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Having an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies l

Having an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies like Blizzard get away with because their employees just want to make video games at their favourite dev studio. While they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, I welcome the devs who are only here for the cash.

sunir 7mo ago
I think you have the law of supply and demand backwards.
alex43578 7mo ago
This is totally leaving out the supply and demand aspect. People like the idea of making games more than working on the plumbing of some accounts payable software, so Blizzard can pay less and treat worse than NicheBoringFinanceCo.
- Archonical 7mo ago
  The parent comment is describing supply and demand. If Blizzard attracts a larger supply of workers who will accept lower pay and worse conditions because they intrinsically want the job, Blizzard gains leverage. That is exactly why studios like Blizzard can get away with more than “NicheBoringFinanceCo.”
  - alex43578 7mo ago
    If an “industry’s labour [is] supplied only by those inherently passionate about it” the post says it would “crush wages and working conditions”. That runs completely counter to the basics of supply and demand in a perfect competition market. It would be market with far fewer (labor) suppliers, who could therefore command a higher wage, not lower.
    - dwohnitmok 7mo ago
      You are only looking at supply. Neither supply nor demand by themselves adequately describe prices (even in supply-demand 101 theory; in practice of course it gets significantly more complicated than just supply and demand). There are fields with few suppliers where supply is extremely cheap and fields with few suppliers where supply is extremely expensive. Is the number of suppliers low because demand is also low or is the number of suppliers low because demand is high but supply is constrained? A field that previously had a supply of labor in it "for the money" who all leave is indicative of the former scenario not the latter. That does not lead to higher wages. That leads to low wages. (There are a variety of reasons why this story is too simple and why I remain uncertain about developer salaries in the short term) There is a broader question of whether having people who are in it for the money leave independently "causes" wages to go down (e.g. if you were to replace all such people with people "purely in it for the passion"). My suspicion is yes. Mainly because wage markets are somewhat inefficient, there are always mild cartel-like/cooperative effects in any market, people in it for passion tend to undersell labor and the people in it for the money are much less likely to undersell their labor and this spills over beneficially to the former. Note that this broader question is simply unanswerable assuming perfect competition, i.e. a supply-demand 101 perspective (which is why it doesn't make sense to posit "perfect competition" for this question). It posits durable behavioral differences among suppliers that are not determined purely by supply and demand which do not update reliably in the face of pricing. This is equivalent to market friction and hence fundamentally contradicts an assumption of perfect competition.
    - icehawk 7mo ago
      Except that there are a LOT of people that want to work in video games (which is the supply) which then depresses the price (wages) All of my developer friends in the gaming industry have had far worse working conditions then what I've had.
    - terminalshort 7mo ago
      To use your example of someone working on the plumbing of an accounts payable system, who is passionate about that? The supply is near zero. That, like most jobs, is going to need to be done entirely by people who are just doing it for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that. Your example runs counter to the laws of supply and demand too. You understand that wages will rise when supply is restricted, but you don't want to accept that supply will respond to the price signal in the form of more people entering that job market.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
