Unlivable Wages in Expensive Cities Are Plaguing the Video Game Industry (digitaltrends.com) 495
An anonymous reader shares a report: Crunch has been one of the biggest topics in video game industry news over the last year with reports of massive studio layoffs at established studios following closely behind. Another topic relating to these issues that hasn't received as much attention, however, are the low and unfair wages developers are being paid in exchange for their increasingly demanding work. Just like issues with crunch and layoffs, it's a problem developers are afraid to speak openly about because of the fear of retaliation from current and future job opportunities. In light of all the news surrounding crunch and layoffs at studios, Beck Hallstedt sparked the conversation about developers being paid unlivable wages on Twitter, using the Quality Assurance (QA) jobs at Gearbox Software as a prime example.
They go on to say, "I know crunch is the big thing to criticize in games but please, please, please talk about how bad wages are too. People are living in their cars and pulling out loans to pay rent because of this stuff." They point out information from PayScale, which shows the average Gearbox Software salary at $54,000, but that number isn't the full picture. That average is taken from a small group of people -- in Gearbox Software's case, 10 -- who reported their earnings. Some of these individuals are senior level designers that are making as much as 105k, bumping up the average salary higher than it is. [...] Many game studios are located in major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York. This makes the cost of living far higher than it is in other places in the country. Since many studios do not allow their staff to work remotely, developers have to live in the city or relocate to find consistent work. Rent, food, transportation, and sometimes even student loans and medical care can factor into the cost of living.
Hallstedt has been working as a freelance concept artist for over three years, with their first in-house job being a 2D Art internship at High Voltage Software in Chicago. "I was hired at $12 an hour, which I'm honestly happy with for an intern position in the Midwest. I was learning as much as I was contributing, and the artists there spent time guiding me through adapting to a studio pipeline," they said. "It was great, and the generosity of those artists has guided my entire career." A few weeks after the internship ended, Netherrealm Studios reached out and asked Hallstedt to submit their resume as an associate concept artist. During the interview, they were offered to work on Injustice 2 for their standard 9-month temporary contract. The offer they received wasn't anywhere near what they imagined it would be. The salary was $11 an hour, which was $1 less than their prior internship had offered, except that this would a full-time commitment.
They go on to say, "I know crunch is the big thing to criticize in games but please, please, please talk about how bad wages are too. People are living in their cars and pulling out loans to pay rent because of this stuff." They point out information from PayScale, which shows the average Gearbox Software salary at $54,000, but that number isn't the full picture. That average is taken from a small group of people -- in Gearbox Software's case, 10 -- who reported their earnings. Some of these individuals are senior level designers that are making as much as 105k, bumping up the average salary higher than it is. [...] Many game studios are located in major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York. This makes the cost of living far higher than it is in other places in the country. Since many studios do not allow their staff to work remotely, developers have to live in the city or relocate to find consistent work. Rent, food, transportation, and sometimes even student loans and medical care can factor into the cost of living.
Hallstedt has been working as a freelance concept artist for over three years, with their first in-house job being a 2D Art internship at High Voltage Software in Chicago. "I was hired at $12 an hour, which I'm honestly happy with for an intern position in the Midwest. I was learning as much as I was contributing, and the artists there spent time guiding me through adapting to a studio pipeline," they said. "It was great, and the generosity of those artists has guided my entire career." A few weeks after the internship ended, Netherrealm Studios reached out and asked Hallstedt to submit their resume as an associate concept artist. During the interview, they were offered to work on Injustice 2 for their standard 9-month temporary contract. The offer they received wasn't anywhere near what they imagined it would be. The salary was $11 an hour, which was $1 less than their prior internship had offered, except that this would a full-time commitment.
$11 per hour? (Score:5, Informative)
cook county minimum wage! (Score:2)
cook county minimum wage!
Re:$11 per hour? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know?
That's the nice thing about living in this country and in particular contracting.
