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Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

Then by definition, that’s what their time is worth. It should alarm animators that they’re paid so little. It alarmed me as a gamedev when I saw how much webdevs earned in comparison. It’s partly why I left, and I was much happier for it.

No amount of legislation or shame articles will change the reality that market forces have profound effects, and these effects are difficult to break. Unions try. To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a successful one yet for software, but I’m ignorant of the art world; maybe they have one. But be prepared to receive exactly what the union can give you, and no more.

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> It should alarm animators that they’re paid so little. It alarmed me as a gamedev when I saw how much webdevs earned in comparison. It’s partly why I left, and I was much happier for it.

Well, as a software engineer game development is among the lowest-paying jobs you can have, and you usually don't need any special training to switch to something more remunerative. As an artist, though, there's nothing hugely better you can just switch to without doing a lot of training, which is a tough bargain given how expensive art school can be. Sometimes people successfully pivot to graphic or UI design, which is generally more lucrative, but that's about it.

Ironically, game dev at a medium or large studio is actually one of the more stable and lucrative careers in the art world, unlike software development where it's the opposite.

> To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a successful one yet for software, but I’m ignorant of the art world; maybe they have one.

Yes, animators in L.A. at many major studios (e.g. Disney) are unionized, and as a result they're among the best jobs you can get in that field. They still work long hours, but you can earn six-figure compensation with good benefits if you specialize in the right things (generally the more technical you are, the better off you are).

(Source: lots of friends in that industry.)

This is like a collective action problem. Any industry with enthusiasts or which is itself a hobby is subject to this behavior.

People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Game Devs are the first example I thought of here.

If you love games, that's great.. but why not go work in literally any other software dev work for maybe 2x the pay and/or 1/2 the hours.

As Don Draper said 'That's what the money is for'.

Plenty more money and time to buy & play games.

That’s never going to happen unless they unionize. People are not going to voluntarily turn down jobs as a collective everywhere at the same time in mass numbers.

But then by definition, that’s what their labor is worth. Unions can be a stopgap measure, but they can’t correct the underlying market forces. Or at least, I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal, which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit. Not my cup of tea, but I’m also privileged not to have chosen a field suffering from a surplus of labor.

People really can get themselves out, though. I did. There’s no reason for individuals to subject themselves to it unless that’s what they really want. I.e. it doesn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing that situations like these exist.

> I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal, which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit. Not my cup of tea, but I’m also privileged not to have chosen a field suffering from a surplus of labor.

It sounds like you actually have a wildly incorrect view of how unions can and do work. you may want to do some more reading and research. For example, the WGA and SAG unions do not pay based on seniority nor does everyone make the same. They do mandate minimums for certain kinds of work but that’s about it. They also have rules about what the studios can and can’t do.

That being said, it probably does come at the cost of fewer people being able to find employment than the talent pool exists but it’s hard to measure / support that claim considering there’s more actors and writers now than ever before.

I’d be interested to learn. If there aren’t harmful effects to outliers (I.e. exceptional people can still earn a great deal) then that does give me pause. Possibly enough to change my mind.

Thanks. If you have any references on where specifically to start reading, feel free to drop them here. Otherwise I’ll start at the acronyms you mentioned.

Most union contracts still allow for KPI's and bonuses, which can be customized and based on personal goals you set with your employer. So not sure what you mean?

My question is: what are the downsides to unionizing? Whenever someone presents something as having no downside, it’s particularly important to try to examine that.

Comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39074679 are making me think twice, but there must be some catch with unions, or else everyone would do it.

The downsides are the same as any other organization of people with all the same flaws. The goals of the leaders diverging from the interests of the members, unions negotiating contracts that are harmful to the health of the business (although that’s also on the companies involved to some extent).

As for rewards, look at how actors, writers, directors etc get paid - the vast majority of those professions you never hear about and only hear about the ones that are making insane amounts of money from it. The union rules also covers things like residuals and stuff but again afaik it’s all about establishing minimums - the exceptional talent can always negotiate a better deal when they are in demand.