  Let's consider how this could play out: If you need a lot of low quality code in a hurry, AI can definitely do that for you now. The path to making money by writing mediocre code for people who don't really care that much is going to look like managing a network of bots that constantly spit out a huge volume of code that kind of mostly works and if it sometimes doesn't then whatever. The people in it for the money can probably make a decent amount in the "high volume low quality" space. Then there's the code that needs to actually work, or have some thought put into it. Consider the process of writing IETF RFCs. Can you get an LLM to spit out English text that conforms to their formatting? Absolutely you can. Is the RFC it emits going to be something you'll want to have the whole world trying to implement as a standard? Not likely. So the people doing that are going to be doing it something closer to the old way.
  - davidw 7mo ago
    I am kind of considering the idea of changing my LinkedIn profile to one of me with a 'wild rag', checkered shirt, and broad brimmed straw hat and calling myself a robot wrangler and see if I get any takers.
- KellyCriterion 7mo ago
  >plumbing of some accounts payable software, As many of us in the early IT generation, I came because of I wanted to build games and program cool stuff. Today, while I admit Games are supercomplex stunning apps, I hate it and I love to do boring finance app development :-)) If you would have told me in my 20ies that I will end up in banking & finance IT, I would have laughed at you - today I really like it and I do not play a single game anymore.
ddorian43 7mo ago
Where are the gamedevs in it for the money?
- cabalamat 7mo ago
  Working on boring accounts software.
sb057 7mo ago
See also: public school teachers. You either need to be insanely passionate or incredibly stupid to take ~$55k/year for long hours as an educator that is also a babysitter. And insanely passionate teachers are in short supply.
- boringg 7mo ago
  I bet a lot of teachers look at what devs do and think that its also insane to sit in front of computer all day, in a no boundary job, working on something you really don't care about and is potentially really bad for civilization only to make money off and lose your sense of self.
  - notesinthefield 7mo ago
    My spouse has expressed this nearly verbatim after transitioning out of a 16 year career in middle and grade school education to medical curriculum development. It was hell on her mental health but at least there was a clear motivation and purpose for being there.
- alex43578 7mo ago
  Long hours? Teachers work the same hours or less than other adults per “New Measures of Teachers’ Work Hours and Implications for Wage Comparisons” by West. “Teachers work an average of 34.5 hours per week on an annual basis (38.0 hours per week during the school year and 21.5 hours per week during the summer months).” That’s leaving out the benefits of incredibly strong union protections, it being a state job with matched benefits, absurd job security even in the face of terrible performance, etc.
  - mylifeandtimes 7mo ago
    Wait-- I think you are confusing "teachers" with "police officers".
  - nullstyle 7mo ago
    “ benefits of incredibly strong union protections” Lol, try saying that to an alaskan teachers face and watch yourself get slapped for the absurdity of the claim.
deterministic 7mo ago
There are plenty of non-games software companies that are treating devs purely. However almost all of the companies I have worked for in my 30+ years career treated devs well. So if you are in a shitty situation, I highly recommend finding another job instead of just placing yourself over a barrel.