If the bill rate doesn't suit your needs, you are entirely free to try to negotiate a more reasonable bill rate, or, failing that, look for work that pays a bill rate closer to your personal needs and desires.
At some point, the company in question will find no one wants to work for them at their low wages and have to raise wages to attract and keep talent, or they have no one to work for them.
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean they will hire H1Bs or relocate to India, right ?
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean they will hire H1Bs or relocate to India, right ?
No. They will relocate to Poland [gameinformer.com] and Ukraine. There's now ~300 game studios in Poland, 22 of which have English Wikipedia pages. One of those studios produces the Witcher series, which has been voted the best game of all time. Eastern Europe has the math education to produce very clever programmers indeed.
When the going gets tough, the tough export to countries with absurdly cheap cost of living. Eastern Europe is the new hotness.
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, India got too expensive at least a decade ago. Romania was a much better alternative for a few years, not least because, like India, lots of Romanians speak quite a bit of English. As a result, Romanian wages have risen and now other eastern European countries are more attractive.
However, it's always temporary. Their wages will rise, too. Then it will be on to the next, to lift their wages. This is how globalization works to gradually erode global inequality.
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:3)
Thats just 100% false. They have a thing called the E visa or employment visa.
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
H1-B workers need to make $60K/yr, they can't be paid anything close to $11-12/hr.
Why take a job when you can't live off the wages? Because you want to work in the industry, of course. This is common in many industries, not just game development - for example, radio DJ, performing music, broadcasting, minor league baseball, etc. Over time your skills increase, your ability to command higher wages increases, etc.
That the wages don't cover living expenses is your problem, not your employer's. When people refuse to take the low wages, they will go up, until then realize it is you, the worker willing to accept $11/hr that keeps the wages at $11/hr.
Re:$11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
Economics 101 - Supply and Demand.
You can try to negotiate a higher wage, but if you are in an area, where it is easy to find people with your skill-sets or companies just don't want your skill sets. They will be entirely free to reject that wage, and pay you the value that is inline with rest of the people with the skills sets they want.
Nearly Every Kid dreamed to be a Video Game Developer. So the industry has a rush of people trying to get in. So wages will be low, because the Supply of people wanting to be a Video Game Developer is really high.
Now a COBOL programmers gets paid a lot of money, even if they are not that skilled at the job. Because they are harder to find, and the systems that are made in COBOL still need to operate. So companies are willing to pay a lot more for these people, to make sure people with those skills apply at the place, and stay there.
Re:$11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
Troll harder.
You obviously have no idea how the real world works.
You live in a fantasy land where your privileged ass got handed everything they ever wanted.
Work for a living and then come talk to me how there shouldn't be a "living wage".
Sure, the world doesn't OWE you a living wage, but a working successful society who wants a vigorous economy and productive citizens sure does. If you want to go back to feudalism be my guest, the rest of us will try to make a modern economy that actually works to produce successful outcomes at all levels instead of parroting Ayn Rand bullshit like a seventh grader.
This isn't about entitlement or the world owing people a living, it's about what kind of country, world, life we want to be living. If you think that life is all about the competition, I hope one day you find yourself reaping what you sow.
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If you think that life is all about the competition
It is. And if you demand that the company pays you a higher wage, then you'll find that your company can no longer compete with game publishers in other countries.
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as there are workers willing to accept $11/hr, wages for the job will hover around $11/hr.
Don't take an $11/hr job, then demand employer increase wages - interview for the job, get the offer, and if you can't live on the wages offered then ask for more or decline the opportunity. Employers need to be told, in no uncertain terms, when their wages are too low.
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:4, Insightful)
Repeat after me: game developer salaries are low because game developers fervently believe that "game developer" is "fun" and "cool" and is a job title that will impress the girls they will never meet because they're busy developing games 100 hrs/week and don't have time for a social life.
If all the cool, fun game developers would grow up and demand compensation commensurate with their skills and training, one or more of the following might happen.
