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Game Developer Now Offering Employees Overtime
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Oct 03, 2007 01:32 PM
from the ea-spouse-cries-with-relief dept.
from the ea-spouse-cries-with-relief dept.
Via Joystiq comes a story from the European game development website Develop, saying that the UK developer Free Radical will be offering employees overtime for crunch mode sessions. "Steve Ellis of Free Radical says the days of 'bonuses that pay off your mortgage are long gone' and that they've 'decided to start paying people for the work that they do -- even when that work is outside their normal hours.' Ellis says that the industry as a whole will eventually go this way, but they prefer to do it sooner rather than later. Although there are so many companies who are guilty of not paying their employees for working extra hours, EA gets picked on more often than not because of the infamous EA Spouse saga."
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EA Games: The Human Story 1143 comments
An anonymous reader writes "An Electronic Arts employee spouse speaks out against company crunch time practices. From the post: "EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?"
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Not the entire industry... (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that the big names, companies like iD, Raven, and SplashDamage will continue on a by-project basis, simply because their teams are so radically different.
Interesting idea, though, and it definitely helps bring 'game developer' closer into the fold with 'real' jobs, giving it more weight with skeptics who don't understand the industry.
Not enough ads (Score:5, Funny)
11 sentences to 14 ads is just too small of a cost/income ratio (yes, I counted).
</sarcasm>
How pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
Idiots
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure how well this pay-for-overtime concept will do though. There are a lot of ambitious people waiting to break into the industry, and the suits at the top know this and take advantage of it. Simple supply and de
Re:How pathetic (Score:4, Insightful)
Gotta prove you're worth it in experience and what you bring to the table before you start making demands. Thankfully, employ at Free Radical is a pretty good heavyweight on the resume and those working there are very likely to be able to demand overtime pay at their next gig.
Parent
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Why does it blow your mind that the young'uns will work these absurd hours? Here's how it goes:
Young'un: Hello! I'm entering the working world under a staggering mountain of college debt.
Old'un: Will you work 70+ hours a week for months?
Young'un: Gee, that sounds kind of exploitative.
Old'un: This guy will. Don't worry though, I hear Starbucks is hiring.
Young'un: No no, I'll take it.
Old'un: Perfect! By the way we've cut bonuses.
Young'un: Oh.
Old'un: I mean, I still get them. But you don't. Sou
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Plenty of other jobs, including programming/IT ones, that don't have this problem AND pay better. Of course when you have so many
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But this is good news, definitely. FWIW, I get paid hourly, and I bill like crazy if someone needs something done and I need to reschedule a lot of work or work overnight beca
Re:How pathetic (Score:4, Insightful)
The number of people who want to break into the industry leads to workers making compromises. Just like acting, where you have to work a minimum wage job 95% of the time so you have the flexibility to stand in line for 5 hours to get the chance at landing a one time role that pays $50. Or professional sports where by age 6 you spend hour after hour practicing, most likely will end up in a $20k/year practice and will suffer life long physical pain, all for the chance of having a big league career that lasts less than 3 years.
Parent
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Not like this will happen in the US (Score:5, Informative)
We don't buy slaves any more, we rent them.
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Of course it is hard to tell anything from a single article since it could very well be the reporter projecting his fervent wishes onto the data.
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An exemption was inserted in the last few years that covers "computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, and other similarly skilled workers in the computer field who meet certain tests regarding their job duties and who are paid at least $455 per week on a salary basis or paid on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour."
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm [dol.gov]
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EA response (Score:2)
Could be the wrong solution (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is more cash available, the solution is good, regular bonuses, and higher salaries. The problem is the management obsession wit bums on seats and hours clocked in. Coders and designers especially are knowledge workers. It's to do with clear thinking, experience, efficiency and inspiration. you can't chain someone to a desk and expect them to produce a linear amount of results per hour. Coding and designing is not bricklaying. Management panic that they can't tell if a game coder is working hard or not, or whether he good at his job or not, so they settle for the one metric they understand -> hours worked.
It's a deeply flawed method, and paying them for the extra hours just penalizes those who are more efficient and get stuff done faster. Pay people by results.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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[Overtime's quality of being cheaper than hiring more employees] puts it totally at odds with why overtime was first introduced. During the great depression, overtime was introduced to pressure employers to hire extra staff rather then simply working the ones they had into the ground.
Overtime still works that way, just not in the way that you expect. It is cheaper still to hire more part-time employees and refuse them both benefits AND overtime. Overtime contributes significantly to this equation; as it is possible for a part time employee to be paid overtime on a short term basis without running afoul of federal laws that would change their status to full time. The resulting expenses however cause any employer of part time employees to be downright paranoid of
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Thanks for posting that. I agree with it. I think (hope) I write well designed, well documented, well tested, usable code. But honestly, my employer probably gets 5 hours of solid work a day from me and then my concentr
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It'll likely lead to saner game release schedules. Instead of saying "Oct 9th 2007, no matter hell or high water", it'll be "forth quarter 2007, probably".
Re:Dupe (kinda) (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the problems with allowing businesses the level of freedom that they have over compensation. Sure minimum wages and similar mandates tend to be problematic when not thought through, but so is the idea that an employer should be allowed to require constant overtime as well. Burn out is a serious matter, and as is killing morale. There just aren't many industries that have workers that thrive by working constant overtime because the business model was messed up.
Parent