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To all the people saying 10k is low. What he did and the way it got acknowledged can net him millions of dollars in the future income. He could start a company

To all the people saying 10k is low. What he did and the way it got acknowledged can net him millions of dollars in the future income. He could start a company saying that "from the guy who reduces GTA V loading times 70%". I think that what he did is amazing and I'm sure it is not the last time we hear from this guy.

spurdoman77 6y ago
This. People underestimate the value reputation like this can have in the industry. And anyway, the guy is smart, he just has to work on his monetization strategy. The business model where you do things for free in hopes that some kind corporation will pay you just doesnt work.
- nawgz 6y ago
  I enjoy the juxtaposition between your comment and the sibling comment wrt “the value of reputation” Personally I am not so convinced this persons reputation will earn them millions, but I can imagine it to be a reasonably valuable resume point
that_guy_iain 6y ago
> What he did and the way it got acknowledged can net him millions of dollars in the future income. I think people over estimate how valuable reputation is. It can open doors but that is all. Being the guy who reduced loading times in GTA may get some VC interest but that doesn't automatically equate to making any money. It may get you a job and get you paid a few thousand more than usual. But honestly, I've never seen one of these famous devs make lots of money. They'll get offered CTO roles but that's been the max.
- michaelcampbell 6y ago
  Indeed, look at the bevy of Twitter posts from authors of a given tech/stack/framework being turned down by companies to work with said tech because of "lack of experience".
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    The guy who decreased GTA loading time by 70% understands the difference between O(n^2), O(n*log(n)) and O(n). That's exactly what a big company is looking for, not a successful product. The other person was much better match for a small company / startup.
    - michaelcampbell 6y ago
      > The guy who decreased GTA loading time by 70% understands the difference between O(n^2), O(n*log(n)) and O(n). That's exactly what a big company is looking for, not a successful product. I haven't been at any that have cared (none of my past jobs' have been FAANG, but several have been in the over 10k employees size.) *SOME* potential colleagues care, and a VERY FEW managers care that you know that, but I have found that to be the exception.
      - xiphias2 6y ago
        I was working on the Google Ads backend, and we had a strict 20ms timeout. The managers didn't care about the algorithms themselves, but my change had a 0.1ms impact on latency in the experiment arm, for launching that you need director level exception approval. My tech lead actually helped me by saying that the trick is that instead of trying to speed up my own code base (which was really hard), it's easier to find something to improve outside my change to balance for the 0.1ms impact inside the same experiment.
    - sva_ 6y ago
      I'm very sure that the GTA devs understand the difference between O(n^2), O(n), etc. They just didn't catch this particular way in which the compiler/standard library changed the complexity time dramatically. The reason for why they didn't catch it is up for debate, but it's surely not because they don't understand basic "Big O" concepts. edit: actually, nevermind. I realize you're probably referring to the hashmap lookup part, rather than the strlen() part?
      - xiphias2 6y ago
- colonwqbang 6y ago
  Maybe not millions of dollars, but I can see a successful consultancy specialising in optimisation of games. > Does your game take forever to start? Your lazy devs say there's nothing to be done about it? Just give us a call! As seen on hackernews.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    How many times can one person perform a miracle?
    - colonwqbang 6y ago
      It's not a miracle, this programmer was just smart enough to see something that nobody at Rockstar had seen. Or nobody in the engineering org cared to look. These could both be good reasons for somebody higher up to hire a "star consultant", no?
      - that_guy_iain 6y ago
