
Nearly Half of Game Developers Want to Unionize - toufiqbarhamov
https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/24/nearly-half-of-game-developers-want-to-unionize/
======
evanmoran
As someone who's been in the game industry a while, I can see where this is
coming from. This is not about software devs, it's a special challenge
specific to game devs where the lower pay and higher overtime expectations
really affect people's lives. This is then made worse as studios keep closing
down, because people will put up with more bs than usual for job stability.

No idea if unions are the solution, but this is definitely an issue specific
to the game industry right now.

~~~
usefulcat
The biggest reason why gamedev jobs tend to have lower pay and more overtime
compared to many other swdev jobs is really simple: there are lots of sw devs
who are willing to put up with those conditions because they want to work on
games.

Also, it's easy to claim that one "wants" to unionize on a survey. But that's
quite a bit different from actually doing it. So I would take this survey with
a large grain of salt. It's not like most game developers couldn't get other
sw dev jobs if they wanted to, after all.

If you want to know what people really value, ignore what they say and focus
on what they actually do.

Disclaimer: have worked for game companies before

~~~
jayd16
While this is true its not the biggest reason. The game dev cycle is just
different than the tech cycle and it opens a window to exploitation.

Games releases are seasonal so a common practice is to hire for an xmas
release and gut the teams after that.

Shady bonus practices are common. You often have very little recourse into how
yearly profit is calculated and paid out.

The separation of studio managing employees and publishers holding on to IP
means that studios can close up shop without the rights holders being liable
for any back pay or bonus.

~~~
vkou
This is the correct answer. Management promises a unicorn, works you like a
dog, and then pulls the rug out from under you, just before you deliver.

Alternatively, if you dig in, and refuse to deal with that bullshit, quitting,
or being dismissed for not being a team player, half-way through crunch on a
shitty project is a great way to burn bridges in that industry.

~~~
usefulcat
> Alternatively, if you dig in, and refuse to deal with that bullshit,
> quitting, or being dismissed for not being a team player, half-way through
> crunch on a shitty project is a great way to burn bridges in that industry.

I don't doubt it, and your comment supports my original point: that there is a
surplus of devs willing to tolerate such conditions. If that were not so,
quitting would not be near as much of a problem for one's future employment
prospects, because employers would not have as many candidates to choose from
in the first place.

------
hesdeadjim
I've been in the game industry going on a decade now and I have zero interest
in unionizing. I do not want my future in any way controlled by yet another
external entity that I have little control over and promises nebulous results.

As an employer I want to be able to fire toxic or under-performing employees
at will without jumping through a hundred hoops to make sure I am not breaking
any union rules.

As an employee, I want to be free to negotiate my own wages based on my merit.

If there is one thing I would want a union to do it would be to collectively
enforce some kind of profit sharing plan. The interests of the employees and
the employer align -- make a great game that sells well. Anything else, no
thanks.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
These are all very old problems brought up when workers want protection from
abusive employers by forming a union and is not unique to the video games
industry at all.

Even railroads and textile mills didn’t ask their employees to work 80 hour
work weeks.

~~~
hesdeadjim
There are some serious bad actors in the game industry, Rock Star being one of
the worst.

Where I've worked we valued work/life balance as much as possible. Did we have
a bit of crunch close to a release? Yep, but it was short and a few weeks at
max. Most of us enjoyed it due to the extra camaraderie.

If there were a unionization effort that focused on 1) a hard 40-50 hour cap
on work hours (or with paid overtime) and 2) enforced profit sharing plans, I
could support it.

The current main unionization effort basically says "things will be better for
everyone" on their FAQ. Total bullshit.

~~~
fzeroracer
Saying that 'most of us enjoyed crunch time' seems like a bit of projection,
especially for people that might have families or other social obligations
outside of work that crunch time eats into.

~~~
hesdeadjim
We were sane about it, family obligations always took priority. There is a
difference between a sprint to the end and a death march like Rock Star.

~~~
vvanders
Just so you know, this is the knife edge that leads you down to crunch.

Literally every time I had a 3-4mo 80-100hour crunch it always started out
with "we're going to push for a week or two" which just transitioned into
"just one more week" for the next 3 months.

Also, shame for celebrating a crunch. You may have enjoyed it but there's a
high likelyhood someone else went along just to not "rock the boat". I don't
care who you are putting in more hours puts stress on other parts of your
life.

