4 ms·

Massive crunch culture where Tim checks the lot for cars late at night and on weekends and complains when there are not enough cars there.

alextgordon 11y ago
This is why we need unions!
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  We don't need unions. There are plenty of non-evil employers in the tech space. If an employee doesn't like the way his employer is run, he is free and generally very able to go find another employer. Unions are a nightmare that we don't want or need in an in-demand field like software.
  - pyrocat 11y ago
    You're conflating the tech industry with the video game industry. Not all unions are a nightmare, they're there for employee protection. If you specifically are in a privileged enough position to not need a union, you have still benefited from the existence of them.
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      That is certainly one perspective, and this may come as a shock to you, but there are those that argue unions are not a universal good. [0] A tech workers' union means not only the mandatory imposition of dues (don't need any more little cuts out of my paycheck), fixed hiring qualifications that are pretty likely to evolve into full-blown licensing (i.e., the end of the self-taught professional), removal of the right to independently negotiate, and affirmative action, but also a large, opaque body that engages primarily in political activities like lobbying and negotiations with very little oversight or transparency. The benefits of a union are protection from predatory employment policies. That may be necessary in some fields, but in programming, it isn't. Most devs I know can have a new job within a few weeks if they don't like their employers' policies, and most employers I know appreciate the difficulty in sourcing good software talent so they don't want to do much to piss them off. [0] https://www.unionfacts.com/article/crime-and-corruption https://www.unionfacts.com/article/crime-and-corruption
      - smacktoward 11y ago
        The "Center for Union Facts," to which you linked, is one of a large number of sites operated by Richard Berman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman), a P.R. guy who has made a very lucrative business hiring his firm out to corporations and industry interest groups to set up astroturf "citizens' groups" opposing anything and everything that would cost them money. This includes not just unions, but minimum wage increases (on behalf of the restaurant industry), restrictions on indoor smoking (on behalf of the tobacco industry), drunk driving laws (on behalf of the alcohol industry), programs to reduce childhood obesity (on behalf of the soda industry), and lots more. Here's some more links about him, if the one above doesn't make the point clearly enough: - http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman - http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lobbyist-usat_x.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lo... - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-rick-berman-aka-dr-evil/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-rick-berman-aka-dr-evil/ - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18berman.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18berman.html?... You know, just FYI.
        cookiecaper 11y ago
        See https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem You're going to be hard-pressed to find a neutral source on labor unions. There's no such thing as a point of view from nowhere. The implication in your statement is that persons do not organically oppose labor unions, though this is obviously not true ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_trade_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_trade_unions ). Besides that, let's be real here. I don't make money leaving comments on HN, so I don't have all day to spend looking for the purest possible source. I just picked a source that looked pretty OK as generic documentation of some of the bad things that unions do and was near the top of Google. I don't think that's a problem. It doesn't really change anything if a group that opposes labor unions and also has high PageRank is part of a PR effort. You understand that PR firms are used by any side well-funded enough to afford them, yes?
        saiya-jin 11y ago
  - alextgordon 11y ago
    There is a salient difference between working in long hours in tough conditions with appropriate compensation (e.g. offshore oil and gas), and working long hours in tough conditions without appropriate compensation (the video game industry). The former is an aspect of personal freedom, the latter is evidence of market failure and possible exploitation.
    - saiya-jin 11y ago
      I think to everybody in IT it's pretty clear that video game industry is full of exploitation and it's rather rule than exception. That's why very few stay in industry for long, the disappointment from daily reality is a bit too much. Especially when other variants of same work can be (almost) as much fun, and they treat you like human being actually, with perks and more time to actually live your life.