        > It's not a miracle, this programmer was just smart enough to see something that nobody at Rockstar had seen. Or nobody in the engineering org cared to look. Or more likely, no one had time to look. I keep see people acting like not fixing something is because the devs don't care. More often than not it's because we're being told to do something else instead.
        colonwqbang 6y ago
        Sure, I'm not saying the Rockstar devs are stupid. I was addressing the idea that it was some kind miracle that happened here, rather than just competent engineering. "I don't have time to do it myself" is probably a very common reason why consultants are hired.
      - smnrchrds 6y ago
        Do you honestly believe that the person can look around any code base and find significant speed increases? Do you think he can significantly increase the speed of Firefox, or Excel, or SQLite? Maybe he is the solution to Mozilla's woes—just hire him for a month, he will increase Firefox's speed by 70%, and everyone flocks from Chrome to Firefox for the increased speed. At least, until next month that Google hires him and he increases the speed of Chrome and everyone flocks back. With such a valuable resource, it is unethical to monopolize—there should be a waitlist so every company can use his genius. By the decade's end, every piece of software will be running more than twice as fast. Or maybe this was a case of a rare low-hanging fruit lying around for someone to find. Maybe the entire software industry is not one giant low hanging fruit waiting for the right genius to emerge and pick.
- slightwinder 6y ago
  And reputation can even backfire, when people start to have to high exceptions about your results.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- cloverich 6y ago
  > It can open doors but that is all. Opening closed doors is frequently THE thing that changes a persons circumstances. Anyone who's been ghosted by an application process can attest to that. You can (interview) prepare all you want, but if you can't get in front of someone it won't matter.
meowface 6y ago
Additionally, their bug bounty program, like most/almost all, is designed for reported security-related bugs. They made an exception here, which they had no obligation or expectation to do. I'm sure the modder wasn't anticipating any kind of financial compensation when they embarked on this.
notretarded 6y ago
Not really. Employers don't give a fuck, and you could always lie anyway
hartator 6y ago
Yes, these sweet exposure bucks. /s I don’t think this point is valid anyway. He got exposure prior to actually got the acknowledgment and money. And he probably won’t have got either if the story didn’t get so viral.
onlyfortoday2 6y ago
not really lol
varispeed 6y ago
You will never get rich working on a salary because of progressive taxation. Different countries are also legislating to tax your business the same as employment on a whole revenue if you want to go self-employed (for example changes in IR35 (it already passed and goes live this April) regulation in the UK will make it next to impossible to run software development as a small company, as all the money you receive from clients will be taxed on the whole without realistic possibility to deduct business expenses. You also have to pay national insurance and employer's insurance that means you'll effectively have to part with over half of the revenue). I think it's a cool entry in the resume, but won't get much money flowing in.
howaboutnope 6y ago
The same would be true if he hadn't received such a low amount, so that's not an argument for it not being low.
codezero 6y ago
Rockstar isn’t going to check in on that and correct it if it doesn’t play out that way.
karaterobot 6y ago
I agree with you, but for a different reason. I struggle to put a value on how much money he "should" get, since I have no way of knowing how much money his work will save, or make, for Rockstar. Loading times in GTAO have been slow for years, and despite that it's been hugely successful. People (e.g. me) have bought multiple copies of the game, on multiple platforms, despite knowing it loads slowly in multiplayer. I'm not sure I would have bought more copies, or more DLC, if it were any faster. It's entirely possible that people don't care enough about load times enough to not give Rockstar their money. So how much is it actually worth to them? I'm not saying $0. I'm not saying $10k. I'm saying I don't know, and I suspect nobody else does either, as of right now. So, for people saying he should get more money, what is the basis for determining that value?