I just don't understand how that industry has their head up their ass from top
to bottom for such a long time. There's some interesting problems in that
space but after my 6 years I'd never go back.

~~~
hesdeadjim
Shame for celebrating a crunch? I'm talking 50 hours a week instead of 40 for
a period of a few weeks. It is possible for a company and project to need that
extra work and not turn into a sweatshop afterwards. I am 100% against the
crunch that is par for the course in so many studios, but I am also
disappointed by an attitude that work is always just work and god forbid it
ever intrude on life outside.

I worked for five years at early and late stage startups before transitioning
to games, and I cannot recall there ever being a time when extra work was not
needed to get over the finish line.

If a union ends up being the only way chronic overwork can be addressed in the
industry at large, so be it. Perhaps the real solution though is a legislative
one, as suggested below.

~~~
watwut
> I worked for five years at early and late stage startups before
> transitioning to games, and I cannot recall there ever being a time when
> extra work was not needed to get over the finish line.

I worked at such company too. It had zero to do with need for overtime and and
a lot to do with people wanting to work this way. E.g. unwillingness to
prioritize, unwillingness to negotiate, wish to be seen like the one who stays
late and thus finding work to stay late when not needed. Overtime is not seen
as failure of organization, so the organization does not learn how to do it.
People staying late are seen as heros and people managing projects so that
overtime is not needed are not rewarded, so latter leave and former create
culture.

To large extend, people who stay in such companies don't believe it is
possible to make deadline without overtime, so they are not even trying.

~~~
hesdeadjim
It's trivial to never have overtime if you either 1) have no deadlines or 2)
have a project so unoriginal you can plan its schedule to the hour.

Show me any project with dynamic requirements that has some sort of deadline,
be it time or money running out, and I guarantee there has been some extra
work at some point.

~~~
watwut
I am not saying it is trivial. I am saying it is not rewarded. It takes skill
and willingness and some companies are not motivated to do it. Nevertheless,
it is quite possible to not cruck when you decide you don't do that, period.

Prioritization, negotiation and saying no. Estimates large enough that they
have buffers. You don't need on hour predictability. It is precisely when you
have dynamic requirements when you are supposed to use tools like that.

After crunch, there are typically many bugs and convoluted code. It just adds
to overall time in long term. Pretty much all studies found crunch to not be
effective. It is not about achieving more.

------
prepend
Not to be pedantic, but this headline is not accurate. There’s nothing that
makes me confident that respondents to the game dev conference survey are
representative enough to say “nearly half of game developers.”

This is a really important point as trying to represent a bunch of people’s
opinion based on a single, limited survey is not productive.

~~~
tridentboy
Statistically speaking 4000 is a good enough number. I mean, election polls in
the US usually use less than that for a population of 300 million and they're
usually close to the real number.

~~~
maccio92
Except in 2016. And that 4000 is a biased population of only game devs that
attended a certain conference. Maybe if it was a totally random sample of 4000
of all game devs it would be statistically significant.

~~~
learc83
>Except in 2016

In 2016 the national polls were very close to the final result--within a
couple points. Remember that Clinton won the popular vote.

State polls were less accurate, but the general consensus is they were wrong
due to undecided voters breaking more for Trump than is normal in the final
few days--after the final state polls were conducted.

That being said, your point stands. Sample method is generally more important
than sample size, and 4,000 game devs who self selected to attend a conference
is very unlikely to be a representative sample.

------
chasingthewind
Unions would very likely increase game prices. I will happily pay more for
games in exchange for better conditions for game developers.

~~~
jressey
Labor cost does not determine a product's sale price. That is a disastrous
myth. Demand changes selling price. If a company cannot price to sell to their
demand because of capital or labor costs, the free market has stated that the
business is not viable.

~~~
redorb
Labor / Employee costs is a lot of the times the most significant costs to a
company. It's not the sole determination but it's definitely one of the top 3
factors Labor (forever and growing) > Infrastructure (large but incremental)
and R&D (medium and ongoing)

~~~
jressey
Right, and if the costs of running your business are greater than the revenue
you can generate from market demand, then you are not running a viable
business.

------
lenticular
I never understand employees who _don 't_ want to unionize. It just shows what
a sorry state the labor movement is in.

~~~
LitFan
Some insight as to why someone may be anti union:

My union has done nothing perceptible during the course of my employment,
outside of protecting employees who are under performing.

My union dues cost 1% of my salary, and my perception is that they're taking
that money and spending it on protecting bad employees.

I have friends who are higher up in unions at other workplaces, as well as
friends who are involved with labor law. The impression all around is that my
union and its representatives are "not good".

Unions don't automatically make working conditions better. They need to have
good people working in the union to achieve that.

