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Comment by petee | Hacker News Reader

One of my relatives works for a large well known game developer; same employer for years. Because they decide to classify many of their devs as contract workers, they are denied rights afforded to 'full-time' employees - when she is laid off for months at a time (to prevent being called a full-time) she can't collect unemployment. No health care, no benefits whatsoever. And due to contracts, can't work for a rival either during this time. Its forced unemployment.

None of the employees are happy with this situation, but job scared that they'll simply be replaced by those who won't complain, and blacklisted.

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I'm amazed that this is legal in a first world country- it would be illegal to do this in a couple of third-world countries I'm personally familiar with: the laws state that if you're a on contract for more than a certain number of months, you automatically become a permanent employee. Firing and rehiring for the same position as a contractor is straight-up illegal.

There are almost always loopholes and gray areas. I'm pretty sure its illegal, but here is one example: I hire you to rebuild my kitchen; I eventually 'run out of money' and lay you off. 3 months later I rehire you to finish the kitchen. Are you really a full-time employee? Am I responsible for your healthcare? Or are you still just a contractor? In this example, i'll bet most would say no, you're just a contractor. But that is also just at your house, not some mega-corporation...gray area, right?

I believe its the use of layoff and such terminology, that gets them around laws

But if your contract with the "non-employee" says that they may not work for any employer for n years or that they may not use what they learned from working at your business elsewhere then I say they deserve compensation.

It is obvious to me that if you want an employee to not work for someone else, you need to pay them the same as if they're working for you. This is how things work at the executive level. This is how it should work for everyone. It is the least we can do.

For decades gaming has been the programmer equivalent of the waiter-actor/waitress-actress in Hollywood trying for their big break.

The competitiveness and desire to work there is what drives these insane working conditions.

The big difference is this: If you have the skills to work in the gaming industry, you also have the skills to work in another software industry that will compensate you appropriately.

Nobody needs to work 100 hours a week on salary for at a AAA studio who will discard you.

The key message is this:

AAA productions are losing touch with their audiences and spending unholy amounts of money on garbage games. (this is accelerating just like Hollywood).

Unlike the poor actor/actress who has to suck Spacey/Wienstein's dick, YOU have options. Go work a boring 9-5 webapp job with benefits and then hack on a game with a few passionate friends with a vision of something AWESOME.

The Internet levels the playing field for us. Minecraft is an excellent example of this.

> For decades gaming has been the programmer equivalent of the waiter-actor/waitress-actress in Hollywood trying for their big break

The game industry is not made up entirely of programmers! There are lots of other roles that do not map to the software industry such as animators, modelers and artists. They can't just switch to making enterprise CRUD apps. Even the programmers might have difficulty meeting the requirement of having 2-4 years experience on framework that got its first stable release in 2017.

And again I will claim that:

"you also have the skills to work in another software industry that will compensate you appropriately"

If you are capable of learning how to use the apps necessary to be a animator/modeler you DO have the skills to work in another industry! Nobody is entitled to work whatever job they want wherever they want, and nobody forced you to take out loans to get a degree in Art/3d modelling or animation.

For example, I'd love to be a beer taste tester for 150k per year and live in downtown SF, but the demand isn't there. How would a Union of beer taster's improve the lot of people who want the job? They would establish rules to exclude up and comers with more talent who are willing to work for less.

The sad truth is a union will help people in the gaming industry just as much as a union would help the NBA. No matter what there will always be a shortage of jobs compared to the number of people who wish to work there. But the union will exclude a significant portion of people who are willing to work for less from competing at all.

Hint:(Similar to minimum wage, this is where unpaid internships came from)

So either you compete on price/working conditions, Or you end up with a Union cabal who set artificial standards of entry and keep out talented newcomers who are willing to work for less.

You have choice. Make good decisions.

Actually, in Europe many countries do have unions for sport players as well.

Here is the Portuguese web site for football (soccer) just as an example, not going to list everything here.

http://sjogadores.pt/

The NBA players have a union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Players_...

Yup totally and I'd argue that if you have chops for Game Design then you probably would also do very well doing IxD[1].

If you're an animator there's plenty of gigs doing motion design in places you wouldn't consider.

I know a ton of ex-gamedev who've landed in these roles and done quite well.

[1] Interaction Design

Majority of workers in game industry are artists, not programmers. And programmers are not the ones having "big breaks" or ability to influence what the game is going to be like.

It will be interesting to see some stats on this breakdown.

One place to look at is credits in games that have credits.

Look at all the details in big games - people drawing those details are not programmers.

I'm not too amazed - a flexible labor market is widely regarded as something that attracts industry, and hence creates first-world countries.

Conversely, inflexible labor markets are something that keeps third-world countries how they are.

France and Germany pretty much disprove this model.

Another example is the collapse of 38 Studios in Rhode Island - half their workers were brought in as contract workers; After 2 weeks without pay, the company finally collapsed: only 'full-time' workers were able to attend an emergency job fair the state created.

The rest of the employees, many who had moved to the area specifically for the job, couldn't even collect unemployment - I met one girl working at Uno's Pizzeria so she wouldn't become homeless and stuck in a distant state.

You should advice your relative to just get another job, dunno why anyone would bother working under such conditions.

"scared that they'll simply be replaced by those who won't complain, and blacklisted"

I used to be poor until someone on the internet told me to work hard.

The perfect system /s

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