Voloskaya 6y ago
How is this different from the meme about designer not getting paid but instead being rewarded "with exposure"? What he did can, maybe, potentially, eventually, net him a lot of money if he does this and that. Sure, but maybe he doesn't want to start a company and spend his time looking for customers? Or maybe he has an actual need for real money right now and not hypothetical money in the future? What he did was worth a fuck ton of money to rockstar, so yes 10k is very low, and the fact that he might maybe make up for it in the future if he lives like you want him to does not change that. In my opinion the only argument that can be made for that 10k, is simply that rockstar never asked for any help and never had any bounty open, so anything they want is fair.
- neals 6y ago
  It's different because Rock Star was doing fine without this guy and they didn't ask him to do anything.
- path411 6y ago
  As a developer almost anything you do is worth far more than what you are paid for. I agree "exposure" is never a proper payment, but I think acknowledgement from Rockstar is a bit more legit along with the 10k cash, which I bet he never imagined he would get.
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  > What he did was worth a fuck ton of money to rockstar [dubious - discuss] Remember, this is an 8 year old game that has already been purchased by 2% of the global population[1]. How many people do you think are gonna go out and buy it - or spend more on microtransactions - because it loads faster? [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/09/take-two-ceo-grand-theft-auto-v-sold-record-20-million-units-in-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/09/take-two-ceo-grand-theft-aut...
  - Voloskaya 6y ago
    > How many people do you think are gonna go out and buy it [...] because it loads faster Probably not a lot, although this game is still selling at a staggering 20M copies a year, so there is probably something to be said here. > How many people do you think are gonna [...] spend more on microtransactions - because it loads faster? Probably a lot. GTA is raking an enormous amount of cash from microtranscations, more than 500M$ a year and it is still growing. That 2% of the population already bought the game is irrelevant, what really matters is what percentage of the current player base will come back, or simply play more thanks to this patch? Even if you think it's just 1%, that's a huge boost in mostly recurring revenues, and I would bet hard that there isn't just 1 gamer over 100 that would be bothered by 3-7 minutes loading time to the point of not (or barely) playing anymore, I know I cannot stand that. You can also do a search on the GTA Online subreddit for anything related to loading complaints, you will drown in results. So yes, I think this is worth a fuck ton of money.
jfrunyon 6y ago
To all the people saying $10k is low... how is $10k low?! Even if you're making $120k/year that's a month's salary. For something he did for his own, personal enjoyment, not expecting to make anything.
- nprz 6y ago
  Considering how much this game made, 10k is nothing. > Extensively marketed and widely anticipated, the game broke industry sales records and became the fastest-selling entertainment product in history, earning $800 million in its first day and $1 billion in its first three days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_V
  - jfrunyon 6y ago
    Ah. So we're expecting people - rank and file worker bees - to be paid based on how much revenue (not even profit) their employer (or in this case customer) makes, rather than how much value they provide or another sane measure?
    - nprz 6y ago
      Significantly improving the loading time, an allegedly huge gripe for many players of the game, and given no other dev was capable of improving the load time, that is a huge amount of value provided. And yes, given how successful the game was Rockstar should provide him with a larger reward.
    - ryanmcbride 6y ago
      You are right on the cusp of realizing that any company making a profit has by definition underpaid its workers for the value created. You are SO CLOSE to figuring out that all profit is stolen from workers. Yes even the "rank and file worker bees" that for some reason you think don't deserve payment in relation to the company's income.
      - jfrunyon 6y ago

