QA workers at Blizzard Albany are unionizing
gamedeveloper.com
gamedeveloper.com
The best part is that they could have avoided all of this by paying their QA more for fewer hours. The changes they'll likely be forced to make by a union are probably much more dramatic than what they could have quashed pro-union sentiment by simply introducing themselves. Put another way: As an engineer, I have a great salary, good stock options, and decent hours. I favor unions in principle but don't have a drive to force my company to set one up because I am not so poorly treated that I think I need it. Why not treat QA the same way?
The exploitative practices that some in tech - especially the games industry - are exposed to are a long-term bet that those people won't mind being exploited and won't be convinced they can do better. It's a shame that bet pays off as often as it does.
Yesterday, after a Chipotle in Maine became the first location to vote to unionize, corporate decided it would rather shutter the store than risk giving anyone else any bright ideas. The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Honestly, I don't even particularly like the idea in principle of adding another layer of bureaucracy to any organization. I would rather have a country where strong labor laws made unions unnecessary. But it's plain to see that these companies need internal opposition in order to stay honest.
To see whether 20 is a low number, I searched for how many employees an average Chipotle branch has, which brings up this page (from 2018), where multiple commenters leave estimates that all hover around 20: https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Chipotle-Mexican-Grill/faq/how-ma...
It would not surprise me if the store couldn't hire workers because of a reputation for poor working conditions. It would not surprise me if call outs and lack of availability were proportional to excessive call ins from an under staffed store.
I'd imagine that locations which are struggling to hire would be correlated with disaffected employees looking to unionize.
The company decides whether you eat or not, and you can't live long without eating
We hear the same line of BS about environmental laws, that they make things less efficient, yet the places that have them are objectively better.
Games don't get shipped in a quality state on time without the hard work of skilled QA testers but the industry really treats them like they're disposable. Game design and game programming are both MUCH easier if you can rely on a good QA tester to spot issues and help you figure out reproduction steps, etc.
We had one netcode bug in Guild Wars that haunted us for at least 6 months (probably longer?) that players would frequently report but we never managed to find a reliable repro for, despite having extensive server-side logging. One of our best QA testers spent an hour or two every day trying to find a repro case and eventually was able to hand it to a lead to be fixed - something like that simply isn't possible unless you put skilled people in an environment where they can do focused, specialist work like that. (Sadly, that studio - ArenaNet - also had a tendency to mistreat QA staff and it got worse and worse over time.)
That tester ended up going on to be a design lead on multiple big AAA titles at other studios, so it was nice to see him get the recognition he deserved for his work ethic and skill.
If the best people in a given job always choose the leave if given the chance, then it will always suck to do the job. Custom service, qa, warehouse workers. These are all jobs that need to get done. But if anyone with the skill and drive to do something else leaves, then you are left with people who are abused because they are stuck and powerless. How many people dream of doing Video Game QA? I doubt very many. They only do it because they cannot program/draw/write/etc.
That said, a company the size of Blizzard should be able to pay decent wages for QA. I don't know how it is today but older Blizzard games had excellent QA and their products were very polished compared to the rest of the market and they were recognized by that. So trying to save a few bucks in this department is negligent management and should immediately be stopped as it would undermine their successful strategy.
Gonna go down kicking and screaming instead of just doing better.
before the inks dried the company is going to throw every single thing they have at you to fight. youll get calls, youll get meetings, youll get your hours chopped stretched and moved all over the place. management will tell you what youre doing is illegal, that they can close the shop and walk away, that all your benefits will go away.
and in the end, youll take a 15k raise, pick up some nice new PPE, sit at the same table as management and ask them to recall why they said all these things that werent true while they tell you they do not comment on any prior business conducted outside of a union agreement.
our union ended mandatory overtime, slashed shift injuries, got healthier vending machines, and got health insurance for everyone.
As in less injuries from them or?
So yeah, so long as there's more options, rather than just completely changing everything to be "healthy", I think it's an improvement. Otherwise, someone gets the shaft.
Even if it removed the junk in favor of health food it's still the same amount of choice, now it's just the people who want junk that have to source it elsewhere instead of the people who want healthier options.
Many people will eat whatever snacks are available against their better judgment, and then regret it later. Having unhealthy snacks there and in people’s faces is a kind of psychological manipulation that takes some people nontrivial willpower to overcome.
If someone really wants candy bars, they can bring them from home.
