Comment by louthy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by louthy | Hacker News Reader

Don’t be so black-and-white about no-pay, no-work. It’s entirely situational and you need to assess how this could work for you. There could be upsides to hanging in there.

My anecdote: During my second job in the games industry, in London, back in the late 90s — I was working for a dev-house that had just finished its first game (I joined halfway through the project).

The lead engine programmer got an offer to work in San Francisco and left the company and I took over his role as I was the only person in the company that could develop a 3D graphics engine (and had done so at my previous job).

They were desperately trying to get two games titles funded, but were having no luck, because it was in the awkward period between the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 where the publishers were not committing.

Eventually they just ran out of money. I was asked to work for nothing whilst they tried to land a deal. Which I did. If I’d have left them there was no way they would’ve got a deal, because they wouldn’t have anybody with experience capable of developing the 3D engine. Selling the team is an important part of the deal.

It still failed, the business went under, and we all went our separate ways. The CEO (and founder) who had asked me to stay and work gratis went on to run a major studio. I went contracting for a while.

Then dotcom happened. My contracts dried up. I needed a job.

I called up my former boss and said “have you got any jobs?”.

His reply: “you start Monday”.

I traded away some of my cash, yes. But I gained loyalty and an ally in the industry. Obviously, most situations where someone isn’t paying you isn’t like this, just don’t fall into the “no pay, no work” dogmatic position by default.

This is a major "vector" of abuse in the games industry. Right now, you could go on certain Discord servers and find tens of jobs that "can't pay right now" but will have various benefits in the future.

I'm happy it worked out for you, and maybe the 90s was a different time. But now, to go for the same deal would be foolish. And come to think of it, people were raising hell about it in games, even in the late 90s.

I'd say this practice today needs to die out. I'm sure 80% of companies with a temporary cash crunch (but a legitimate business model) can get bank credit to cover salaries. It's not even a big hassle - the business banking app usually approves the line of credit automatically in a few seconds, anyways. Depending on the regular cashflow, it can be up to small five figures - enough to pay a month or two of salaries. If they don't want to pay, that's a different matter.

This wasn’t a new role, I’d been working at the business for about 18 months by that point. It doesn’t sound like what you describe at all.

I believed in what we were doing. I’d built a new game engine for the Dreamcast (the only nextgen console available at that point), we’d created two good game demos, the team was full of industry veterans and I liked and respected everyone I worked with. I also saw the lengths my boss was going to to make it work (including remortgaging his house to finance the short term).

In hindsight it was obvious where it was going. But I wasn’t being manipulated or abused. And I will argue vigorously and vehemently that we weren’t being taken advantage of. We were fighting to save what we felt was a good thing.

> I'm sure 80% of companies with a temporary cash crunch (but a legitimate business model) can get bank credit to cover salaries

This wouldn’t be an option in the situation I describe. You would need orders and evidence of delayed payments that can be used to cover the loans once they arrive.

That kind of finance is actually quite hard to get in the UK.

As someone in game studio leadership, I found UK business loans easy to access up to 1:1 debt-to-assets. Perhaps it was different in the 90s. And I can understand if it's a scrappy start-up with no assets, though the older I get, the more I believe those business models are irresponsible and often have negative externalities (like someone going unpaid).

You justify working for free, and I get it. Sometimes, I worked for free in my companies, but it built my equity value. I can also somewhat get it if it’s for a good cause—if you personally want a change that your labor effects in the world.

Working for free for someone else without anything of value in return is a different matter. Even if, in the end, you became friends and got a job. Some people in the games industry will say this is normal, but it’s not (and by law in some cases). For example, the UK's living wage is where society decided to draw the line between fair labour relations and abuse.

When it comes to working for free or almost free, I think whether you'd get much better labor conditions elsewhere matters. In many cases, the answer is yes. That's a good litmus test for unfair compensation.

> maybe the 90s was a different time

Yes. There was a great need for anyone with IT knowledge, and the demand was far greater than the available labour.

I remember in 98 I got a job in a (financial) brokerage, and the required skills were:

  show up on time
  don't leave before stock exchange closed
  wear a clean shirt
  be a nice to customers (all were affluent)
  know how to use conditional formatting in Excel
  know how to connect a PC to multiple screens
  know how to place different spreadsheets/windows in those different screens

I knew/could do 'more' than that but hey, money was OK, work was 15mins walking distance

Perhaps in the 90s where we still had some semblance of a social contract on taking care of your debts and your workers.

In the 20's, that's all been torn down. Gifting isn't only commonplace but are being busted out at untold scales these days. There's no sense of community, networks are weaker than ever, and workers have less right than ever, so everyone's struggling. This is all doubly true for the games industry.

Whilst I respect your experience, is there a chance you may not have been able to find a different opportunity in that time you had been working for free?

Well, I see your point, but given the answer to op was "Ok, sad to see you are not loyal to the company," he effectively dodged a bullet.

It's probable that your experience was successful because you already had personal trust on behalf of your company.

You never owe free work. You can choose to do it anyway because you trust someone, but nobody is entitled to act as if you owe them any loyalty.

> It's probable that your experience was successful because you already had personal trust on behalf of your company

Yes, absolutely, I’m merely stating that it doesn’t make sense to make ‘no pay, no work’ a dogmatic position.

And while it might be unpaid, credible CV-lines are more valuable than stretches of unemployment.

In a development job, the only reason to have nothing on your CV is a lack of effort. You can most certainly create projects that are CV worthy, that you will also benefit from financially.

There's "benefit from financially" and then there's "can survive on the income". Mostly likely any early projects won't even be Doordash levels of compensating. Especially in games which this thread focuses on. 6+.moknths of work and half of the indie games can't even break $2000.

Given current times, I understand not having time for hobby projects while trying to survive.

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