spurdoman77 6y ago

This. People underestimate the value reputation like this can have in the industry. And anyway, the guy is smart, he just has to work on his monetization strategy. The business model where you do things for free in hopes that some kind corporation will pay you just doesnt work.

nawgz 6y ago
I enjoy the juxtaposition between your comment and the sibling comment wrt “the value of reputation” Personally I am not so convinced this persons reputation will earn them millions, but I can imagine it to be a reasonably valuable resume point

that_guy_iain 6y ago

> What he did and the way it got acknowledged can net him millions of dollars in the future income. I think people over estimate how valuable reputation is. It can open doors but that is all. Being the guy who reduced loading times in GTA may get some VC interest but that doesn't automatically equate to making any money. It may get you a job and get you paid a few thousand more than usual. But honestly, I've never seen one of these famous devs make lots of money. They'll get offered CTO roles but that's been the max.

michaelcampbell 6y ago
Indeed, look at the bevy of Twitter posts from authors of a given tech/stack/framework being turned down by companies to work with said tech because of "lack of experience".
- xiphias2 6y ago
  The guy who decreased GTA loading time by 70% understands the difference between O(n^2), O(n*log(n)) and O(n). That's exactly what a big company is looking for, not a successful product. The other person was much better match for a small company / startup.
  - michaelcampbell 6y ago
    > The guy who decreased GTA loading time by 70% understands the difference between O(n^2), O(n*log(n)) and O(n). That's exactly what a big company is looking for, not a successful product. I haven't been at any that have cared (none of my past jobs' have been FAANG, but several have been in the over 10k employees size.) *SOME* potential colleagues care, and a VERY FEW managers care that you know that, but I have found that to be the exception.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      I was working on the Google Ads backend, and we had a strict 20ms timeout. The managers didn't care about the algorithms themselves, but my change had a 0.1ms impact on latency in the experiment arm, for launching that you need director level exception approval. My tech lead actually helped me by saying that the trick is that instead of trying to speed up my own code base (which was really hard), it's easier to find something to improve outside my change to balance for the 0.1ms impact inside the same experiment.
  - sva_ 6y ago
    I'm very sure that the GTA devs understand the difference between O(n^2), O(n), etc. They just didn't catch this particular way in which the compiler/standard library changed the complexity time dramatically. The reason for why they didn't catch it is up for debate, but it's surely not because they don't understand basic "Big O" concepts. edit: actually, nevermind. I realize you're probably referring to the hashmap lookup part, rather than the strlen() part?
    - xiphias2 6y ago
colonwqbang 6y ago
Maybe not millions of dollars, but I can see a successful consultancy specialising in optimisation of games. > Does your game take forever to start? Your lazy devs say there's nothing to be done about it? Just give us a call! As seen on hackernews.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  How many times can one person perform a miracle?
  - colonwqbang 6y ago
    It's not a miracle, this programmer was just smart enough to see something that nobody at Rockstar had seen. Or nobody in the engineering org cared to look. These could both be good reasons for somebody higher up to hire a "star consultant", no?
    - that_guy_iain 6y ago
      > It's not a miracle, this programmer was just smart enough to see something that nobody at Rockstar had seen. Or nobody in the engineering org cared to look. Or more likely, no one had time to look. I keep see people acting like not fixing something is because the devs don't care. More often than not it's because we're being told to do something else instead.
      - colonwqbang 6y ago
        Sure, I'm not saying the Rockstar devs are stupid. I was addressing the idea that it was some kind miracle that happened here, rather than just competent engineering. "I don't have time to do it myself" is probably a very common reason why consultants are hired.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      Do you honestly believe that the person can look around any code base and find significant speed increases? Do you think he can significantly increase the speed of Firefox, or Excel, or SQLite? Maybe he is the solution to Mozilla's woes—just hire him for a month, he will increase Firefox's speed by 70%, and everyone flocks from Chrome to Firefox for the increased speed. At least, until next month that Google hires him and he increases the speed of Chrome and everyone flocks back. With such a valuable resource, it is unethical to monopolize—there should be a waitlist so every company can use his genius. By the decade's end, every piece of software will be running more than twice as fast. Or maybe this was a case of a rare low-hanging fruit lying around for someone to find. Maybe the entire software industry is not one giant low hanging fruit waiting for the right genius to emerge and pick.
slightwinder 6y ago
And reputation can even backfire, when people start to have to high exceptions about your results.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cloverich 6y ago
> It can open doors but that is all. Opening closed doors is frequently THE thing that changes a persons circumstances. Anyone who's been ghosted by an application process can attest to that. You can (interview) prepare all you want, but if you can't get in front of someone it won't matter.

meowface 6y ago

Additionally, their bug bounty program, like most/almost all, is designed for reported security-related bugs. They made an exception here, which they had no obligation or expectation to do. I'm sure the modder wasn't anticipating any kind of financial compensation when they embarked on this.

notretarded 6y ago

Not really. Employers don't give a fuck, and you could always lie anyway

hartator 6y ago

Yes, these sweet exposure bucks. /s I don’t think this point is valid anyway. He got exposure prior to actually got the acknowledgment and money. And he probably won’t have got either if the story didn’t get so viral.

onlyfortoday2 6y ago

not really lol

varispeed 6y ago

You will never get rich working on a salary because of progressive taxation. Different countries are also legislating to tax your business the same as employment on a whole revenue if you want to go self-employed (for example changes in IR35 (it already passed and goes live this April) regulation in the UK will make it next to impossible to run software development as a small company, as all the money you receive from clients will be taxed on the whole without realistic possibility to deduct business expenses. You also have to pay national insurance and employer's insurance that means you'll effectively have to part with over half of the revenue). I think it's a cool entry in the resume, but won't get much money flowing in.

howaboutnope 6y ago

The same would be true if he hadn't received such a low amount, so that's not an argument for it not being low.

codezero 6y ago

Rockstar isn’t going to check in on that and correct it if it doesn’t play out that way.

