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Comment by devindotcom | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure that I feel this guy has much of a point. He got to do something he loves for $11 an hour, when many people are taking any job they can for minimum wage. I know it's a false equivalency, but the real point is there wasn't some big conspiracy to keep him down, he just didn't really like the conditions (common, vague problems - a couple crappy coworkers, some bad management, phony atmosphere) and he didn't get the raise he wanted and didn't get hired full time, when neither of these were promised. I sympathize, but this also smacks of entitlement.

Organizing is probably a good idea, there are already freelancer unions out there. But is that going to fix temps not being treated like employees who have been there for years, or make them more likely to be hired on?

I'm not saying we shouldn't all work together to make a better workplace for workers of all stripes. But this guy just doesn't seem to have much to complain about.

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I'm not sure why contractors or freelancers need a real "union". It kind of runs counter to the whole point of being an independent worker. Part of being a freelancer or contractor is that you already have all the power and you get to set the terms. If you don't like it, you walk away and go somewhere else.

Things like the Freelancer's Union are really about getting group benefits.

The problem is that you have an entire industry set up to push people into contracting who really should be employees. In other words, there are lots of "independent contractors" out there who have one client they work on full-time, which really does not fit under any reasonable definition of an independent businessperson. The companies just prefer to have these people defined as freelancers so they don't have to pay for the types of benefits (health insurance, retirement, etc.) that employees get, and to make them more easily disposable.

Part of being a freelancer or contractor is that you already have all the power

This is a joke, right? How much power does a single independent contractor have by themselves over (say) Electronic Arts? Especially when they have no other clients to fall back on should EA tell them to go pound sand?

Well, if you have only one client, and no money, you do indeed have no power. This is why you try not to get into that situation...

QA does not have a lot to do during most of the production so they should not be employees. If your job is to play the game what are you going to do while there is no game to play?

There is a lot more to QA than just execution. On any normal team I'd expect them to spend considerable time creating a test plan and start figuring out the ways to test specific things, well before the game is in a playable state.

Do you expect the planning to take more hours than actual testing? In a typical title I have seen there are about 20-50 contract testers working for few months. With 2 year development cycle they need to spend 5-10 times more time on planning to justify employing them full time. For reference the entire game art and tech planning takes about 100 times less resources (dozen people over 1-4 months).

Yeh you really need to talk about organizing the major studios first. Though BECTU in the UK has success representing freelancers in the TV industry albeit from having recognition in the major players BBC/ITN etc.

Ill point this post out to one of the people I know in BECTU not sure if anyone has got the Games industry on its Organizing list

I don't get why the guy completely stepped out of the music industry. Apart from failing with agency it sounded like he had some musical talent and was at least making a living.. he opened an agency with royalties... he then takes a low wage job as a QA guy... strange. Smacks of mid life crisis.

I don't see what was wrong with what happened. In the beginning it was fun. Then there was pressure to get the game out so the mood changed a little. He got demotivated and quit. Perhaps I missed something.

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