~~~
chasing
> Unions don't automatically make working conditions better. They need to have
> good people working in the union to achieve that.

I see it everywhere, this weird argument that "shitty unions are shitty."
Well, yes. "Shitty [anything] is shitty."

Unions are a tool. That tool can be misused! But it can also be used well for
great effect.

Sorry your union isn't working well for you.

~~~
oh_sigh
You're recommending everyone unionize, even though some unions are shitty and
may end up being a net negative for people. But, aren't some businesses or
sectors not shitty? Why unionize in nonshitty sectors or businesses?

~~~
egypturnash
Unionizing in a non-shitty sector will give the workers a way to help ensure
that the sector _continues_ to not be shitty, both by maintaining a baseline
for what a union shop looks like, and by contributing money to politicians who
will work to pass laws that help keep the sector free of shittiness.

~~~
oh_sigh
But the sector is already doing a good job of being non-shitty without a
union. And what about the case where you're in a non-shitty sector, but end up
with a shitty union, resulting in a net negative for the employees? Do you
just say "Oh well, it was for the greater good. Someone else somewhere has a
union which is non-shitty, just in case some day the sector becomes
antagonistic with employees"?

~~~
Apocryphon
Isn’t the whole point of the OP about how shitty the video game sector is

~~~
oh_sigh
OP is saying that they don't understand why _any_ workers would not unionize,
not just workers in the video game industry.

------
lordnacho
Since it's game programmers, why not apply some game theory?

Aside from not wanting to be part of a union, people are reluctant to join a
union if others do not do the same. Many people might actually join one if
there was a big one, but a big one can't grow because nobody wants to be the
first guy to raise his hand.

So someone needs to make a website that manages this. Everyone pays a deposit,
say $100 bucks, and signs onto some secure site that will keep details
private. If you get more than some minimum, the money is sent to the new
union. Otherwise send it back.

~~~
doctorRetro
So basically, you're suggesting a union Kickstarter. Makes sense.

~~~
gbasin
unionkickstarter.com is available!

~~~
raldi
Not according to international trademark law.

~~~
jchw
Do you suspect this would fall under trademark confusion? It's definitely
towing a line but I don't think it's necessarily that clear-cut. It's not like
they own the term 'kick starter,' they just used it in their trademarked
brand.

------
jdlyga
I don't know what's driving people to work in the gaming industry. If you
worked on simulation software, for example, you could still do graphics
programming, have a phenomenally better working environment, reasonable hours,
and more pay.

~~~
zjaffee
It's because it's a dream for people, comparable to working on movies. That's
like saying why should a AV technician not work on movies when they can make
more money doing recordings for corporate events.

~~~
magduf
So why should anyone outside this "dream" industry give two shits about the
people inside the industry being mistreated? If they don't like it, they
should go to work in some other "boring" industry that uses those same skills.
There's no shortage of jobs out there for skilled people these days, the
problem is too many prima donnas like these game devs who want to live their
dream and then also be treated well. When everyone and their brother is
clamoring to work in a particular niche industry, producing a huge oversupply,
this is what you get. Go work in an industry where there's a shortage of
qualified people instead.

~~~
davidcbc
Maybe, and hear me out I know this is a crazy idea, but maybe everyone should
be treated well.

~~~
magduf
Sorry, I don't believe that. I believe people who don't have a good choice
should be treated well, but if people are happily signing up to be treated
poorly, and they KNOW they are going to be treated poorly there, (and they
have plenty of far better alternatives, and they're only signing up for this
because it's "cool") then I don't have any sympathy for them whatsoever.

If you want to be treated well, then stop flocking to people and places that
treat you like crap.

------
jayd16
Whats lost in all this is how idiotic the extra hours are to begin with. Games
aren't different than other tech. Burning out your employees is demonstrably
counterproductive. There's some usefulness in short term crunch but some large
studios crunch for a full year. But games are run like entertainment companies
and a lot of the decisions are not fact based.

Even if the only thing a union did was stop the exempt status for developers
with regard to wage law we'd see a huge quality of life increase without much
of a real impact on worker output.

------
stcredzero
Game testers should unionize. I've met some game testers who are as dense as a
box of hammers. I've also met some game testers who are valuable, awesome
people who know things and who I'd be glad to work with. Unfortunately, the
game industry seems programmed to treat them all like trash. I think this is
another form of bigotry obscuring real human value. If one could find the
really good testers, pay them well, and retain them, it might just pay off in
increased quality and productivity.

------
egypturnash
I hope that the folks at the forefront of trying to unionize the game industry
are talking to existing entertainment unions. I suspect there's a lot of
similarities, especially when you get into absurdly huge projects like a
sprawling open-world game or an animated feature.

(And by 'animated' I include pretty much every effects-laden action film. IIRC
there is _not_ currently an effects worker union in Hollywood, while there
_is_ an animators union - guess which craft sucks less to be in?)

------
rafiki6
I never understood the desire to work on games. Is it because many people get
their introduction to software via games (legitimate question)? I remember
many of my classmates in my college days were really about entering the gaming
industry, and I just never understood why.

