Uber for example has always struggled to operate in my country because anytime it tries to push driver wages down, drivers go on a nation wide strike and protest outside its offices. This prevents them from reducing costs without hurting themselves, so they can’t undercut the competition and reap the reward of becoming a de facto monopoly.
> when the studios create VFX divisions in 3rd world countries and then tell you if you want to continue your career you'll follow the jobs overseas
This is one of the things that has to get worse before it gets better. You let them, but you don't go there (or maybe you go, who knows). You start growing a spine
Then let them realize that they "can't come knocking" when the studio is somewhere else. Start putting the foot down with deadlines and revisions (nobody said it was going to be easy). Let them see how the quality suffers with an offshore team with much less skin in the game
"Oh but I might lose my job if I don't do how they tell me how to do it", well, yes. But the way things go you'll lose the job eventually when the company go bust
I was under the impression graphics programming is low-paid relative to similarly difficult programming (or even less difficult like framework CRUD).
This could be like when a romantic partner says, “Let’s be friends.”
They usually don’t want to be friends.