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Comment by caseyy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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