5 ms·

Maybe a software developers’ union. Big projects like this use a lot of third party tooling; imagine if a decent percentage of those said “we won’t license this

by defen 6y ago

Maybe a software developers’ union. Big projects like this use a lot of third party tooling; imagine if a decent percentage of those said “we won’t license this to you unless you’re a union shop” or something like that. And said union would enforce humane working conditions.

denkmoon 6y ago
Us software developers are too smart for organised labour. And why would companies like Epic restrict their revenues like that? Epic too sees financial gain from their developers working excessive (potentially unpaid) overtime, no doubt. Unions are necessarily devised and lead by workers, not beneficent corps.
- temp20160423 6y ago
  That's correct. If you're a software developer and interested in maximizing pay while minimizing stress, you obviously avoid the gaming industry. The only news here is that the company seems to have reneged on the promise it made, but it's not obvious how a union would have solved this problem. Would the union help get the game shipped on time?
  - defen 6y ago
    A union’s role would be to enforce humane working conditions, not to ensure that a company achieves arbitrary financial goals.
  - grive 6y ago
    > Would the union help get the game shipped on time? This is such a weird logic. Since when should the company financial incentives have higher priority over the employees well-being? Arguably, if the existence of the company is threatened by a few delays and that the only solution is to exploit people, it should instead close shop and let people get other jobs that will make them happier. So no, a union would probably not help the game be shipped in time, and if it did, it would be the shittiest union. And if enforcing humane working conditions against the profits of the employer makes the business unsustainable, this means the business should not exist in the first place.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The only news here is that the company seems to have reneged on the promise it made, but it's not obvious how a union would have solved this problem. Would the union help get the game shipped on time? Quite likely yes, though not directly. Foreclosing avenues that management tends to fall into which are both empirically not particularly effective and also miserable working conditions, like more than brief crunch time, probably does improve delivery, though that's not the main goal.
  - fatbird 6y ago
    The TV and film industries are heavily unionised across multiple sectors--tech, writers, actors, directors, etc.--and it's the norm to complete projects on time and on budget, or with immediate compensation for planning failures leading to overtime/crunch time. Think about the massive amount of content routinely produced for TV and film and tell me how unions make that impossible. Somehow, the large investors still make lots of money. The primary effect of unions in this space seems to be that they put an actual dollar cost on poor management. When you hear about boondoggles like Heaven's Gate or Waterworld, what you hear isn't that unions screwed it up; you hear about the prima donna director who couldn't get it all "just so" with a couple hundred million to work with. My employer, a digital services agency, pays hourly overtime of 1.5x. Then the professional PMs we have work very hard to accurately forecast and estimate. I've had crunch periods in which I've been paid overtime, but they're rare because the business has incentived itself to execute on-time and on-budget, mostly by not promising what we can't deliver and expecting the workers to pick up the slack.
  - denkmoon 6y ago
    When I worked in public sector with a strong union, we didn't do crunch, we accepted that deadlines are malleable and my project managers always anticipated and resolved deadline problems before they became a problem. Now I work for IBM, and I am expected to work late as much as it takes to ship on time. "On time" is of course completely arbitrary and determined by people who have no understanding of the technical tasks required to ship the project (and most pertinent, don't listen to me when I provide my expert opinion that the timeline is not viable). And they expect to not have to pay me for that overtime. Not being able to exploit your workers encourages realistic deadlines.
- defen 6y ago
  There’s a definite chicken and egg problem. I think it would have to be a grassroots bottom up thing starting with small vendors, because I agree the big vendors aren’t going to do this on their own. But the small vendors are probably the least financially able to make a principled stand on something like this. You’re probably right that software devs as a group are generally too egocentric or libertarian minded to engage in any sort of collective action for their own benefit.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Us software developers are too smart for organised labour Too smart to from cartels instead of being played off against each other by labor by buyers with greater market power? Nah, just too many have bought into propaganda being spread from the other side of the negotiating table designed to preserve the existing power imbalance.
- yread 6y ago
  We don't need a union we need a fucking bar. If you pass a bar exam, you get to charge 350 eur/h like my lawyer. And if you do questionable shit you could be disbarred
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - denkmoon 6y ago
    What would that achieve?

