
Codemasters are on the scrounge - jheriko
http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.com/2012/01/codemasters-are-on-scrounge.html
======
BSousa
I never worked for Codemasters myself, and left a studio just after it was
bought by Codemasters (for other reasons). But I think everyone in the UK that
worked in games knows their reputation. They are the UK equivalent of EA.

I know about 10 people that left the mentioned studio just because it was
bought by Codemasters (they simply refused to work for them, preferring
unemployment).

Hope you the best in this.

~~~
JanSolo
Ha! Are you from the old Sega Racing Studio in Solihull? Me too!

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robin_reala
A friend went for a job interview at Codemasters a couple of months before it
all went tits up, and got privately warned away from joining by a couple of
members of staff.

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DanBC
"You broke the law, but I'll ignore that if you let me keep the money you
accidentally overpaid me"?

That's extortion and he needs to get better legal advice.

In general if someone makes an accidental overpayment to you it's not your
money. Especially if you do not promptly let them know about it.

I suspect he's going to have to give them the money back. And he's going to
have to forfeit any interest he earned on that money. And then he's going to
have to pursue any other dispute separately.

The stuff about allowing other people to swipe him in and out of the building
was _really_ stupid: he shouldn't have let that happen and he certainly
shouldn't be writing it in a letter of dispute.

He does have my sympathy though - working for bad bosses sucks.

~~~
jheriko
That is absolutely not what I am saying. I have made it abundantly clear that
I want to repay the money - they have just as yet been unable to provide me
with a reasonable way to repay.

The swipe card system was not used to pay me - it was simply the only evidence
I could get of my hours at such a late date.

The issue here is that the company behaves illegally and immorally which can
not be tolerated.

~~~
delinka
I think I'd have replied with something like: "Thank you for taking
responsibility and beginning to compensate me for the extra time I worked for
your company. The balance that is owed is $AMOUNT. If you would like to
contest this amount, please provide a detailed accounting of your
calculations. Otherwise, I will appreciate knowing your intended payment
schedule.

Again, thank you for acknowledging the former shortcomings with regards to
salary and pay.

\--Former Employee"

I would honestly have steered the correspondence in this direction. Kinda
saying "yes, the money you sent is MINE" without saying it directly.

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astrodust
Working for any company with time-cards sounds terrifying.

~~~
virmundi
I work for one and find it rather useful. Most weeks are 40 hrs; no biggie. I
use to eat overtime. Now I don't. I put 50 hrs. Management doesn't like it,
stuff. We all need to know if we are missing estimates. There is no use lying.

As a result, I use the time track as a truth keeper. Without that, there is no
metric tracking; everything is just annidotal.

PS. I'm forced to use IE so misspelling are not caught.

~~~
Flenser
_PS. I'm forced to use IE so misspelling are not caught._

Use this:
[http://www.afterthedeadline.com/download.slp?platform=Bookma...](http://www.afterthedeadline.com/download.slp?platform=Bookmarklet)

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yeureka
I know that usually games_industry = low_pay * long_hours, but it doesn't have
to be that way. I worked in a studio where this does not happen and their
staff turnover is very low. Maybe because the managers were former developers
and they knew the limits to overtime. Other places have not been so nice.

~~~
bsenftner
Where and who is this mythically ethical game studio? In my experience,
publishers force these hours: a studio can't land the publishing contract
without milestones insuring these conditions.

~~~
jheriko
They exist and take your pick pretty much. Most of them run much better than
Codies, with less staff, smaller premises, less expenditure and putting out
more, higher quality games, without masses of overtime. I used to work at
Rebellion for instance, and although they made me redundant and cocked it up
it was fine - they had good reasons and they never mistreated me. It was a
great place to work.

~~~
bsenftner
Ha! "take your pick" sounds like a cruel joke... I gave up on the games
industry after 15 years in the majors. Kept hoping to find ethical behavior
_somewhere_ , never did and left for film VFX. But I never looked outside the
US...

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jheriko
Feel free to spread this around - or ask me questions. :)

jheriko@gmail.com

I think this needs as much publicity as possible - so thanks to the 7 who have
already upvoted. \o/

Hopefully startups can learn some of what not to do.

~~~
JanSolo
I think you're right to be angry; it certainly sounds like you did not have a
positive experience at Codies and it certainly appears like they messed up the
redundancy process for the Guildford studio.

However, I don't agree that you're entitled to more money for your unpaid
overtime. From the mails, it looks like they notified you in advance that TOIL
was off the table and therefore it was your responsibility to work hours that
you deemed reasonable for your salary. I'm sure the company was very pleased
that you worked so much OT, but it's clear that they did not require you to do
so.

I also don't think you can justify keeping the extra months salary that they
accidentally paid you. If your bank accidentally paid you a million bucks, you
would not expect to be able to keep it, would you? What if you accidentally
gave your buddy $100 instead of $10? You'd expect him to give it back, right?
Sure, they screwed up; however they came clean about it and asked you to give
the money back. They even gave you an extension to help you find the money. It
sucks that you had already spent the money, but that was your mistake, not
theirs. I think you're just going to have to bite the bullet and cough up the
cash, sorry.

I'd chalk the whole think down to experience and move on. The games industry
can be a very unforgiving place and now that you've seen some of the things
that can happen, you can prepare yourself better for the future. There are
many games jobs available in the UK at the moment, but, due to the bad
economy, the publishers are all hurting for money. I would expect these kinds
of situations to be quite common for the next year or two.