~~~
hacknat
IMHO, it’s also some of the least interesting dev work you can do. A few
people might get lucky and work on physics engines, but for everyone else it
is basically a gigantic UI project with a ton of control flow and throwaway
code.

------
vvanders
Been that way for more than a decade(at least since I was looking to get into
the industry around '00 or so).

Problem is there's a thousand young devs out there trying to bang down the
doors to get in. In that situation I don't see how you have effective
leverage.

With things as it stands today there's a good ~50-60% churn in the industry
and things seem to keep rolling on(although I wonder what improvements we'd
see with better working hours and improved pay WRT other dev domains).

~~~
smacktoward
_> Problem is there's a thousand young devs out there trying to bang down the
doors to get in._

The same could be said of acting and professional athletics, and actors and
pro athletes have strong, effective unions. So this hurdle is not
insurmountable.

~~~
icelancer
> pro athletes have strong, effective unions

Absolutely false. MLBPA is a joke and NFLPA stands idle while its employees
are killed and subjected to brain damage while ineffectively signing
agreements that discharge liability by management.

------
Apocryphon
Here’s an alternative to unions, which many here seem to be skeptical of:

How about promoting software companies being run as co-ops, where all workers
have more ownership and are self-managed?

~~~
tivert
> How about promoting software companies being run as co-ops, where all
> workers have more ownership and are self-managed?

That's a fantastic idea. In all honesty, unions are merely a mitigation for
some of the worker-hostile aspects of the division between owners and workers.
That split is also seems like it's the root cause of a lot of pathological
union practices. I don't think you'd have those problems if businesses were
worker-owned or if a worker union had a significant ownership stake.

------
randyrand
Unions work well if everyone can agree on the same wage, or the same wage
increases over time, etc, _or_ can agree on barriers to entry.

Teachers unions, pilots unions, etc, generally agree on wage (usually some %
increase per year of experience), and doctors which are harder to agree on
wage because there is much more variation instead unionize with barriers to
entry (stricter AMA requirements).

I wonder which would be better for game developers. Barriers to entry or
agreed wages.

------
exabrial
Don't do it. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Unions are not a
bucket of roses.

You're exchanging one set of overlords for another. Literally sit down with
anyone in their first 8-15 years of experience in a union and ask them what
kind of influence they have on their industry, what sort of choices of work
they get to work, who gets "the jobs" before you do, and about their fixed pay
scale, and what are the consequences if they take non-union jobs.

------
bb88
The tradition means of labor taking their control of a company is through a
strike, and you really can't unionize unless 75% of all game developers are
willing to strike to keep wages high.

You'll find I think that most game developers would be willing to be paid
pennies to be a part of the next big video game. And if that's the market
you're trying to compete in, maybe you should be in a different market if
you're worried about wages.

------
navinsylvester
With regard to crazy work hours, our platform is used by lot of VFX studios
and freelancers. From our frequent interaction with them, we observed that the
amount of work hours they put in are really insane.

Its the same story but unlike game developers they get into that grind very
often too. I don't think this scenario is unique to game developers alone and
it exists in other domains - most prevalent when artistic expectation gets
mingled with technology.

------
MarsAscendant
What would entering a union mean for the developer?

I've read that it would increase their protection (legal, and sometimes
financial, I suppose?), and that it's supposed to improve working conditions
(because unionized workers will have a more solid foundation to push against
as they demand those conditions).

How deep does this go? Is there any other benefit? Something specific to the
industry, perhaps?