And yeah if the vending machines were the primary reason behind unionizing... Probably an overreaction (then again I'm not going to tell someone else what should be important to them), but in this case it's literally the least of the benefits mentioned.
Why make healthy options the expensive one?
With perhaps the exception of health care, none of which seems relevant to white-collar office workers though.
And all your up and coming young techs you were hoping to train into more advanced positions leave to your competitors who can actually offer them a quick promotion and raise outside of the stupid seniority and job title based system the union got you and the workplace steadily inches toward "everyone does exactly their job and nothing more" type clock punching culture that makes everyone hate work.
Whether the tradeoffs are worth it is an argument I'm willing to have. but don't lie to us and act like there's no downsides.
Great! This is awesome. People shouldn't be doing work for free to the benefit of multibillion dollar companies.
Frankly I think it's moronic that people don't realize that just because something benefits the company doesn't mean it doesn't also benefit your coworkers.
I have always felt like tech workers have a hard time organising, which is a bit ironic. Events like this are a good sign for the overall industry.
Maybe it’s because he really is a “bad cultural fit”.
Everyone meets an asshole every now and then, if you meet assholes all the time, maybe the problem is that you’re an asshole…
And even beyond that, there is an even larger pool of NON-tech companies desperate to hire ANY developer at all.
I don't want to pretend that this doesn't happen, and it sucks, but this does not block any competent developers from software employment.
Unions would mean I get paid less, and the guy sitting next to me who can’t find his way around a computer would get paid more.
I know you folks like to say it’s a stereotype of unions, but unions really only protect the lazy. If you do your job well companies will fight over you. If you are not so good at your job that union sure does sound like a good idea.
Weren’t police unions why we have bad police?
Really? You really think that you are the best negotiator out of everyone who could join a union local in your area? You really think that by yourself you have more leverage than if you were negotiating alongside everyone else in a similar position within your company?
You look at the amount, and see that it's good, and you make a whole bunch of assumptions founded on stereotypes about unions, and come to the conclusion that you are the specialest person around...and it's a very seductive thing to believe.
But it's just one more way the people making dozens or hundreds of times more than you screw you over.
I’m not sure if that’s actually the effect unions have, but assuming it is - that position is still so incredibly selfish. Even if you are on the high end, you weren’t aways. Hold the door open for the next generation. Lift everybody up. Let everyone get a first helping before you go back for seconds.
But the past inexperienced me didn't bring as much value as the current me so it makes sense that I made less.
2. "Value you bring to the company" is an odd way to look at most jobs. Like what's the impact on productivity of the 25 engineers in an office if the trash hasn't been taken out in three weeks? Janitorial labor is contributing to the overall income of the company in ways that may not be direct, but ARE real. Same would apply for junior engineering tasks.
3. While I'm a fan of the idea of everyone earning the same hourly wage within a company for above reasons, unions MIGHT flatten the payscale a bhit, but they don't usually result in a FLAT payscale. So you will still earn more based on some ladder - years with the company, title, value you bring, etc.
If a company has button that when pressed makes them $1M. A person they hired for that role brings them $1M in value assuming they had no one to push the button before. The value of that person is very low since they can easily find a replacement.
That's not the sole determining factor. The question is not "can someone else do a better job negotiating for what I want", the question is "will someone else do a better job negotiating for what I want, and will I be able to successfully convince them to do so".
It's valid to ask "does this negotiating body actually represent me". Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. But it's not reasonable to ignore and dismiss people who believe it does not, and who believe they're unlikely to be able to change that.
In the context of the article, it sounds like this organization is quite likely to represent the goals of its members, and I hope that it stays that way.
Unions don't do that, that's pure propaganda. Unions bargain for more free time, better pay, better work conditions (healthier, safer).
They do that AND make it hard to fire useless employees. It's a mixed bag, as all organizational layers are.
On top of that, the percentage of millionaires on HN is probably closer to 80% than 8% so that hackneyed slogan has little resonance with this audience. Then add in that many, many developers get a massive chunk of their compensation in stock or options, which literally aligns their interests with the owners of the company because they _are_ part-owners of the company, and that slogan is DOA.
But in the US the history of unions often ended up with ties to organized crime. In addition unions seemed to become more interested in serving the needs of the union rather than the well being of the workers. One example is a buddy of mine that had to be party of a bag boys union who had to end up paying basically the entirety of a pay check in union dues each month simply to be employed, without him getting anything from it.
