6 ms·

Back when I worked there, they had something called "Blizzard Bucks" to "supplement" your salary. Basically "Blizzard Bucks" was Monopoly money we could use to

Back when I worked there, they had something called "Blizzard Bucks" to "supplement" your salary. Basically "Blizzard Bucks" was Monopoly money we could use to buy their microtransactions and WoW game-time. In reality, you made approx. $30-40k sans OT, but they would always calculate your "salary" at $50-60k because of all the "Blizzard Bucks" and claim your salary was industry best. The best part was, and they would emphasize this at every meeting, "that the company would pay the taxes for us" as if it were a big deal. People never believe me when I tell them this is how the non-devs got treated.

Mandatum 6y ago
That is possibly the most exploitative form of compensation I've heard of in the Western world.
- tyrust 6y ago
  I'd rank service workers' tips counting towards their minimum wage a worse practice.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    At least tips are in cash, not funny money.
    - tyrust 6y ago
      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.
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        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.
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        In a few states like California there isn't a difference in the minimum wage for tipped and untipped workers.
        tyrust 6y ago
        That's true, see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24052955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24052955 I shouldn't have said "always".
      - waihtis 6y ago
        Not following. Don't tips go directly to the recipient without any reductions?
        ornornor 6y ago
        Don't know about US, but in Canada you're supposed to report them as income and pay taxes on them.
        tyrust 6y ago
        They do, but in many states it goes towards your minimum wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage The most extreme example is in a state like Alabama where the minimum wage is $7.25 and the minimum tipped wage is $2.13 (these are the federal minimums): +------------+----------+----------+ |Tips |Wage |Final | | | |Wage | +------------+----------+----------+ |0 |7.25 |7.25 | +------------+----------+----------+ |<5.12 |7.25-$tips|7.25 | | | | | +------------+----------+----------+ |>=5.12 |2.13 |2.13+$tips| | | | | +------------+----------+----------+ So your first 5.12 (=7.25-2.13) in tips are worth nothing. Of course, you can eventually earn more than the minimum wage, in which case the tips aren't exactly worth nothing, but they are worth the value of pushing your final wage above this threshold.
        waihtis 6y ago
        Thanks! By the way, I don't think "tipped wage" is at all a known concept outside of the US (for instance, I didn't know it works this way.)
      - pests 6y ago
        Unless you get more tips to push you past minimum wage.
        vincnetas 6y ago
        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.
        pests 6y ago
        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.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        This is correct if you were working for door dash. Door dash deducts the tip per order. Regular restaurants deduct it monthly so if you can gather enough tips in a month to exceed minimum wage you get paid more in that month. If you earn $1000 (minimum wage in this example) and $2000 in tips for $3000 total compensation your employer takes away $1000 and you end up with $2000. There is an opportunity to earn more with tips. However, door dash does not follow this simple model. What happens is that door dash calculates how much an order is worth, if the customer tips then it deducts the tip from the order. If your order is worth $10 