~~~
vkou
The biggest problems that game developers face is working conditions (Demand
for unpaid overtime), and lack of protection from capricious behaviour by
management (Management promises not fulfilled, retaliatory firings, firing
people so that you don't have to pay them a ship bonus).

I can't really think of anything else.

------
username223
People who make comfortable livings sitting at desks near company cafeterias,
then disparage unions, need to remember that unions brought them labor laws
and weekends, and paid in blood:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre)

~~~
ChrisLomont
Capitalism and productivity had significant impact on giving us more leisure
time, not demanding it. This pattern has been repeated in many places with or
without strong labor. Making more with less lets people work less over time.

~~~
jonathankoren
Making more with less, let's you make more. If you're not making more, you're
losing money. The only thing that reduces working hours is reducing workers,
as a cost cutting move. The workers eliminated have more "leisure" time
because they're not working at all.

Working hours are longer [0].

Capitalism did not give you a weekend. Capitalism did not give you a workday
that ends after 8 hours. These are things that people literally died for.
Business owners hired Pinkerton thugs to _murder_ workers, to try to get them
to fall in line. Never say that capitalists _gave_ people leisure time and
benefits. My grandfather stood in a field in Southern Illinois when he was boy
and watched men gunned down during a strike. These things were demanded and
taken.

[0]
[https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93364&page=1](https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93364&page=1)

~~~
ChrisLomont
>Capitalism did not give you a weekend. Capitalism did not give you a workday
that ends after 8 hours.

Both of those things were offered by Ford (and others) without federal law
forcing it as a way to attract the best workers away from his competitors, and
as companies saw it worked, many followed suit. They've been obtained in many
countries without using labor unions to force the govt to legislate them.
Unions in the US fought for them, but those things were likely coming anyways
as people got richer through producing more goods. And there are enough cases
of those things being offered in non-union places long before federal law that
it's not honest to say they are here solely because unions.

The point is unions did not solely give us those things, or they would not
also appear in places without such a labor movement. Many factors contributed
to these things, unions, more production, i.e., more wealth for everyone,
which are results of lot of pieces of progress.

>Working hours are longer [0].

Americans working more then other OECD countries is not the result of unions
or capitalism. It's culture. Hours worked has fallen as wages rose over the
past few hundred years, wages rose because people became more productive. [1]

China is a perfect example of how capitalism, not labor laws, release people
from work and given them leisure and money. Under communism, there is ample
labor law, which is the point of communism - all men are equal and all share.
China got a two day weekend without needing unions to fight it through, they
got more vacation, etc. [2] This is a result of the people making more, giving
them more power, which is a result of people being more productive. It was not
labor union there obtaining these things.

As they've opened to capitalism, allowing growth by more efficient allocation
of capital, the everyday person has vastly improved quality of life. The same
pattern played out in USSR->Russia for a while, which then went back some on
the capitalism part. India did the same. Other countries followed suit.

[1] [https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-
history/](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/)

[2] [https://confuciusmag.com/chinese-leisure-
life](https://confuciusmag.com/chinese-leisure-life)

~~~
claudiawerner
>Americans working more then other OECD countries is not the result of unions
or capitalism. It's culture.

Ironically, this is one of the topics which Marx (wearing his sociologist hat)
tried to get at, as well as his descendants (Weber and the Frankfurt School
etc.)

>Under communism, there is ample labor law

Under Communism there wouldn't be labour law because there is no such thing as
"labour" requiring a law - labour law literally only exists due to its
position in relation to capital.

>China got a two day weekend without needing unions to fight it through

This is due to a combination of China being founded by Socialists (and despite
not being a Socialist state, needing to keep up appearances of being one) and
importing already established Western ideas (in a very similar way to what
Japan did).

>more efficient allocation of capital, the everyday person has vastly improved
quality of life.

This is not contrary to the Marian thesis that capitalism requires free
workers, free in the first sense of being able to sell their labour how they
wish, and free in his more ironic sense of freedom from the means and produce
of production.

------
willart4food
So, >50% of Game Developers Want to Unionize?

I'd like to see how this >50% is distributed across various measures,
especially in terms of salaries and lines of codes produced. My bet is that
according to Pareto's distribution they fall in the bottom 50% in terms of
headcount whose output and compensation is ~15% of the total.

------
ryanmcbride
Unions can't solve everything, but considering the most prevalent complaints
game devs seem to have is getting overworked, underpaid, and fired as soon as
a project is done, unions seem like a perfect fit.