  - Negative1 11y ago
    If you live in Raleigh and want to work in games, you really don't have many options. Hate the hours imposed? Well, pack up the house, say goodbye to family&friends, take the kids out of school and move across the country. Sounds like a good option, right? On the bright (?) side, the bonuses are epic (hee hee).
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      Games are always going to be that way. There is too much glamor associated with the industry. Whenever someone graduates from a bad games company into a "boring" business job, there are 10 more new grads begging to take his place. A union cannot change the underlying market fundamentals. Desperation guarantees an atmosphere of exploitation; the only thing that would change is that the union directors would get their cut of the proceeds from the exploitative labor practices they'd help enshrine.
  - fsloth 11y ago
    "Unions are a nightmare that we don't want or need in an in-demand field like software." Given the well documented case where certain California based tech companies used their combined leverage to hold wages down (through the non-poaching pact) I would say that your view of the leverage of employees over employers is overly optimistic. (i.e. http://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/03/anti-poaching-lawsuit-415m-settlement/ http://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/03/anti-poaching-lawsuit-41...) If employers gang up against non-unionized employees I would say it is obvious who has the short end of the stick. There are areas in tech where your statement may hold true, and superstar performers usually hold more cards at the negotiation table than employers do but for the general software engineering populace it's not as clear cut as that.
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      I've actually defended Catmull et al for that "cartel" so unfortunately it's not very convincing to me. I see the no-poach agreements as a) not universally applicable in either terms or employers, so not seriously limiting employee mobility, and b) critical to minimizing turnover and successfully managing a long-term project like a CGI movie. The prosecution of the companies involved in this "cartel" is politically motivated.
      - kybernetikos 11y ago
        > critical to minimizing turnover and successfully managing a long-term project like a CGI movie There are other ways of reducing turnover, such as finding whatever would convince your key employees to leave and offering it to them to stay before they get that offer from a competitor. It's certainly true that blanket no-poach agreements can help an employer reduce turnover without making the employees lives any better, but that's part of the reason they artificially restrict wages and are unfair.
        cookiecaper 11y ago
        The employees' lives are made better by consistent and stable employment, which can't be achieved if the company has turnover so disruptive that it can't successfully release a product. Even if companies were be able to thrive by constantly outbidding each other and taking one anothers' employees, the employees would be unhappy (most people desire a reasonable degree of continuity in their employment). My understanding is that the no-poach agreements forbade only unsolicited pursual of employed individuals. Dissatisfied employees were still free to seek employment at the other competitors. All these agreements did was keep others from fomenting discontent by dangling carrots in front of potential employees (which would've been unlikely to be fulfilled). It was a voluntary arrangement entered into by the industry's recruiters. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    No they aren't. I am quite happy with my union in Germany.
dfbrown 11y ago
I would imagine the crunch is significantly lower on a game engine as opposed to a game where you are usually contractually obligated with your publisher to release a final product on a specific date.
cm3 11y ago
What's your source for that? Do you know someone at Epic or have you worked there?
- toephu2 11y ago
  I believe it was a joke.
- speeder 11y ago
  Dunno if what he said is true or not, but when I was a member of IGDA, I left after the board refused to kick out Tim Langdell (that is a trademark troll) and Michael Capps. Michael Capps is Epic president, and he ended admitting he joined IGDA board in first place to stop IGDA from forcing studio hands in fighting crunch, when Capps joined, IGDA most high profile work was to try to fix the crunch culture, Epic felt threatened, and pulled that stunt (send Capps to join IGDA and undermine the efforts against crunch)
jmspring 11y ago
I would hope not. But, hey, the gaming industry (even game engines) asks a lot.
vvanders 11y ago
Sounds like the game industry to me! (Thank god I got out of that industry)