and the customer tips $5 the tip will always be deducted entirely. You get paid $5 for the order and $5 for the tip. Even if you somehow manage to complete 400 orders and all of them are tipped $5 you won't get a single cent from tips even though the tips alone are enough to pay minimum wage + some. The only scenario in which you can earn money from a tip is if the tip exceeds the order's value. Someone tips $50 on a $10 order. You get $0 for the order and $50 for the tip. When you consider that in the restaurant arrangement it's actually intended for waiters to be primarily paid by tips (at least that's how I heard it works in the US??) they'll likely exceed minimum wage and only get the minimum wage during bad months. With door dash you're the one who's being paid for every order you complete, not the cook + rest of the restaurant. Therefore getting a tip at all actually requires a heroic effort because people are not going to tip more than the order is worth. The tips might as well not exist at all and are a pure cash grab. The reason I'm bringing up Door Dash is that it's an example of a truly evil company vs restaurants where it's just a very unusual but fair payment arrangement.
        tyrust 6y ago
        I remember hearing about this, but I think they fixed it last year [0]. Or do I not understand? [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-pol...
- setr 6y ago
  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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    At least company scrip was used to buy food/normal goods, albeit at a large markup. "Blizzard bucks" sound completely useless unless you're really into games
    - oefrha 6y ago
      Since you can trade WOW (and many other MMOs’) items for real world cash, I wouldn’t call Blizzard bucks useless. In fact I’ve heard people playing WoW for a living... Basically, say Blizzard compensates you $20k in Blizzard bucks, and you auction off $20k worth of items at a reduced rate, you end up taking $20k * discount rate from Blizzard’s revenue, roughly speaking.
      - Xelbair 6y ago
        >Since you can trade WOW (and many other MMOs’) items for real world cash, I wouldn’t call Blizzard bucks useless. In fact I’ve heard people playing WoW for a living... You cannot do that, ToS forbids that, and if you were caught i expect that consequences would be harsher than just a ban.
      - masayune 6y ago
        Yeah you can't do this w/o risk of getting fired. Blizz had an internal affairs division that would track this kind of stuff down.
        oefrha 6y ago
        Huh that really sucks.
  - dqpb 6y ago
- people_not_bots 6y ago
  My daddy was a miner and I'm a miner son https://youtu.be/5iAIM02kv0g?t=52 https://youtu.be/5iAIM02kv0g?t=52
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqDVObM1kxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqDVObM1kxc True story. My ex-wifes grandmother was the daughter of a sharecropper who grew tobacco. Start of WWI a friend wrote her dad that if he came to California his friend could get him a job. Well her old man sold everything, bought a broken down car, and drove the family to Santa Clara. When they got to California she remembers her absolute joy when she asked her mother where the tobacco fields were and her mother told her they don't grow tobacco in California.
- QuesnayJr 6y ago
  It's like a plot point in a satirical novel about the games industry.
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
Is it possible to spend $20k per year in WoW?
- konart 6y ago
  Never player WoW, but I had a few friends who were into MMO in general and I'm pretty sure it is possible to spend $20k in a month.
- masayune 6y ago
  Quite a few people I worked with dumped it into Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm loot boxes. Oh, and Hearthstone packs [edit: forgot Hearthstone]

