's my dream job ! (Way to go ! Keep working your dream, money is not everything !!!)
I quit my boring job as a dev in the banking sector to work in the gaming industry, hours are longer and money is tighter but it's my dream job ! (OMG you should unionise, it's so exploitative !!!)
Of course, but that's the whole point. You want to have me? Give me good working conditions! I'm probably not alone.
I would not relate these two situations differently. Agriculture or gaming industry, working conditions need to allow comfortable living, dream job or not.
I'm not saying anything about unions in my previous comment, but my position is that whether it's a dream job for you should not change anything on your decision to unionize. Not even mentioning unions, you are entitled to require good working conditions regardless.
What's more, your employer has all the incentive to provide you with comfortable living if you could be employed elsewhere with better conditions because you could change your decision to work for them at any time (your situation could change: new child, new housing, medical expense, etc; or even your tastes).
(I'm speaking about comfortable living, not the highest pay you could have somewhere else - even if still gives you some leverage)
What's different in the two situations you expose is that someone working in agriculture has (unfortunately) likely less leverage on their pay negotiation because they would less likely be able to find a place where they would be paid more (if there's no other domain they could work in).
At those conditions they also very much might not want to have you. And apparently the total package "industry prestige + working condition + pay" is attractive enough for just the right amount of people that they need.
You can argue that it's not a fit for you, but you can't argue that the equilibrium itself that has been reached between the industry and the workers is inherently wrong or that it should magically change in favour of one of the sides.
I can't argue that things are the way they are (including the equilibrium you are talking about), but that's not I'm trying to do.
"fair" is fairly subjective.
Free market is not necessarily fair (and I don't think it is). That may be part of the reasons why workers are unionizing in the discussed article by the way.
It's the company's job to maximize shareholder value.
It's the worker's job to maximize worker value.
It's the market's job to push profit to zero.
So the union is like a new force in the equation: they put pressure on the company to give the workers more value.
Which could actually be good for business: if treating workers results in better work product, the shareholders might not push for that (typically markets optimize for quarterly earnings). But the union can secure better conditions for the workers, which might lead to moving to a better local maxima.
I agree with your general thought that it could be good for business, but I'd take it a small step further and suggest a more comprehensive way to think about what's good for business as encompassing workers and shareholders equally. A situation that optimizes shareholder value at the expense of worker value is not really economically optimal even if that doesn't necessarily damage the business long term. If you can get much better conditions for workers with only a small drop in shareholder value, for example, that could be considered a net win.
only the shareholders can decide if this is worth a drop. And i would imagine the majority of them would not accept a small drop like that.
For example the musicians have the AFM which helped force labels and radio stations to pay royalties to artists.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_Music...
Should we subsidize other kinds of unsuccessful businesses too?
And how are unions subsidization?
Samples: 0 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
1 - http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/25/business/tlc-settles-suit-...
> The group later revealed that the owner of Pebbitone made them pay $3 million to own the rights to their name.
2 - https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/tlcs-crazysexycool-...
it also goes beyond that, working conditions for game devs are truly abysmal. low wages are just the tip of the iceberg; add it abusive managers, long working hours, etc
What are giving me to make it fair?
My feeling of internal satisfaction is genersted in my body, they are not supplying me drugs and cocaine.
Some musicians make a killing and get royalties - who in gane industry gets millions in royalties?