~~~
tomjen3
It is a reasonable thing to assume that money on your bank account is yours.
Therefore they should at a minimum cover any and all damages their mistake has
cost him.

~~~
__alexs
This is totally wrong. They are right to try and reclaim overpayment if it
actually occurred.

This refers to deducting wages from future pay packets but the principle is
the same. You owe them if they make a mistake.

[http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_money/employment_in...](http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_money/employment_index_ew/faq_index_employment/faq_employment_overpayment_of_wages.htm)

~~~
angersock
It would appear that if they overpay on the final paycheck, tough shit.

Please check my reading--the link seems to indicate that future wages can be
reduced to recoup an error, but that the money can't be collected back
directly. So, it suggests that the final paycheck is overpaid, Codemasters
would have to reduce future wages temporarily to make up for the imbalance,
but there are no future wages (lol), so Codemasters cannot seek recourse.

Am I reasonable in this interpretation?

~

As an aside, it irks me that an employer is given any rights in this regard--
if you can't do basic HR arithmetic (especially since they sure as hell aren't
doing anything as exacting as code or what have you) I deserve the balance of
your ignorance.

If a company overpays for a part and then finds out that the part went on sale
right after purchase, they eat the cost.

If a company brings a product to market and underprices it and loses money,
they eat the cost.

If a company hires someone for contract work and overpays them--pays them more
than is reasonable for the work done, but pays them what was promised--then
they eat the cost.

If a company decides to take out a chunk from its petty cash fund and burn it
to make smores over, they eat the cost.

So, why the hell isn't an overpayment in HR considered something similar? Why
isn't it a free-market "you can't do math accurately" tax?

(genuinely curious)

~~~
__alexs
This kind of thing applies generally to all overpayment of contracts. The
advice I've been given by employment lawyers in the past about this kind of
thing is that once you leave, it becomes a normal debt and they are free to
chase you about it however they choose. Usually this results in you offering
to pay them a small some every month with no interest until it's all paid
back. They don't want to go to court either after all.

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CHsurfer
I've made this mistake before. Even if you can personally justify something as
being reasonable (they did that to me, so it's OK if I do this to them) it
often doesn't hold up in the eyes of a 3rd party (like the law).

I have no doubt that you were mistreated, but be careful how you handle this.
The worst outcome would be for the courts to rule against you - then they will
have done it to you again...

Good luck

~~~
quanticle
In his appeal letter to Codemasters, Essessi does mention that he took time to
seek legal counsel before replying. I don't know if he's retained a lawyer,
but it doesn't look like he's going into this totally blind.

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justin_vanw
He's complaining that he didn't get proper training to 'know where to assemble
for fire drills', among other things, after he no longer works there. Smells
like sour grapes from a disgruntled former employee.

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nestlequ1k
Sorry to hear this. I love Codemaster's games (Dirt and GRID). Too bad it's
created in such a hostile environment.

~~~
jheriko
Thanks for your comment. I am yet to actually play GRID, but yes, DiRT 3 is a
pretty sweet game, although the tech behind it is comparable to something from
10 years ago covered in lazy post-processing it is both beautiful and fun, in
fact even more impressive knowing how lacking the tech is.

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kahawe
Technical question to UK-based hackers... OP says: " _...it wasn't quite the
amount of money I was owed for unpaid overtime, but it was something._ "

Can you as an employee in UK lose pay like that when your employer goes
bankrupt? Aren't there any government funds or organizations stepping in?
Because strangely it seems this is the case in Germany, though in Austria I
was victim to my employer's bankruptcy and I got paid for every single hour of
clocked over-time by a government-owned fund which protects employees. Also,
the government steps in and handles the whole thing; the original CEO won't
have anything to say anymore after they declared bankruptcy.

~~~
bsenftner
Wow. Here in the US, the idea of the government handling bankruptcy to the
benefit of the employees who lost wages is so completely foreign... I gotta
stop thinking about it. That is simply impossible in the United Corporations
of America.

~~~
gbhn
My understanding is that wages owed is senior to any other corporate debt. Is
this not true?

~~~
bsenftner
No true. Bankruptcy law in the US is all about helping the company get back on
its feet. There's some useful information here, but the page takes forever to
load: [http://smallbusiness.chron.com/employee-rights-company-
bankr...](http://smallbusiness.chron.com/employee-rights-company-
bankruptcy-2670.html)

