Life

[SecretAsianMan]

There are plenty of unions where I work, just not any that I can join for what I do.  I was told that several years before I started they talked about unionizing but that went nowhere.  As far as benefits goes, I have an HSA with a high deductible but our company offers several health care plans.  I chose the high deductible plan because I rarely visit the doctor (I actually haven't been to one in several years) and I have enough in my HSA to cover me in the future.  I'm technically underpaid for what I do (I make 83% of the standard pay rate for someone in my position) but I live in an area with a low cost of living to help even it out a bit.  Even then, I'd still say I'm underpaid but who wouldn't say that.  I'm definitely overworked though.  The real problem we have is a lot of people are retiring and we're not staffing back up enough to compensate.  There's a fairly large age gap here and a ton of knowledge is walking out the door with very little time for people like me to learn what I need.

[Badfinger]

Today was day 12 of 16 straight days I will be working. The only day I'm not working is specifically a day I requested off because I have two events, and the GM even asked if it was really a day I needed (which is to say I would not have gotten a day through normal scheduling). I worked 55+ hours last week. I made $15 today because it was raining and Columbus day, and the restaurant depends on the business crowd for non-theater performance days. I don't have insurance. People with my qualifications and skill set are making $30+/hr for the jobs I have been applying to, but no one is biting to hire me.

 

I met a girl I really like, though. One day I will have time I might be able to spend to see her.

[Hermie]

To make a contrasting post, I'm positively elated lately. I'm prepping everything to move back to Norway for my new job, and I just came back from Oslo after finding a fantastic apartment. It's a little more expensive than we were looking for, but it's really central and has everything we would want. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, like the last two years have been kind of like purgatory.

 

While in Oslo I met up with a very good friend from university, that I haven't gotten to see since. We and our respective mates had dinner then stayed up late just talking about everything and nothing. I haven't had an evening like that in the whole time I've been living here, and it felt so nice. We will have friends again!

 

 

One damper is that we have to deal with my girlfriends visa. We fulfill every requirement, but have to slog through the paperwork and get to worry for months before it gets approved. Not to mention paying an huge sum to get her official documents and birth certificate from Brazil, without having to there herself. 

 

Her current job wants her to continue working from Norway and occasionally going back until they find someone new, which is great. But the law states that you can't leave the country while waiting for the visa, so that might prove a problem. We're hoping to work it out, but it's complicated.

[ihavefivehat]

Just got hired somewhere and while my income won't be as good as with the meat department job, I'm still really glad I decided to keep looking. Thanks again for the advice, guys.

[Dewar]

Yay! I'm glad you were able to hold out.

[Chris]

That assumes unions exist everywhere you might need one! For example, ain't no unions for game developers in Amurka.

(I don't think there are any in other places either though?)

[Twig]

(I actually wouldn't know! I only added those last two words just to be on the safe side in case they did exist elsewhere.)

[syntheticgerbil]

Well most other countries get government benefits such as sweet healthcare that doesn't cause you to go bankrupt so a lot of the union need is offset.

[Twig]

Well in this case I thought people were talking more about shitty work environments where you're basically forced to work overtime without bonus pay unless you don't care about losing the job, sorta thing. Most game developers actually do offer health care. (At least, for programmers - I've never applied to / been contacted by any that didn't.)

[Badfinger]

Just got hired somewhere and while my income won't be as good as with the meat department job, I'm still really glad I decided to keep looking. Thanks again for the advice, guys.

 

Yay, I'm glad! I have certainly felt the squeeze of needing some kind of income, no matter what. But I'm sincerely happy you have found somewhere to work where you aren't having to deal with things outside the scope of work during work.

[Merus]

There's no union in Australia, I know this because Team Bondi was able to operate with impunity.

[mikemariano]

Oct Ides

[syntheticgerbil]

Well in this case I thought people were talking more about shitty work environments where you're basically forced to work overtime without bonus pay unless you don't care about losing the job, sorta thing. Most game developers actually do offer health care. (At least, for programmers - I've never applied to / been contacted by any that didn't.)

My experience in Austin is just multiple companies running people as contract workers for the max year (?) using their equipment, waiting for the contract to run out and either put a waiting period between the next contract so it looks good to the state of Texas or just hiring a different person.

 

Bioware Austin was just a shady mess of this, and it's sort of guessed that about 250 or more of the 500 of the people they let go in the year of Jedi Knights New Order Time's launch were contract. Also these contracts were not hourly, still a fixed monthly sum, just no benefits or chance of unemployment insurance. This also prevents them from paying a higher percentage of unemployment to the state because it looks like they hardly ever let anyone go to the state.