Mandatum 6y ago

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

tyrust 6y ago
I'd rank service workers' tips counting towards their minimum wage a worse practice.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  At least tips are in cash, not funny money.
  - tyrust 6y ago
    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.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      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.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        In a few states like California there isn't a difference in the minimum wage for tipped and untipped workers.
      - tyrust 6y ago
        That's true, see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24052955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24052955 I shouldn't have said "always".
    - waihtis 6y ago
      Not following. Don't tips go directly to the recipient without any reductions?
      - ornornor 6y ago
        Don't know about US, but in Canada you're supposed to report them as income and pay taxes on them.
      - tyrust 6y ago
        They do, but in many states it goes towards your minimum wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage The most extreme example is in a state like Alabama where the minimum wage is $7.25 and the minimum tipped wage is $2.13 (these are the federal minimums): +------------+----------+----------+ |Tips |Wage |Final | | | |Wage | +------------+----------+----------+ |0 |7.25 |7.25 | +------------+----------+----------+ |<5.12 |7.25-$tips|7.25 | | | | | +------------+----------+----------+ |>=5.12 |2.13 |2.13+$tips| | | | | +------------+----------+----------+ So your first 5.12 (=7.25-2.13) in tips are worth nothing. Of course, you can eventually earn more than the minimum wage, in which case the tips aren't exactly worth nothing, but they are worth the value of pushing your final wage above this threshold.
        waihtis 6y ago
        Thanks! By the way, I don't think "tipped wage" is at all a known concept outside of the US (for instance, I didn't know it works this way.)
    - pests 6y ago
      Unless you get more tips to push you past minimum wage.
      - vincnetas 6y ago
        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.
        pests 6y ago
        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.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      This is correct if you were working for door dash. Door dash deducts the tip per order. Regular restaurants deduct it monthly so if you can gather enough tips in a month to exceed minimum wage you get paid more in that month. If you earn $1000 (minimum wage in this example) and $2000 in tips for $3000 total compensation your employer takes away $1000 and you end up with $2000. There is an opportunity to earn more with tips. However, door dash does not follow this simple model. What happens is that door dash calculates how much an order is worth, if the customer tips then it deducts the tip from the order. If your order is worth $10 and the customer tips $5 the tip will always be deducted entirely. You get paid $5 for the order and $5 for the tip. Even if you somehow manage to complete 400 orders and all of them are tipped $5 you won't get a single cent from tips even though the tips alone are enough to pay minimum wage + some. The only scenario in which you can earn money from a tip is if the tip exceeds the order's value. Someone tips $50 on a $10 order. You get $0 for the order and $50 for the tip. When you consider that in the restaurant arrangement it's actually intended for waiters to be primarily paid by tips (at least that's how I heard it works in the US??) they'll likely exceed minimum wage and only get the minimum wage during bad months. With door dash you're the one who's being paid for every order you complete, not the cook + rest of the restaurant. Therefore getting a tip at all actually requires a heroic effort because people are not going to tip more than the order is worth. The tips might as well not exist at all and are a pure cash grab. The reason I'm bringing up Door Dash is that it's an example of a truly evil company vs restaurants where it's just a very unusual but fair payment arrangement.
      - tyrust 6y ago
        I remember hearing about this, but I think they fixed it last year [0]. Or do I not understand? [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-pol...
setr 6y ago
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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
- kalleboo 6y ago
  At least company scrip was used to buy food/normal goods, albeit at a large markup. "Blizzard bucks" sound completely useless unless you're really into games
  - oefrha 6y ago
    Since you can trade WOW (and many other MMOs’) items for real world cash, I wouldn’t call Blizzard bucks useless. In fact I’ve heard people playing WoW for a living... Basically, say Blizzard compensates you $20k in Blizzard bucks, and you auction off $20k worth of items at a reduced rate, you end up taking $20k * discount rate from Blizzard’s revenue, roughly speaking.
    - Xelbair 6y ago
      >Since you can trade WOW (and many other MMOs’) items for real world cash, I wouldn’t call Blizzard bucks useless. In fact I’ve heard people playing WoW for a living... You cannot do that, ToS forbids that, and if you were caught i expect that consequences would be harsher than just a ban.
    - masayune 6y ago
      Yeah you can't do this w/o risk of getting fired. Blizz had an internal affairs division that would track this kind of stuff down.
      - oefrha 6y ago
        Huh that really sucks.
- dqpb 6y ago
people_not_bots 6y ago
My daddy was a miner and I'm a miner son https://youtu.be/5iAIM02kv0g?t=52 https://youtu.be/5iAIM02kv0g?t=52
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqDVObM1kxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqDVObM1kxc True story. My ex-wifes grandmother was the daughter of a sharecropper who grew tobacco. Start of WWI a friend wrote her dad that if he came to California his friend could get him a job. Well her old man sold everything, bought a broken down car, and drove the family to Santa Clara. When they got to California she remembers her absolute joy when she asked her mother where the tobacco fields were and her mother told her they don't grow tobacco in California.
QuesnayJr 6y ago
It's like a plot point in a satirical novel about the games industry.

CobrastanJorji 6y ago

Is it possible to spend $20k per year in WoW?

konart 6y ago
Never player WoW, but I had a few friends who were into MMO in general and I'm pretty sure it is possible to spend $20k in a month.
masayune 6y ago
Quite a few people I worked with dumped it into Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm loot boxes. Oh, and Hearthstone packs [edit: forgot Hearthstone]