From what I understand there is a literal and figurative ocean of difference between the unions in the EU and the US.
I'll further add that trying to conflate the two is a tactic I've often seen used by dishonest people to manipulate the conversation.
Organized crime takes root in groups that don't benefit from government protection. Do you think that unions would've turned to organized crime if the authorities and privatized security groups didn't regularly attack them without any intervention by the US government to protect them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
Is this true, or just another case of historical revisionism based on pop culture?
Not denying that there aren't examples of this, but it does seem a bit like people like to go back to a few famous criminal individuals to justify that unions are "bad".
What potentially could be a whole paycheck are the payments for healthcare that is provided by the union
edit: Looked it up in my state, they are limited here to $15.
Eventually the Civil Rights Act passed, forcing government-mandated equality in many places, especially around employment. White labor abandoned the labor party (Democrat) in favor of the anti-government party (Republican).
Since then, the Democrats have been pro-minority, pro-government and at best fairly ambivalent about labor issues. Only the management perspective played in the media, and when Clinton came in to power he brought a strongly anti-labor platform to the Dems.
Americans for the most part have not had a labor party to oppose management narratives, and don't generally even have the common vocabulary to discuss labor issues.
This was one of the warnings of Orwell. A good example is how communism and socialism are synonymous for many people limiting their capability to discuss social improvements.
The political realignment was rather sudden, and the upshot was that the party that previously represented labor didn't particularly care about "labor vs management" anymore. They cared about equality within the labor force, which is a totally different thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_S... / https://listverse.com/2017/09/14/10-tragic-times-the-us-gove... / https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/themine... / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Labor_Wars / https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/219
In the 1970's Reagan ushered in an era of busting unions and they have been declining ever since. Ironic as Reagan in his youth had actually fought for unions.
https://medium.com/the-future-of-labor-unions/ronald-reagans... / https://medium.com/the-future-of-labor-unions/why-has-union-...
Numbers are really, really low here, if you compare them to owners' lead violence, especially committed by police.
This is in contrast to the rest of Hollywood which is probably one of the best examples of a union success story the US has. Every single little niche has its own union (Animation Guild, Editors Guild, etc)
This all ended with a huge lawsuit and a (supposedly) massive settlement without a court decision. But the end result was that the tech unions never formed - the assholes won
In particular:
1. Do you have a choice of union?
2. Do you in theory have a choice of union even if in practice there is only one applicable union?
3. Can you leave the union/not engage in collective bargaining via the union if you believe the union is not representing your interests?
4. Can you in theory form your own union if applicable unions do not represent your interests?
From a cursory inspection of the structure of German and Swiss trade unions, I believe the answer to all of these questions is yes, though I do not have any in-depth or firsthand experience indicating the truth of my belief, so it would be helpful to get input from someone with firsthand experience.
In contrast, based on a more in-depth analysis on the nature of legal recognition for unions in the US, in the US the answer to all of these questions is no. I hypothesize this distinction, assuming it is true, is a key reason for the different attitudes towards unions in the US and Europe.
Toxic management, PIP as a tool to overwork people, hire to fire, etc all needs a little dose of unions.
What people forget in their arrogance is that unions also just bring more leverage back to the table to fight off abuse, setup better conditions, etc. Yes, they can be abused and yes, they can lead to stagnation but without collective bargaining power your only leverage is how easy/difficult you are to replace and how abundant acceptable (e.g., do I need to uproot my life?) competitive or acceptable openings are at any given point of time so you can vote with your feet.
It's perfectly OK to embed your idealistic meritocracy within a union as part of your negotiations. You don't have to appease the lazy and 'medicore' if that's your great fear, you can negotiate and codify fair evaluations for these things if your union so wishes this. At the same time you also can negotiate nifty things like: not being on call, not working overtime, making sure theres adequate number of engineers on a project, improving the type of work you do, etc. Unless you're leading a startup where you're on the other side of the table, I don't see how these ideas aren't appealing to you--the opposite is very appealing to your employers.
In general, labor has been on the losing side for decades and there's this degree of condescension that "I am professional making great TC, I don't need those piddly unions" mentality that does nothing but props up continued erosion of standards and expectations of work and compensation in this industry. I've been working in software and tech for quite awhile (my mentor who shared their experiences of such declines since the 60s), and I can assure you it's gotten worse over the years for workers. This industry has been mostly fortunate because of growth outstripping supply that continues to give some leverage, but that may not be the case indefinitely and if that happens, unless you are near the absolute top of the field, you too will continue to see declines in working conditions in this field indefinitely.