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I worked for Ubisoft about a decade ago and was paid so little that I pointed out to them that if I actually worked the overtime they 'expected' from me, they'd actually be breaking the law as they'd effectively be paying me less than the minimum wage.
Needless to say my next appraisal wasn't great - pointing out uncomfortable facts like that brands you a pariah regardless of how skilled you are or how much you've contributed.
I resigned shortly after, unfortunately subject to a 3 month notice period. Such a
Secret benefit (Score:2)
Fortunately I was able to break into web development, a profession only marginally less respectable than a burger flipper. :)
The thing people overlook about being a burger flipper is that at least you have the option of easily stealing food to live on, a dramatic boost to your earnings..
Re: $11 per hour? (Score:5, Informative)
You went about that all wrong. The right way is to document all of your hours. Then when you are ready to quit, file a complaint with the labor department.
Show documentation, and the company will be on the hook for all that back overtime, plus a penalty which you will be paid. They can fight it, but they won't because they know that will open up an investigation into their practices.
Rinse, repeat.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
^^^^^THIS
Yes, document what they're doing, then contact an employment attorney to get it on the record.
At that point you have two options:
1) Go to the company and bargain with them. Let you know that you've contacted an employment attorney. Ask for a serious boost in pay. If you don't reach an agreement, then you can go to option 2.
2) Let the employment attorney do his thing. You may very well end up with a very tasty settlement.
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Re:$11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
$11 per hour? They could literally make more working at Target -- starting wage is $13/hr.
Then go work at Target.
It is silly to willingly accept a job, and then complain that it is "unfair".
Unemployment is at record lows, so there are plenty of other jobs available.
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Re: $11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
See salaries WON'T GO UP unless companies access to cheap labor labor is cut off. Companies can exploit workers from 3rd world countries. Too bad they don't do the same with CEOs....
Re:$11 per hour? (Score:4, Insightful)
They have to take the $11/hour in the hope that they can move up and on to better things. It's classic exploitation.
What did you expect to happen when there're more people willing to perform a job than there are positions available. It's classic supply and demand. The world doesn't owe anyone a game development job and the kinds of jobs paying $11 per hour aren't learning game development skills anyway. QA jobs in game development are people doing bug testing and writing up reports on where they clipped through the wall, not actually doing any actual development.
There are plenty of people who do independent game development or start their own small studios. Some of them even go on to become quite successful and turn in to large studios.
Re:$11 per hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
How they get away with paying wages like this ...
Mostly what they describe is hyperbole. Read the actual tweets, they aren't talking about the programmers or artists, they're talking about QA testers. From the actual tweet: @randy: your QA testers are hardly even paid a living wage. do better. The office is in Frisco Texas.
QA is an hourly role, usually part time or hourly for a 3-6 month contract and fairly low skill. The posts say their entry level QA folk are paid $10/hr. Looking around that part of Texas, other hourly low-skill short term jobs pay a similar rate.
A bit of web searching later ... Sure the work of game testing is a few steps above making pizza at CiCi's pizza buffet in Frisco, but GearBox's $10/hr tester wage is 25% more money than CiCi's $8 starting wage. As people have mentioned Target recently bumping their wages, if those people working in game QA want to stock shelves at the Frisco TX Target store for a 30% pay increase, they're free to change jobs.
If there is enough competition from other business increasing pay for entry level hourly workers, then naturally other businesses will need to follow suit. But for now that is within the prevailing wage for low skill, entry level work in that location.
Mystifying to me (Score:3)
Given how much time game developers spend working, why even have the studio and all these people living in expensive areas they will not be seeing?
To me it would make a lot more sense to have a game studio somewhere cheap, then have everyone take substantial time off after a big release (like a few months) to live somewhere really nice.
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Most of the jobs could be done remotely anyway.
Harder to target consoles remotely (Score:2)
Development of video games for Windows, macOS, X11/Linux, Android, and iOS can be done remotely provided that the employer pays enough to cover the required hardware. But I doubt it's quite as easy to remote into a console devkit.
