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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Roblox is hiring. And they pay Silicon Valley salaries, not game dev salaries.[1]

Cool, sell your soul to a corporation that literally exploits minors [1][3]. Of course they can afford to pay Silicon Valley salaries, given that most of the game development is done by sub-subcontracted child labour [2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/GameTheorists/comments/ykmx3m/roblo... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

I think Roblox’s business model is similar to that of sweatshops’ in a sense that they’re enabling minors to earn money when there are no better alternatives. Is that truly a bad thing? From westerner’s perspective, a sweatshop might be an exploitation but for the workers’ perspective it’s the best opportunity available to them.

For the longest time I thought being a game dev was a cool job where you made lots of money and got to do what you loved.

The more I read about it the more sweatshop-ish it sounded.

"I want to work in this field because I am passionate about it" is always a license for employers to exploit their workers. Video gaming, fashion, entertainment, even social service – all new entrants into such careers quickly get a dose of reality about how glamorous they actually are on the inside.

My advice to smart CS students looking for jobs always is – find a nice company that makes business software. The more boring the job, the better your salary and work-life balance will be. You can work on your passions on the side.

> My advice to smart CS students looking for jobs always is – find a nice company that makes business software. The more boring the job, the better your salary and work-life balance will be. You can work on your passions on the side.

100%.

I’m a father of a then-little girl who was molested by one of her 2nd grade classmates. What came out of the safety investigation, the boy who molested her was taught that behavior through unmoderated sexually oriented user generated content on Roblox. I am stunned to see you recommending people should actually work for this groomers cesspool, with said content persisting to this day. The only reason I can imagine is you work there. And if you do, then fucking do something about it.

This had grave consequences for my daughter, the trauma, the PTSD, and a year of therapy.

The evidence is astounding and the reaction to the evidence of the Roblox Corporation is horrifying. It's more ethical to work in land mine manufacturing than at the Roblox Corporation.

> unmoderated .. user generated content

While I sympathize with your tragedy, you should have stopped at this point.

Anything where you let kids talk to each other will have that problem. Roblox does have various parental controls. Also, Roblox has an ESRB rating of E10+ rating, meaning users need to be at least 10 years old. What's a second grader doing on there?

And no, I don't work for Roblox.

How old were you in second grade? About 10 right? Maybe 9 approaching 10. Close enough that your argument is ignorant and terrible.

in most places, 9-10 is fourth grade?

So I guess 2 years makes ALL the difference in this context.

Each year makes a large difference for kids yes.

> So I guess 2 years makes ALL the difference in this context.

Well, yeah.

The difference between a 3yo and a 4yo is a quarter of lifetime!

The difference between an 8yo and a 10yo is a fifth of a lifetime!

It’s a social network without moderation.

Bud, with all due respect, chill out.

This is a random overreaction.

I'm sure some bad things happen in Roblox, but this seems like the exception, not the rule.

This is not meant to be a hostile zone.

> I am stunned to see you recommending people should actually work for this groomers cesspool,

It's about as much a groomer's cesspool as Discord, Twitter, Reddit, or any other social media.

I feel this is a problem with parenting more than the tool. If it wasn't roblox it would have been any other website on the internet. Should we ban the internet for kids under 13? Maybe, but banning something from kids never kept some from getting access.

How dare they? By doing this, they can snatch all the really great developers earning standard game dev salaries. /s

Looking at the RBLX stock I expect it's going to have Slicon Valley layoffs quite soon.

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