Game Developer Now Offering Employees Overtime

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."

Re:Overtime Cheaper than More People

[butterflysrage]

which putts 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.

Re:Overtime Cheaper than More People

[rkcallaghan]

butterflysrage wrote:

[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 you "going over" at any time, usually to the point of pushing you out the door as soon as you get close.

Mind you as I say this, I'm not against overtime laws or want to remove them in any way. However, overtime is helping to create more part-time jobs. As I said though, the solution here to create more full time jobs is not to remove overtime but rather to further increase the pressure by requiring benefit packages to be extended to all employees regardless of the hours worked. Most benefits require some employee contribution, such as insurance fees, premiums, 401(k) contributions, etc. Or an employer could simply raise their payroll, and get rid of employer tied benefits altogether, a more reasonable approach in my opinion.

~Rebecca

Re:Overtime Cheaper than More People

[91degrees]

Absolutely. I know from personal experience I've spent hours on a problem working late and fixed it in 5 minutes the next day. After an 8 hour day you;re not going to get a lot from an employee.