[Apelsin]

(I actually wouldn't know! I only added those last two words just to be on the safe side in case they did exist elsewhere.)

 

Yeah, there are no Game Dev specific unions here in Sweden either. However, some of the other unions are broad enough that we can join those instead. Upside to that is that the unions are quite a bit larger than they would be otherwise and as such have a bit more power behind them.

[Gormongous]

I wish there were a teaching adjunct union I could join without becoming a literal pariah in higher education. My five-year assistantship runs out next academic year and, though I'd like to keep teaching at a college level, I am really having trouble with the idea of working forty hours a week for $3,000 a semester while also finishing my dissertation, especially when my institution is making $200,000 in tuition per class assuming all twenty spots are filled by students.

[Justin Leego]

Just out of interest, how difficult is it to start a union in the US? Do people have to join a union specific to their precise role or are there more general workers' unions that could suffice?

[Nachimir]

No game developer unions in the UK, and there's often been a feeling that IGDA bestow a but of funding on new chapters, but after that they're on their own and developers tend to feel their money is just being funnelled to the US.

 

There are many, many more meetups than there used to be, many of them full of developers who are between AAA jobs. I think those might have potential to form a union that could spread into the bigger studios.

[Twig]

My experience in Austin is just multiple companies running people as contract workers for the max year (?) using their equipment, waiting for the contract to run out and either put a waiting period between the next contract so it looks good to the state of Texas or just hiring a different person.

 

Bioware Austin was just a shady mess of this, and it's sort of guessed that about 250 or more of the 500 of the people they let go in the year of Jedi Knights New Order Time's launch were contract. Also these contracts were not hourly, still a fixed monthly sum, just no benefits or chance of unemployment insurance. This also prevents them from paying a higher percentage of unemployment to the state because it looks like they hardly ever let anyone go to the state.

Fair enough. I suppose I should've mentioned that I was only talking full-time positions. I wouldn't expect contract work to give me health insurance, though not because I think it shouldn't.

[aeolist]

Just out of interest, how difficult is it to start a union in the US? Do people have to join a union specific to their precise role or are there more general workers' unions that could suffice?

It's difficult generally speaking. Most unions are old and well-established and even those are getting heavily pressured by state governments (which are more effectively controlled by conservatives than the federal govt) and corporations. Also culturally the right-wingers have done a very good job at demonizing unions so plenty of people who would be helped by them don't want them.

[Dewar]

My experience in Austin is just multiple companies running people as contract workers for the max year (?) using their equipment, waiting for the contract to run out and either put a waiting period between the next contract so it looks good to the state of Texas or just hiring a different person.

 

Bioware Austin was just a shady mess of this, and it's sort of guessed that about 250 or more of the 500 of the people they let go in the year of Jedi Knights New Order Time's launch were contract. Also these contracts were not hourly, still a fixed monthly sum, just no benefits or chance of unemployment insurance. This also prevents them from paying a higher percentage of unemployment to the state because it looks like they hardly ever let anyone go to the state.

 

I think that's a pretty common thing tech-company wide. Microsoft does the same thing on the Redmond campus. For contractors they want to keep, they simply give you high enough pay to make it through the 3 months break and then bring you back on.

[syntheticgerbil]

$3,000 a semester as in like six months for $3,000?

[Gormongous]

$3,000 a semester as in like six months for $3,000?

 

Yeah, and my institution actually pays fairly well compared to other places. As an adjunct professor, you get paid anywhere from $500 to (maybe, on very rare occasions) $4500 to teach one class for one semester. If you want something approaching a living wage, you'll probably have to teach three classes a semester, which is pushing eighty hours a week of work to prep and grade. Meanwhile, you're getting maybe two percent of the revenue that the college or university makes from the class that you create, teach, and support entirely on your own. This is the state of the academy in America right now.

 

Honestly, I can't think about it for more than a couple minutes at a time. There's so much anger and anxiety there for me.

[JonCole]

For what it's worth, my sister in law taught as an adjunct professor and had an equally anger-inducing experience. I remember reading two good articles at The Atlantic about it in the past year or so -

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-worst-time-of-the-year-to-be-an-adjunct-professor/282314/

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/the-adjunct-professor-crisis/361336/

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah that's not fair, you should get paid way more than that for your time and expertise.

[prettyunsmart]

Well, this is an email I just received:

 

"Are you able to be an expert for the national media on the following topic of video games? See below. We are trying to find a university expert who can go on camera with Al Jazeera English to talk about the gaming business. Let me know if this is something you are interested in or know of someone within the university who you think might be a good fit.

 

Signed, University PR"

 

I am both excited and terrified.