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That devkit would be part of the required hardware the employer would need to provide. They don't need to provide enough to cover the required hardware, they need to provide it just like everyone else does. They have to buy it anyway whether you are using it at their office or your own.
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If you work at an office, you can share the devkit with others who work at the same office. So it's a matter of providing one devkit for office use vs. several for home use. Not only is the latter more expensive for a studio, but console makers have been more hesitant to allow the latter in order to preserve platform security.
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Re:Harder to target consoles remotely (Score:5, Insightful)
Work done on a "devkit" comprises testing code and assets on a console that has been modified to accept code and assets from someone other than the console maker. If you come in through a VPN, how do you see whether your code changes have noticeably increased lag, both objective (frame rate and CPU/GPU load) and subjective (much of which depends on the input and camera handling)? Or whether your assets look as they did in the program in which you designed them?
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Most people working on a game aren't working with the dev kit. They're working on assets. So that's a dumb argument even for a console game.
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If they're working on 3d assets then the employee probably needs access to a rendering farm, which is not a trivial thing to provide to an employee remotely.
Only (Literally only) if they are working on prerendered cutscenes, which is a tiny minority of all game development activity.
Wasn't sure if remote would be practical (Score:2)
I wasn't sure how viable it would truly be to have much of the game devs remote (not just for the dev kit reasons mentioned, but also it seemed like there would be a lot more group meetings and discussions on things).
It does seem alike a large part of the core team could be elsewhere in one office though, with cheap housing nearby. With office space cost reduced then maybe you could also pay the workers more (though I know it doesn't often work like that). Even just the cheaper food in smaller cities woul
Re: Mystifying to me (Score:2)
I could be wrong, but downloading an 80GiB game build to India for every bug fix may be prohibitively expensive during crunch time.
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My advice.... (Score:5, Informative)
Some one should tell them to "learn to code".
Wait? Err....umm. Nevermind.
Seriously, if you're in this position, LEAVE. Get a job with a real software company. You don't "have" to do a damn thing. You "WANT" to be a game designer. There are jobs all around you that use the same skill set, but pay much more.
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Verifiable experience for CV (Score:2)
Do they expect to slingshot into some high ranking position with this or another company because they cut their teeth working on the latest game?
Yes, at least to some extent. Console makers have historically taken relevant video game industry experience into account when choosing whether or not to approve a given indie studio, as do investors when choosing which studios to fund. So the career path was to pay your dues working for an established studio for several years and then make use of this verifiable experience when starting a studio elsewhere.
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Game developers often do get royalties
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Game developers often do get royalties
Game developers often get cheated of royalties, just like musicians.
Average? (Score:3)
Some of these individuals are senior level designers that are making as much as 105k, bumping up the average salary higher than it is.
How can an average be higher than it is?
Unrepresentative sample; skewed distribution (Score:5, Informative)
That sentence is unclear in isolation, but in context, it implies two things to me. One is that an unrepresentative sample makes the sample average higher than the population average. Another is that a few employees earning far more than average skew the distribution enough that the mean income significantly exceeds the median income.
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Some of these individuals are senior level designers that are making as much as 105k, bumping up the average salary higher than it is.
How can an average be higher than it is?
Yeah, I thought the same. Obviously what they meant to say was "inflating the average salary". Even better would be to avoid the problems inherent in averaging non-normal distributions and just provide the median, which is less sensitive to outliers.
Unlivable Wages Are Plaguing Everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
Fixed
Comment removed (Score:3)
Stop Taking the Jobs, idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
If a business can offer sub-livable wages in a crazy-expensive place and keep getting decent employees, why should they stop?
I know people who are working 3 jobs just so they can afford a meager life in the SFO Bay Area.
It's a nice place, but it isn't that nice.