karaterobot 6y ago

I agree with you, but for a different reason. I struggle to put a value on how much money he "should" get, since I have no way of knowing how much money his work will save, or make, for Rockstar. Loading times in GTAO have been slow for years, and despite that it's been hugely successful. People (e.g. me) have bought multiple copies of the game, on multiple platforms, despite knowing it loads slowly in multiplayer. I'm not sure I would have bought more copies, or more DLC, if it were any faster. It's entirely possible that people don't care enough about load times enough to not give Rockstar their money. So how much is it actually worth to them? I'm not saying $0. I'm not saying $10k. I'm saying I don't know, and I suspect nobody else does either, as of right now. So, for people saying he should get more money, what is the basis for determining that value?

Voloskaya 6y ago

How is this different from the meme about designer not getting paid but instead being rewarded "with exposure"? What he did can, maybe, potentially, eventually, net him a lot of money if he does this and that. Sure, but maybe he doesn't want to start a company and spend his time looking for customers? Or maybe he has an actual need for real money right now and not hypothetical money in the future? What he did was worth a fuck ton of money to rockstar, so yes 10k is very low, and the fact that he might maybe make up for it in the future if he lives like you want him to does not change that. In my opinion the only argument that can be made for that 10k, is simply that rockstar never asked for any help and never had any bounty open, so anything they want is fair.

neals 6y ago
It's different because Rock Star was doing fine without this guy and they didn't ask him to do anything.
path411 6y ago
As a developer almost anything you do is worth far more than what you are paid for. I agree "exposure" is never a proper payment, but I think acknowledgement from Rockstar is a bit more legit along with the 10k cash, which I bet he never imagined he would get.
jfrunyon 6y ago
> What he did was worth a fuck ton of money to rockstar [dubious - discuss] Remember, this is an 8 year old game that has already been purchased by 2% of the global population[1]. How many people do you think are gonna go out and buy it - or spend more on microtransactions - because it loads faster? [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/09/take-two-ceo-grand-theft-auto-v-sold-record-20-million-units-in-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/09/take-two-ceo-grand-theft-aut...
- Voloskaya 6y ago
  > How many people do you think are gonna go out and buy it [...] because it loads faster Probably not a lot, although this game is still selling at a staggering 20M copies a year, so there is probably something to be said here. > How many people do you think are gonna [...] spend more on microtransactions - because it loads faster? Probably a lot. GTA is raking an enormous amount of cash from microtranscations, more than 500M$ a year and it is still growing. That 2% of the population already bought the game is irrelevant, what really matters is what percentage of the current player base will come back, or simply play more thanks to this patch? Even if you think it's just 1%, that's a huge boost in mostly recurring revenues, and I would bet hard that there isn't just 1 gamer over 100 that would be bothered by 3-7 minutes loading time to the point of not (or barely) playing anymore, I know I cannot stand that. You can also do a search on the GTA Online subreddit for anything related to loading complaints, you will drown in results. So yes, I think this is worth a fuck ton of money.

jfrunyon 6y ago

To all the people saying $10k is low... how is $10k low?! Even if you're making $120k/year that's a month's salary. For something he did for his own, personal enjoyment, not expecting to make anything.

nprz 6y ago
Considering how much this game made, 10k is nothing. > Extensively marketed and widely anticipated, the game broke industry sales records and became the fastest-selling entertainment product in history, earning $800 million in its first day and $1 billion in its first three days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_V
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  Ah. So we're expecting people - rank and file worker bees - to be paid based on how much revenue (not even profit) their employer (or in this case customer) makes, rather than how much value they provide or another sane measure?
  - nprz 6y ago
    Significantly improving the loading time, an allegedly huge gripe for many players of the game, and given no other dev was capable of improving the load time, that is a huge amount of value provided. And yes, given how successful the game was Rockstar should provide him with a larger reward.
  - ryanmcbride 6y ago
    You are right on the cusp of realizing that any company making a profit has by definition underpaid its workers for the value created. You are SO CLOSE to figuring out that all profit is stolen from workers. Yes even the "rank and file worker bees" that for some reason you think don't deserve payment in relation to the company's income.
    - jfrunyon 6y ago