sunir 7mo ago

I think you have the law of supply and demand backwards.

alex43578 7mo ago

This is totally leaving out the supply and demand aspect. People like the idea of making games more than working on the plumbing of some accounts payable software, so Blizzard can pay less and treat worse than NicheBoringFinanceCo.

Archonical 7mo ago
The parent comment is describing supply and demand. If Blizzard attracts a larger supply of workers who will accept lower pay and worse conditions because they intrinsically want the job, Blizzard gains leverage. That is exactly why studios like Blizzard can get away with more than “NicheBoringFinanceCo.”
- alex43578 7mo ago
  If an “industry’s labour [is] supplied only by those inherently passionate about it” the post says it would “crush wages and working conditions”. That runs completely counter to the basics of supply and demand in a perfect competition market. It would be market with far fewer (labor) suppliers, who could therefore command a higher wage, not lower.
  - dwohnitmok 7mo ago
    You are only looking at supply. Neither supply nor demand by themselves adequately describe prices (even in supply-demand 101 theory; in practice of course it gets significantly more complicated than just supply and demand). There are fields with few suppliers where supply is extremely cheap and fields with few suppliers where supply is extremely expensive. Is the number of suppliers low because demand is also low or is the number of suppliers low because demand is high but supply is constrained? A field that previously had a supply of labor in it "for the money" who all leave is indicative of the former scenario not the latter. That does not lead to higher wages. That leads to low wages. (There are a variety of reasons why this story is too simple and why I remain uncertain about developer salaries in the short term) There is a broader question of whether having people who are in it for the money leave independently "causes" wages to go down (e.g. if you were to replace all such people with people "purely in it for the passion"). My suspicion is yes. Mainly because wage markets are somewhat inefficient, there are always mild cartel-like/cooperative effects in any market, people in it for passion tend to undersell labor and the people in it for the money are much less likely to undersell their labor and this spills over beneficially to the former. Note that this broader question is simply unanswerable assuming perfect competition, i.e. a supply-demand 101 perspective (which is why it doesn't make sense to posit "perfect competition" for this question). It posits durable behavioral differences among suppliers that are not determined purely by supply and demand which do not update reliably in the face of pricing. This is equivalent to market friction and hence fundamentally contradicts an assumption of perfect competition.
  - icehawk 7mo ago
    Except that there are a LOT of people that want to work in video games (which is the supply) which then depresses the price (wages) All of my developer friends in the gaming industry have had far worse working conditions then what I've had.
  - terminalshort 7mo ago
    To use your example of someone working on the plumbing of an accounts payable system, who is passionate about that? The supply is near zero. That, like most jobs, is going to need to be done entirely by people who are just doing it for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that. Your example runs counter to the laws of supply and demand too. You understand that wages will rise when supply is restricted, but you don't want to accept that supply will respond to the price signal in the form of more people entering that job market.
AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
Let's consider how this could play out: If you need a lot of low quality code in a hurry, AI can definitely do that for you now. The path to making money by writing mediocre code for people who don't really care that much is going to look like managing a network of bots that constantly spit out a huge volume of code that kind of mostly works and if it sometimes doesn't then whatever. The people in it for the money can probably make a decent amount in the "high volume low quality" space. Then there's the code that needs to actually work, or have some thought put into it. Consider the process of writing IETF RFCs. Can you get an LLM to spit out English text that conforms to their formatting? Absolutely you can. Is the RFC it emits going to be something you'll want to have the whole world trying to implement as a standard? Not likely. So the people doing that are going to be doing it something closer to the old way.
- davidw 7mo ago
  I am kind of considering the idea of changing my LinkedIn profile to one of me with a 'wild rag', checkered shirt, and broad brimmed straw hat and calling myself a robot wrangler and see if I get any takers.
KellyCriterion 7mo ago
>plumbing of some accounts payable software, As many of us in the early IT generation, I came because of I wanted to build games and program cool stuff. Today, while I admit Games are supercomplex stunning apps, I hate it and I love to do boring finance app development :-)) If you would have told me in my 20ies that I will end up in banking & finance IT, I would have laughed at you - today I really like it and I do not play a single game anymore.

ddorian43 7mo ago

Where are the gamedevs in it for the money?

cabalamat 7mo ago
Working on boring accounts software.

sb057 7mo ago

See also: public school teachers. You either need to be insanely passionate or incredibly stupid to take ~$55k/year for long hours as an educator that is also a babysitter. And insanely passionate teachers are in short supply.

boringg 7mo ago
I bet a lot of teachers look at what devs do and think that its also insane to sit in front of computer all day, in a no boundary job, working on something you really don't care about and is potentially really bad for civilization only to make money off and lose your sense of self.
- notesinthefield 7mo ago
  My spouse has expressed this nearly verbatim after transitioning out of a 16 year career in middle and grade school education to medical curriculum development. It was hell on her mental health but at least there was a clear motivation and purpose for being there.
alex43578 7mo ago
Long hours? Teachers work the same hours or less than other adults per “New Measures of Teachers’ Work Hours and Implications for Wage Comparisons” by West. “Teachers work an average of 34.5 hours per week on an annual basis (38.0 hours per week during the school year and 21.5 hours per week during the summer months).” That’s leaving out the benefits of incredibly strong union protections, it being a state job with matched benefits, absurd job security even in the face of terrible performance, etc.
- mylifeandtimes 7mo ago
  Wait-- I think you are confusing "teachers" with "police officers".
- nullstyle 7mo ago
  “ benefits of incredibly strong union protections” Lol, try saying that to an alaskan teachers face and watch yourself get slapped for the absurdity of the claim.

deterministic 7mo ago

There are plenty of non-games software companies that are treating devs purely. However almost all of the companies I have worked for in my 30+ years career treated devs well. So if you are in a shitty situation, I highly recommend finding another job instead of just placing yourself over a barrel.