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I'm curious what the actual employee staff numbers are given the various Weta companies are AFAIK pretty notorious for using "temporary contractors" rather than

I'm curious what the actual employee staff numbers are given the various Weta companies are AFAIK pretty notorious for using "temporary contractors" rather than actually employing people. It's also an interesting development given that they only recently started promoting a cloud-based service for integrating their technology with Maya & Houdini.

shahar2k 5y ago
the entire film industry is "temporary contractors" visual effects most guilty of that among the various departments. (I work in a section of the industry) I've worked with some of weta's toolset on the avatar sequels and I've also worked with unreal on various projects... it's interesting hearing this and I wonder if that's part of the toolset that will be released
- salamanderman 5y ago
  You're absolutely right.
LAC-Tech 5y ago
IME is almost all highly skilled/(relatively) highly paid work in NZ is done by contractors. It's almost a right of passage for devs here. For US HNers - it's different than in the US where health insurance is tied to employment. I typically have the exact same health coverage whether I'm employed, self-employed, or un-employed.
- glenngillen 5y ago
  I’ll admit I’m inferring a lot from a single anecdote here: but from when I toured Weta the guide we had seemed very honest in saying the high proportion of contract employees was because of the unpredictable nature of the work. She’d work there for 6mo, then a project would wrap, and she’d have to go find a different job. Hopefully being able to come back if/when the next project came a long. That’s a very different experience to the rite of passage a lot of devs (myself included) have taken because there’s high constant demand and high day rates.
  - follower 5y ago
    Weta & Peter Jackson explicitly went out of their way to get a law change to prevent people who were working in the industry from having the worker protections to which they were entitled. Thus, they're not "contract employees" but "independent contractors"--which, without the law change, wouldn't have been legal in the same way "gig workers" failed to meet the criteria of "independent" in many places/cases (e.g. working for more than one client at a time, having control over work location etc). (There was some recent coverage of this history in this article (although it appears the relevant full text is not available online): https://web.archive.org/web/20210921132447/https://northandsouth.co.nz/2021/09/12/1-billion-and-counting/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210921132447/https://northands...)
  - LAC-Tech 5y ago
    I get that most NZ 'contractors' are de-factor permanent employees doing long stints that are quite stable. But for me - 6 months is a good engagement length. Happy to move on at that point. Have no insider scoop on Weta in particular, but just hitting back that having contractors instead of employees is somehow unethical.
    - follower 5y ago
      > just hitting back that having contractors instead of employees is somehow unethical. It's unethical when the people concerned aren't independent contractors but are treated as such because it's cheaper for the company (e.g. in regard to sick pay, holiday pay etc) than treating them as employees. If you like a 6 month engagement length, that's cool, there's nothing stopping you from agreeing to a 6 month employment contract. Although even that is unethical on a company's part if they're taking advantage of power imbalances in the employment market to transfer risk/cost onto employees only "agreeing" to short term contracts under duress.
      - LAC-Tech 5y ago
        But I don't want to be an employee. I want to be a contractor. With all the rights & responsibilities that entails. I mean how far do we take this - you've got 3 months worth of building to be done at your house, so you have to form an LLC and employ carpenters directly?
- irrational 5y ago
  Not just health insurance. What about vacation time (I get a day each pay period + 11 fixed holiday days + 6 week sabbatical + Fridays off in the summer), stock, life insurance, fitness facilities, etc.?
  - 0x1062 5y ago
    Contractors say when they want to take holidays. Your pay reflects the time you expect to take.
0x1062 5y ago
Only the very senior management are employees. But there are lots of long-serving staff who are basically employees. You earn more as a contractor. Film projects have weird schedules. You simply couldn't run a business if you had to have a consistent set of people over time.
- follower 5y ago
  > Only the very senior management are employees. In that case, maybe the senior management should stop referring to the other people as "employees" then. And, if being an employee is such a bad deal, why would senior management choose to be employees rather than "independent contractors". > But there are lots of long-serving staff who are basically employees. There's no such thing as "basically employees" (or indeed "staff" who aren't employees) they're either "actually independent contractors" or "employees intentionally & exploitatively miscategorized as independent contractors"). > You earn more as a contractor. That's certainly what the management want people to think, for sure. But if being an employee isn't even a possibility it's conveniently pretty hard to know if that's actually the case. > You simply couldn't run a business if you had to have a consistent set of people over time. Perhaps that means it's actually a "hobby" or a "charity" rather than a business then? And, regardless, that just means you hire people as employees on fixed term contracts, not that you get to miscategorize them & get the law changed to make it "legal". None of this is about a better deal for the people doing the work--it's entirely possible for a fully loaded employee cost to be 2x salary so if the company can get the workers to accept 1.5x salary & shift risk to them, well, that's just a great deal for the company, isn't it. Especially in an industry with an unending supply of creative people willing to be ground up in the process of doing what they love. Perhaps we should take a lesson from what happened to the dinosaurs that worked as "independent contractors" for oil industry...
  - 0x1062 5y ago
    Yes all these poor people forced to work for Weta lol.
EdwardDiego 5y ago
Given that the last National government passed the "Hobbit Law" to allow film industry companies to treat people who would, in any other industry, be employees, as contractors, as well as banning collective bargaining for them - the actual employee numbers will be verrrry low.

shahar2k 5y ago

the entire film industry is "temporary contractors" visual effects most guilty of that among the various departments. (I work in a section of the industry) I've worked with some of weta's toolset on the avatar sequels and I've also worked with unreal on various projects... it's interesting hearing this and I wonder if that's part of the toolset that will be released

salamanderman 5y ago
You're absolutely right.