That’s exactly what a union is, a way to force the market to deal with a collective and buck wage lowering market forces. It involves putting gatekeeping licensing in place and making that license a legal requirement for any work done by that collective. This prevents rogue independents from depressing wages. With a union you give up some free agency in exchange for higher wages, better work life balance and job stability.

Any sufficiently powerful group of people can make 2 + 2 = 5. In this case, the Japanese animation industry is concentrated, so they can demand lots of hours for little pay.

Of course, when you make 2 + 2 = 5, there's always a -1 floating out there that someone else has to suffer for. Right now, the animation industry sets the price, so the individual animators take the hit. If the animators unionize, then they can push back on that. The market forces here are that artists cost money, but the production committees and studios don't want to pay for them, so they arrange the industry in such a way as to keep artists out of the picture.

which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit.

You're implying that being paid by seniority isn't already the case for most of the tech industry. Last time I checked, most job adverts are looking for "X years of experience in Y".

> Or at least, I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal

The work culture in europe is largely based on standardized work contracts, enforced by unions. For example, the entire railway industry in Germany is collectively unionized (~40k members) and is holding negotiations right now, to renew the terms of these standardized contracts.

The goal of a union is not to "make everyone equal", it is to enforce collective bargaining rights. This usually does lead to better employment conditions for everyone involved though.

Yes, that is why I defined it as "This is like a collective action problem."

> People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'.

Why? If I was really passionate about something, I would not mind low pay. For me, the blocker is that I'm not quite so passionate about anything. I suspect a lot of people think they're passionate about games but really are just addicted.

Congratulations, you just lowered wages for everyone involved across the board.

I'm happy because I got the job!

This is the classic problem for photography for example, which is a hobby of mine.

You see a lot of hobbyists elbow into paid work, to the detriment of people actually making a living of it. It puts a ceiling on what people are willing to pay for the typical work - engagement, wedding, headshot photography for example.

Photojournalism is a bit of a weird case because, in my opinion at least, its always been populated by nepobabies and other sorts who weren't commanding proper living wages because they didn't really have to.

Really hard to dissuade people from passion.

From a different perspective: teachers. From most absolute criteria, teaching is a horrible profession. Significant credential requirements, lousy pay, hard hours, dealing with occasional rotten child/parent. Yet millions agree to do it because they want to impact the next generation.

So I'm 40, and I have to tell you a dark secret.. Most friends & family who ended up going into teaching.. don't particularly like kids by the time they are actually this far into their career.

I think a lot of people go into it because they have a comfortable middle/upper-middle class suburban upbringing, reasonably bright (but not like super high achievement focused), without any specific areas of interest (STEM), and teachers play an outsize role in their life as far as non-family adults. Teachers being an uncreative lot, suggest to them - hey, why not pursue teaching.

In theory teaching should be a good, portable middle class job in that you aren't restricted to 2-3 mega cities like tech or finance or whatever. In practice it doesn't really work out that way. For one thing the certification process varies by state so your degrees are not immediately portable.

Further, in teaching you literally have to wait for someone to retire or die to get a shot. Most of my cohort who went into teaching had to slog it out in bad districts, bad schools, hard/bad roles (ie - special ed) in precarious employment (substitute teaching for years, or non-union/tenure schools like charters).

There is maybe 2 people I know who actually made it teaching back home in their hometown like they intended. The rest eventually found a full time role within 30 miles of where they were willing to live, after 5 years or more bouncing around in precarious employment.

>If you love games, that's great.. but why not go work in literally any other software dev work for maybe 2x the pay and/or 1/2 the hours.

1. Work is still half your waking life for decades. Why not attempt to make it quality work instead of a slog if you can help it?