by defen 6y ago

denkmoon 6y ago

Us software developers are too smart for organised labour. And why would companies like Epic restrict their revenues like that? Epic too sees financial gain from their developers working excessive (potentially unpaid) overtime, no doubt. Unions are necessarily devised and lead by workers, not beneficent corps.

temp20160423 6y ago
That's correct. If you're a software developer and interested in maximizing pay while minimizing stress, you obviously avoid the gaming industry. The only news here is that the company seems to have reneged on the promise it made, but it's not obvious how a union would have solved this problem. Would the union help get the game shipped on time?
- defen 6y ago
  A union’s role would be to enforce humane working conditions, not to ensure that a company achieves arbitrary financial goals.
- grive 6y ago
  > Would the union help get the game shipped on time? This is such a weird logic. Since when should the company financial incentives have higher priority over the employees well-being? Arguably, if the existence of the company is threatened by a few delays and that the only solution is to exploit people, it should instead close shop and let people get other jobs that will make them happier. So no, a union would probably not help the game be shipped in time, and if it did, it would be the shittiest union. And if enforcing humane working conditions against the profits of the employer makes the business unsustainable, this means the business should not exist in the first place.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The only news here is that the company seems to have reneged on the promise it made, but it's not obvious how a union would have solved this problem. Would the union help get the game shipped on time? Quite likely yes, though not directly. Foreclosing avenues that management tends to fall into which are both empirically not particularly effective and also miserable working conditions, like more than brief crunch time, probably does improve delivery, though that's not the main goal.
- fatbird 6y ago
  The TV and film industries are heavily unionised across multiple sectors--tech, writers, actors, directors, etc.--and it's the norm to complete projects on time and on budget, or with immediate compensation for planning failures leading to overtime/crunch time. Think about the massive amount of content routinely produced for TV and film and tell me how unions make that impossible. Somehow, the large investors still make lots of money. The primary effect of unions in this space seems to be that they put an actual dollar cost on poor management. When you hear about boondoggles like Heaven's Gate or Waterworld, what you hear isn't that unions screwed it up; you hear about the prima donna director who couldn't get it all "just so" with a couple hundred million to work with. My employer, a digital services agency, pays hourly overtime of 1.5x. Then the professional PMs we have work very hard to accurately forecast and estimate. I've had crunch periods in which I've been paid overtime, but they're rare because the business has incentived itself to execute on-time and on-budget, mostly by not promising what we can't deliver and expecting the workers to pick up the slack.
- denkmoon 6y ago
  When I worked in public sector with a strong union, we didn't do crunch, we accepted that deadlines are malleable and my project managers always anticipated and resolved deadline problems before they became a problem. Now I work for IBM, and I am expected to work late as much as it takes to ship on time. "On time" is of course completely arbitrary and determined by people who have no understanding of the technical tasks required to ship the project (and most pertinent, don't listen to me when I provide my expert opinion that the timeline is not viable). And they expect to not have to pay me for that overtime. Not being able to exploit your workers encourages realistic deadlines.
defen 6y ago
There’s a definite chicken and egg problem. I think it would have to be a grassroots bottom up thing starting with small vendors, because I agree the big vendors aren’t going to do this on their own. But the small vendors are probably the least financially able to make a principled stand on something like this. You’re probably right that software devs as a group are generally too egocentric or libertarian minded to engage in any sort of collective action for their own benefit.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Us software developers are too smart for organised labour Too smart to from cartels instead of being played off against each other by labor by buyers with greater market power? Nah, just too many have bought into propaganda being spread from the other side of the negotiating table designed to preserve the existing power imbalance.
yread 6y ago
We don't need a union we need a fucking bar. If you pass a bar exam, you get to charge 350 eur/h like my lawyer. And if you do questionable shit you could be disbarred
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- denkmoon 6y ago
  What would that achieve?