LAC-Tech 5y ago

IME is almost all highly skilled/(relatively) highly paid work in NZ is done by contractors. It's almost a right of passage for devs here. For US HNers - it's different than in the US where health insurance is tied to employment. I typically have the exact same health coverage whether I'm employed, self-employed, or un-employed.

glenngillen 5y ago
I’ll admit I’m inferring a lot from a single anecdote here: but from when I toured Weta the guide we had seemed very honest in saying the high proportion of contract employees was because of the unpredictable nature of the work. She’d work there for 6mo, then a project would wrap, and she’d have to go find a different job. Hopefully being able to come back if/when the next project came a long. That’s a very different experience to the rite of passage a lot of devs (myself included) have taken because there’s high constant demand and high day rates.
- follower 5y ago
  Weta & Peter Jackson explicitly went out of their way to get a law change to prevent people who were working in the industry from having the worker protections to which they were entitled. Thus, they're not "contract employees" but "independent contractors"--which, without the law change, wouldn't have been legal in the same way "gig workers" failed to meet the criteria of "independent" in many places/cases (e.g. working for more than one client at a time, having control over work location etc). (There was some recent coverage of this history in this article (although it appears the relevant full text is not available online): https://web.archive.org/web/20210921132447/https://northandsouth.co.nz/2021/09/12/1-billion-and-counting/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210921132447/https://northands...)
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  I get that most NZ 'contractors' are de-factor permanent employees doing long stints that are quite stable. But for me - 6 months is a good engagement length. Happy to move on at that point. Have no insider scoop on Weta in particular, but just hitting back that having contractors instead of employees is somehow unethical.
  - follower 5y ago
    > just hitting back that having contractors instead of employees is somehow unethical. It's unethical when the people concerned aren't independent contractors but are treated as such because it's cheaper for the company (e.g. in regard to sick pay, holiday pay etc) than treating them as employees. If you like a 6 month engagement length, that's cool, there's nothing stopping you from agreeing to a 6 month employment contract. Although even that is unethical on a company's part if they're taking advantage of power imbalances in the employment market to transfer risk/cost onto employees only "agreeing" to short term contracts under duress.
    - LAC-Tech 5y ago
      But I don't want to be an employee. I want to be a contractor. With all the rights & responsibilities that entails. I mean how far do we take this - you've got 3 months worth of building to be done at your house, so you have to form an LLC and employ carpenters directly?
irrational 5y ago
Not just health insurance. What about vacation time (I get a day each pay period + 11 fixed holiday days + 6 week sabbatical + Fridays off in the summer), stock, life insurance, fitness facilities, etc.?
- 0x1062 5y ago
  Contractors say when they want to take holidays. Your pay reflects the time you expect to take.

0x1062 5y ago

Only the very senior management are employees. But there are lots of long-serving staff who are basically employees. You earn more as a contractor. Film projects have weird schedules. You simply couldn't run a business if you had to have a consistent set of people over time.

follower 5y ago
> Only the very senior management are employees. In that case, maybe the senior management should stop referring to the other people as "employees" then. And, if being an employee is such a bad deal, why would senior management choose to be employees rather than "independent contractors". > But there are lots of long-serving staff who are basically employees. There's no such thing as "basically employees" (or indeed "staff" who aren't employees) they're either "actually independent contractors" or "employees intentionally & exploitatively miscategorized as independent contractors"). > You earn more as a contractor. That's certainly what the management want people to think, for sure. But if being an employee isn't even a possibility it's conveniently pretty hard to know if that's actually the case. > You simply couldn't run a business if you had to have a consistent set of people over time. Perhaps that means it's actually a "hobby" or a "charity" rather than a business then? And, regardless, that just means you hire people as employees on fixed term contracts, not that you get to miscategorize them & get the law changed to make it "legal". None of this is about a better deal for the people doing the work--it's entirely possible for a fully loaded employee cost to be 2x salary so if the company can get the workers to accept 1.5x salary & shift risk to them, well, that's just a great deal for the company, isn't it. Especially in an industry with an unending supply of creative people willing to be ground up in the process of doing what they love. Perhaps we should take a lesson from what happened to the dinosaurs that worked as "independent contractors" for oil industry...
- 0x1062 5y ago
  Yes all these poor people forced to work for Weta lol.

EdwardDiego 5y ago

Given that the last National government passed the "Hobbit Law" to allow film industry companies to treat people who would, in any other industry, be employees, as contractors, as well as banning collective bargaining for them - the actual employee numbers will be verrrry low.