2. Less money =/= barely afford rent. I was still making $160k at my last role with 7YOE, so we're not talking "can barely pay rent". I'm a single 20's male with no car or school payments to make, and pretty low maintenance hobbies (hiking, games, art). Even in a high CoL area, doubling my salary won't necessarily double my QoL.

3. Gamedev is still a craft, so the more time you spend honing it the better a dev you become (generally). Even if I chose to leave gamedev as hobby work on the side, it reduces my ability to progress.

4. Gamedev works on similar "it's who you know" logic. And the best way to connect with fellow devs in a meaningful matter is to be in the industry. If you have aspirations to open your own studio one day these connections and portfolio is priceless for selling yourself to others.

5. Playing a game is very different from making one. Just because you like playing games doesn't mean you will enjoying making one yourself. The opposite can be true as well. Gamedev digs into domains like graphics, physics, UI/UX, and even psychology in applied ways that challenge engineers, even ones who rarely play games. A graphics programmer is a wizard who will be snatched by many industries if they open up, but if you wanna home your craft, you don't have too many other places for such specific work. Games, 3d animation, GPUs, and a few research labs (often looking for PhDs though).

Re: the money/time

The thing is that gamedev is one of the few industries you reliably hear people bully 60/80/100 hour weeks outside of say - medicine, law, finance. Or startups where you grind for a couple years hoping the lottery ticket of your equity pays off.

However, it does not pay anything near medicine, law, or finance wages. Nor do you get equity like a startup. And the labor practices of game studios in terms of benefits, layoffs, etc have always sounded far worse.

If the ROI is worth it for you, great (and $160k ain't bad to be fair, I've heard lower than that in gamedev). People just need to go into it with eyes wide open though and not foreclose their options early (by overly focussing on gamedev niche coursework in college for example).

> Then by definition, that’s what their time is worth.

Only if the market for animation is efficient.

If it wasn't efficient, it is because some participants in the market (namely the animators) aren't choosing to maximize their economic utility by doing a different (higher paid) job.

Or because:

* Switching costs for changing careers are high.

* Collusion between employers.

* Collusion between employees.

* Products being exchanged are not commoditized.

"Free markets" work great for determining prices for easily manufactured commodity products like toilet paper. They work way less great for basically everything else.

Employing someone to create artwork is just about as far from an efficient market as I can imagine.

Code for America's union ratified their first contract last year. Kickstarter United ratified their first contract in 2022. I myself was in the Glitch union when we won voluntary recognition several years ago.

(We had layoffs unrelated to the union and more related to a bad monetization scheme and high costs, during which the union negotiated increased severance and health insurance coverage vs we were initially offered.)

Union successes are definitely growing in tech.

Just wanted to say thank you, this is interesting to hear. Is there really no downside to unionizing? It seems too good to be true, or that it must come with some kind of catch. But enough people here have said nope, no catch, that I’m starting to reconsider whether it’s possible.

Unions can cause industries/companies to stagnate if they make it too hard to fire people or if they squeeze their respective companies out of too much money.

For union members pay, layoffs, etc. are often decided by seniority and not by ability or how hard you work.

Whether or not that's worth it is up to you.

Unions sometimes charge union dues in order to fund the operations of the union (i.e. pay for negotiators, fund initiatives of a larger union if you joined one instead of forming an independent union, etc.). If you only consider your total compensation this is a potential downside, but the money has to come from _somewhere_ and often the union can win benefits that exceed the value of the dues being paid in.

A more subtle "downside" is that unions represent the workers—including the workers you _don't_ like. That project manager who you hate is also a laborer with rights who deserves protection from the union, and at some point you will need to come to terms with cooperating with people you think have horrific political views or whatever. I use quotes because I don't think this is a real downside at all. Unions are not simply a cost-benefit option you choose because it helps you personally, they are the counterbalance to the implicit power employers have over their employees. Even if your benefits are great and you're paid very well, you should still have a union to represent you.

> but I’m ignorant of the art world; maybe they have one

The Film Actors Guild is a union in the art world with pretty significant market power.

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