As I looked into it further, it was similar to the argument how conservatives don't support certain social services because it'll cause people to be lazy and underperform in society. There is probably some truth to that, and there's always going to be people taking advantage of the system.
I do agree with you that the balance has shifted too much on the anti-union side. I hope these new unionizing efforts help shift the balance back to the middle.
It is illegal to go after individuals responsible for helping unionizing. It's also illegal to say that they will shut it down prior to unionization as a threat. But doing so afterward is 100% legal.
Walmart's done this. Starbucks is doing this right now. And many other stores that are unionizing/unionized are being just closed with no warnings.
The other half of what you said, releasing a buggy product and fixing it afterwards - that happens all the time and it's usually a bit PR win since users appreciate "bug fixing velocity" more than they appreciate a bug free game... However, negative patches (where more things are broken than fixed) can be a death knell for a game - one good example of this is the Leviathan DLC for EU4[1]... Paradox spent months afterwards doing PR catch up to try and re-ingratiate themselves with the community.
1. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1416420/Expansion__Europa...
The fact the outsourcing company is in the same building and has positions open that could be filled by the now-redundant QA staff is accidental.
As for the companies fighting tooth and nail against unionization attempts, I don't blame them any more than I blame a dog for eating food I drop on the floor. It's just what they do. If we want a more equitable playing field for unionization we need to support policies and politicians to make that happen. Waving fists at for-profit enterprises accomplishes nothing.
Unionization actually generally helps company growth in the long term since it's beneficial to the company - it just hurts stocks in the short term because the stock market hates unions.
What’s the general feeling? I can’t see their working conditions being genuinely terrible or unsafe, or the pay being that unfair. Perhaps they’re being driven too hard?
I'm on the side of those unionizing. Work conditions don't need to be unsafe for folks to unionize, and I'm fairly confident in saying that the vast majority of folks everywhere (in tech anyway) are paid an unfairly low amount for the value they generate.
If I have an employee that generates 100M a year, but I have boundless applicants that can perform that same task then the unfortunate reality is that person is not that valuable.
Just because a union isn’t “needed”, doesn’t mean it can’t be helpful.
The 100M a year here is generally rapidly competed away in this situation.
Value generation should be +/- the only metric for salary(besides whether or not you negatively affect the rest of team because of your behavior)
Rightfully so too -- none of the programming jobs I've had have made me believe that crunch time is actually necessary. But, management has to plan not to have crunch time rather than rely on it regularly.
Under a union, the gaming industry will have to give a lot more time to work on tasks that have a specific deadline that can't be moved (like tie-ins with external events that won't get delayed, such as the super bowl for example).
Isn't that the equivalent of other jobs in other industries where no qualification is required?
I know it's got a particularly bad reputation in SV but software developers are long overdue a strong union.
Can I ask what you are basing this assumption on?
They sell a position to a qualified candidate. Keyword is sell. They're not going to tell you what frustrations other staff have, or if they treat their workers like shit, or if they make unreasonable demands that aren't in the job description, or if scope-creep on a project 4 months down the line will require me to start putting in overtime I didn't agree to, etc.
If you know of an accurate way to determine what the day-to-day working conditions are for any arbitrary position in any company over an extended period of employment (including how work conditions will change with things like leadership changes, mergers, departmental transfers, special projects, etc.), shoot me an email because I will invest in whatever magic it is.
The general consensus seems to be that good QA is highly valuable. As for if their pay were unfair, would they not leave for a better pay/safer working conditions?
My personal take is that people in the software industry don’t understand what terrible working conditions are. Running out of odwalla or having non-organic fruit in the micro kitchen is not terrible.
What's "fair" got to do with it? If they can get more, they should. Companies don't stop at "fair". CEOs don't stop at "fair".
Is this in general or in this specific case of defending their decision to unionize?
In general, I feel that QA should be paid as much as devs, when they are good. I've worked with a couple of "holy shit, how did you find that?" level of exceptional, and I felt they deserved more than I was paid and actively argued as much with our manager. Those people made me better, they made the products better, which ultimately made the company better. Keeping these people around make other QA people better. Instead, they get hired away because nobody pays them their worth, and you're left with a much less capable QA team.
That is such a trash comment. Good QA/test/validation engineers are worth their weight in gold! It is a absolute crime we don't pay the profession more.