alextgordon 11y ago

This is why we need unions!

cookiecaper 11y ago
We don't need unions. There are plenty of non-evil employers in the tech space. If an employee doesn't like the way his employer is run, he is free and generally very able to go find another employer. Unions are a nightmare that we don't want or need in an in-demand field like software.
- pyrocat 11y ago
  You're conflating the tech industry with the video game industry. Not all unions are a nightmare, they're there for employee protection. If you specifically are in a privileged enough position to not need a union, you have still benefited from the existence of them.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    That is certainly one perspective, and this may come as a shock to you, but there are those that argue unions are not a universal good. [0] A tech workers' union means not only the mandatory imposition of dues (don't need any more little cuts out of my paycheck), fixed hiring qualifications that are pretty likely to evolve into full-blown licensing (i.e., the end of the self-taught professional), removal of the right to independently negotiate, and affirmative action, but also a large, opaque body that engages primarily in political activities like lobbying and negotiations with very little oversight or transparency. The benefits of a union are protection from predatory employment policies. That may be necessary in some fields, but in programming, it isn't. Most devs I know can have a new job within a few weeks if they don't like their employers' policies, and most employers I know appreciate the difficulty in sourcing good software talent so they don't want to do much to piss them off. [0] https://www.unionfacts.com/article/crime-and-corruption https://www.unionfacts.com/article/crime-and-corruption
    - smacktoward 11y ago
      The "Center for Union Facts," to which you linked, is one of a large number of sites operated by Richard Berman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman), a P.R. guy who has made a very lucrative business hiring his firm out to corporations and industry interest groups to set up astroturf "citizens' groups" opposing anything and everything that would cost them money. This includes not just unions, but minimum wage increases (on behalf of the restaurant industry), restrictions on indoor smoking (on behalf of the tobacco industry), drunk driving laws (on behalf of the alcohol industry), programs to reduce childhood obesity (on behalf of the soda industry), and lots more. Here's some more links about him, if the one above doesn't make the point clearly enough: - http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman - http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lobbyist-usat_x.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lo... - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-rick-berman-aka-dr-evil/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-rick-berman-aka-dr-evil/ - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18berman.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18berman.html?... You know, just FYI.
      - cookiecaper 11y ago
        See https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem You're going to be hard-pressed to find a neutral source on labor unions. There's no such thing as a point of view from nowhere. The implication in your statement is that persons do not organically oppose labor unions, though this is obviously not true ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_trade_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_trade_unions ). Besides that, let's be real here. I don't make money leaving comments on HN, so I don't have all day to spend looking for the purest possible source. I just picked a source that looked pretty OK as generic documentation of some of the bad things that unions do and was near the top of Google. I don't think that's a problem. It doesn't really change anything if a group that opposes labor unions and also has high PageRank is part of a PR effort. You understand that PR firms are used by any side well-funded enough to afford them, yes?
      - saiya-jin 11y ago
- alextgordon 11y ago
  There is a salient difference between working in long hours in tough conditions with appropriate compensation (e.g. offshore oil and gas), and working long hours in tough conditions without appropriate compensation (the video game industry). The former is an aspect of personal freedom, the latter is evidence of market failure and possible exploitation.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    I think to everybody in IT it's pretty clear that video game industry is full of exploitation and it's rather rule than exception. That's why very few stay in industry for long, the disappointment from daily reality is a bit too much. Especially when other variants of same work can be (almost) as much fun, and they treat you like human being actually, with perks and more time to actually live your life.
- Negative1 11y ago
  If you live in Raleigh and want to work in games, you really don't have many options. Hate the hours imposed? Well, pack up the house, say goodbye to family&friends, take the kids out of school and move across the country. Sounds like a good option, right? On the bright (?) side, the bonuses are epic (hee hee).
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    Games are always going to be that way. There is too much glamor associated with the industry. Whenever someone graduates from a bad games company into a "boring" business job, there are 10 more new grads begging to take his place. A union cannot change the underlying market fundamentals. Desperation guarantees an atmosphere of exploitation; the only thing that would change is that the union directors would get their cut of the proceeds from the exploitative labor practices they'd help enshrine.
- fsloth 11y ago
  "Unions are a nightmare that we don't want or need in an in-demand field like software." Given the well documented case where certain California based tech companies used their combined leverage to hold wages down (through the non-poaching pact) I would say that your view of the leverage of employees over employers is overly optimistic. (i.e. http://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/03/anti-poaching-lawsuit-415m-settlement/ http://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/03/anti-poaching-lawsuit-41...) If employers gang up against non-unionized employees I would say it is obvious who has the short end of the stick. There are areas in tech where your statement may hold true, and superstar performers usually hold more cards at the negotiation table than employers do but for the general software engineering populace it's not as clear cut as that.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    I've actually defended Catmull et al for that "cartel" so unfortunately it's not very convincing to me. I see the no-poach agreements as a) not universally applicable in either terms or employers, so not seriously limiting employee mobility, and b) critical to minimizing turnover and successfully managing a long-term project like a CGI movie. The prosecution of the companies involved in this "cartel" is politically motivated.
    - kybernetikos 11y ago
      > critical to minimizing turnover and successfully managing a long-term project like a CGI movie There are other ways of reducing turnover, such as finding whatever would convince your key employees to leave and offering it to them to stay before they get that offer from a competitor. It's certainly true that blanket no-poach agreements can help an employer reduce turnover without making the employees lives any better, but that's part of the reason they artificially restrict wages and are unfair.
      - cookiecaper 11y ago
        The employees' lives are made better by consistent and stable employment, which can't be achieved if the company has turnover so disruptive that it can't successfully release a product. Even if companies were be able to thrive by constantly outbidding each other and taking one anothers' employees, the employees would be unhappy (most people desire a reasonable degree of continuity in their employment). My understanding is that the no-poach agreements forbade only unsolicited pursual of employed individuals. Dissatisfied employees were still free to seek employment at the other competitors. All these agreements did was keep others from fomenting discontent by dangling carrots in front of potential employees (which would've been unlikely to be fulfilled). It was a voluntary arrangement entered into by the industry's recruiters. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  No they aren't. I am quite happy with my union in Germany.

dfbrown 11y ago

I would imagine the crunch is significantly lower on a game engine as opposed to a game where you are usually contractually obligated with your publisher to release a final product on a specific date.

cm3 11y ago

What's your source for that? Do you know someone at Epic or have you worked there?

toephu2 11y ago
I believe it was a joke.
speeder 11y ago
Dunno if what he said is true or not, but when I was a member of IGDA, I left after the board refused to kick out Tim Langdell (that is a trademark troll) and Michael Capps. Michael Capps is Epic president, and he ended admitting he joined IGDA board in first place to stop IGDA from forcing studio hands in fighting crunch, when Capps joined, IGDA most high profile work was to try to fix the crunch culture, Epic felt threatened, and pulled that stunt (send Capps to join IGDA and undermine the efforts against crunch)

jmspring 11y ago

I would hope not. But, hey, the gaming industry (even game engines) asks a lot.

vvanders 11y ago

Sounds like the game industry to me! (Thank god I got out of that industry)