I genuinely do not understand people willing to take what are (in that cost of living) nearly slave wages just for a zip code? $1500/mo to live in a frikkin' BUNK BED with a half-dozen other people in the same quarters? Um, no.
If you think "San Francisco is the only place I can have X!" I would almost guarantee you haven't traveled around the US at all.*
*unless X = overwhelming amounts of human feces that require a dedicated team of city workers full time to address it. Then yeah, maybe SFO is "special" in that case, but from what I hear Los Angeles city hall is pretty close.
Re: Stop Taking the Jobs, idiots (Score:2)
When you are frugal, living in an expensive place usually works out better for you because the amount leftover after expenses is usually larger in absolute dollars. Not to mention you are shoveling more money into social security every paycheck.
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No, Virginia, you did that to yourself. As noted above, as long as there is a strong supply of folks willing to accept crappy wages and the attendant crappy living conditions, there is zero motivation for employers to change their behavior.
... but he needs to stop being a whiny princess about how he's wor
Mr. Hallstedt needs to find another job, or stay with his current one and make it work
Get a real job; get a local job (Score:2)
You play video games all day. That's your reward. If you want to earn money you need to find a real job that people wouldn't do for free.
Not to mention, you have chosen a "job" where your first world education, great English skills, and creative thinking have no value to your employer, and so your labor pool competition mostly works in the third world.
You're lucky you can find more than minimum wage.
Stop it. Stop taking jobs you can't afford. (Score:2)
Remote workers (Score:4)
Danger of Sexy Jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
The video game industry is a prime example of why many "sexy" jobs- the type 10 year old kids talk about wanting to do when the grow up- can be a terrible choice. Similar issues are present throughout the entertainment industry. Because the jobs are sexy, they can expect to pay people in "cool points." People will sign up for abuse from a video game or movie studio despite poor pay and working conditions just so they can live out their dream of developing video games for a living. Even if you become disillusioned fairly quickly, it can be hard to escape once your skill set becomes tailored to the industry.
At the end of the day, a job is a job. Being a spreadsheet monkey for a film studio isn't really any more fun than doing the same thing for a bank, an oil company, or a software company specializing in corporate databases. Only a select lucky few will get paid big bucks to make creative decisions. Everyone else would be far better off doing something more conventional and more boring.
Argh. It’s ONE GUY (Score:2)
I hate it when some pseudo-literate text monkey uses “they” and “their” while referring to one individual.
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I will add, according to Wikipedia, and other references, the use of the singular "they" has been around for several centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It's because the person being quoted has stated their pronouns in their Twitter bio. Which kind of makes me amazed they were offered a job in the first place.
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Well then, if we’re allowed to define them ourselves - my pronouns are “POTUS” and “Grand Master of the Pan Flute”.
"their"? (Score:2)
"Hallstedt has been working as a freelance concept artist for over three years, with their first in-house job being a 2D Art internship at High Voltage Software in Chicago. "I was hired at $12 an hour, which I'm honestly happy with for an intern position in the Midwest. I was learning as much as I was contributing, and the artists there spent time guiding me through adapting to a studio pipeline," they said. "It was great, and the generosity of those artists has guided my entire career."
Can someone enlighten me regarding the "their" and "they" used in the summary; isn't Hallstedt a single person?
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Can someone enlighten me regarding the "their" and "they" used in the summary; isn't Hallstedt a single person?
Apart from marital status (single vs. married) being irrelevant, the "they" pronouns in English have two uses. One is for multiple people; the other is for people who are nonbinary [wikipedia.org].
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$54K per year?? (Score:2)
You might be able to live in North Dakota or Mississippi on $54K a year, but not Seattle or San Francisco, no way. In San Francisco it would cost you more than that to live in a van down by the river.
Holy crap, I'm in Seattle and I thought my current wage was a little low. Apparently I'm rakin' it in compared to these guys.
Read the article - It's Intern-Level QA, Not Devs (Score:5, Insightful)
"Beck" (the "they") has a bunch of strikes against s/h/it. For example:
Yeah, it finishes with a producer anecodte, but the click-bait is "developers." That's not what the focus of the story is.
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Time to Unionize (Score:3)
Huh? (Score:3)
The best example of why a minimum wage is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Leave these cities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leave these cities (Score:5, Insightful)
I have zero desire to live in places that are small minded, lack diversity, and lack interesting and rich culture.
The irony of you complaining that others are small minded after your rant is amazing. How do you not see it?
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Not many opportunities for dating or, for that matter, finding other jobs.
There’s always farmersonly.com
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Many people don't want to live in rural areas
Kansas City, Omaha, and Cheyenne are not rural. There are plenty of midsized cities way cheaper than NYC or SF.
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THey hire a significant number of artists and programmers. These places have significant numbers of artists and programmers, and people in those professions seem to like living in larger cities. Going to a small town would destroy their ability to recruit and hire talent. Large numbers of people would flat out refuse to live in a small town and choose other opportunities.
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And what about IBM? They don't waste money in NYC, they are in small towns North of the city.
Share a devkit (Score:2)
the location offers no advantage
Having all developers in one city lets them share expensive console devkit hardware.
when these products are created and sold completely digitally
AAA games for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles are still released on disc, and AAA games for Nintendo Switch are still released on cartridge.
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still released on disc
.
.
still released on cartridge
But it's not like building airplanes or cars. You don't have to be located anywhere near the disc/cartridge production line. Those plants are probably somewhere in China.
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There are lots of remote workers out there.
Sure. But if the job can be done remotely from Missouri, it can also be done from Mumbai.
Re: Leave these cities (Score:2)
Because the talent in NYC has opportunities.
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"I'd hate to have to find talented developers in Missouri."
You don't find talented workers in Missouri, you just hire talented developers without regard for their location. There are very few positions in technology that require the staff to actually be on location except a handful of hands on site positions at datacenters.
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You're not getting the talented developers for $11/hour anyway.
Pay your 'shit NY wages' in Missouri and you'll find better developers than you will for those wages in NY.
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No. Go to the government, get them to have a choice -- pay living wages or get shut down.
Yes, because making $0 is better than getting paid at all. It's funny that the people saying this are never the ones who actually run a business. Your sense of entitlement is appalling. Every job is a voluntary agreement between employer & employee. Nobody is forcing you to work at any given place.
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My response to either of your options would be to shut down. $11/hour gets me perfectly capable professionals in Eastern Europe or South Asia.
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Veteran indie vs. newcomer indie (Score:3)
Over the years, other Slashdot users have told me that demonstrating your skills through experience in the mainstream video game industry is a way to "pay your dues." If you have worked on successful projects, then investors, console makers, and licensors of books, movies, TV shows, etc. are more likely to be willing to work with you once you do start an indie studio.
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less expensive cities has an dorm nextdoor = 100 h (Score:2)
less expensive cities has an dorm nextdoor = 100 hour work week.
Try $11.77/hour Re:Min wage should be appx $40/hr (Score:3, Informative)
Just to keep pace with the inflation we've had from year 2000 to year 2019
A better comparison would be from this chart [bebusinessed.com] which shows nominal and 2014-dollar minimum wages over time. The "2014-dollar" peaked in 1968 at $10.75/hr (nominally $1.60, $11.77 in 2019 dollars).
That peak is still well below $15/hour but well above today's $7.25/hour rate.
$11.77 amounts to a bit over $24K/year, which is a living wage in most areas of the country outside of the east and west coast or very large cities.
Oh, if you want to compare to the year 2000, when the nominal minimum wage was $5.15/hour (
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That peak is still well below $15/hour but well above today's $7.25/hour rate.
You're only covering inflation in your comparison. Productivity has also massively increased over that time.
We're getting about 1.5 to 2 1968-hours-worth-of-work from each 2019 hour of work, which should be factored in when comparing wages over such a long difference in time.