At my last corporate job I was very vocal about the benefits that unions would
have for software engineers. I still believe that.

------
jaredtn
There is a vast market of companies willing to scoop up talented software
developers - many don't require the demanding work schedules that the gaming
industry takes for granted. Especially in such a highly-skilled field, I don't
see the need for unionization when switching industries can be done easily.

------
cabaalis
As always: 100% support them wanting better situations, and they have a right
to pursue it. I would just not want to end up with a situation where I want to
put my own self-developed game up on itch.io or otherwise and they require me
to send a copy of my union approval.

------
mythrwy
This software developer union thing is not going to happen, no matter what
people prefer. At least a union that has any real clout.

It's not a situation like Detroit in 1954. It's a somewhat global marketplace
with easily shifted capital and labor.

------
tptacek
Ironically, despite the famously abysmal working conditions in the game
industry, they might have a hard time organizing, because there is such an
enormous supply of qualified people who want those jobs.

------
ben509
I'll take a shot at how it could be successful.

Unions can add value in industries that need vast numbers of highly
specialized individuals.

If you think of a film or a play, both unionized industries, a production
works by hiring a mess of specialists who show up ready to go. Everyone knows
what they're doing, why they're there, etc. There's a very good discussion
(with a libertarian economist, no less) here[1] about it.

There is a large part of game development, especially in the "blockbuster"
game development that seems like it fits this model quite well.

It might not apply to more specialized elements like game engine design, but
for modern games that are designed more like movies than games, it could be
highly effective.

[1]: [http://www.econtalk.org/mitch-weiss-on-the-business-of-
broad...](http://www.econtalk.org/mitch-weiss-on-the-business-of-broadway/)

------
SubiculumCode
I neither think there should be impediments on unions nor should union dues
malndatory, nor that there should be restrictions on the number of unions
active in a workplace or industry. People should be able to go it alone and
suffer/benefit from the consequences, or form a union spontaneously consisting
of just a couple of fellow workers with shared demands. Let unions compete in
their own marketplace to achieve both better and flexible representation of
labor. And to those that will ojext that this puts a heavy burden on business
by having to negotiate with multiple parties, well too bad.

------
techslave
As a non-game developer, I'm surprised the numbers are so low. From the sounds
of it, game dev is unnecessarily brutal and lives even get destroyed.

------
csense
As soon as they do, those jobs will move overseas. Unless there's some kind of
legal / regulatory block to prevent it (e.g. tariffs)

------
tomohawk
Yes, I'm sure that 20 something dev would look forward to waiting for years to
get on the game dev team due to union seniority rules. And I'm sure the junior
devs on the team would feel great about not getting the choice vacation times
because the senior devs would have first choice due to union rules. After all,
its fairer if those people who have put the time in get the most benefits,
right?

------
Kiro
This is not at all reflected in the different game development groups on
Facebook.

------
kmlx
any industry that has unions and/or requires unions, is an industry that is
ripe for automation.

~~~
jayd16
Go automate teachers and actors then.

~~~
kmlx
actors and teachers are so easy, they've been replaced by software programs.

what's hard is replacing programmers, but we're getting there, no worries.

------
zozbot123
As I've said before-- game development is the sort of industry that everyone
_thinks_ they'll want to work in, only to change their minds very quickly once
they see how the sausage is made. Never mind unionizing, even just raising
awareness about the work conditions in the industry - and making it clear that
they're not representative of "tech" more generally - would help a lot!

~~~
Tistel
this. When I was a little kid I wanted to make games. Worked in the industry
for 13 years. It's pretty brutal. 10AM to 10PM for months on end (this was
when games were deployed on disks so there was a hard deadline, hence brutal
crunch). The basic (but unsaid) feeling inside was that there are a ton of
people who would be happy to replace you, so don't complain. Its an art form
(visuals, audio, story, mechanics, math etc) so maybe suffering is innate. :).
I don't miss it, but, I have always wanted to flesh out some ideas that have
bouncing around for years.

------
unionta
Unions are formed, and are profitable for the members, when the work is the
same for everyone and they are easily replaceable, since in that case, the
workers can be easily exploited. The best engineers would not want to join a
union since they'd have no reason to. Unions can help mediocre engineers who
are replaceable code monkeys (Many of us are, including myself I think). But
the thing is, why would I want to associate myself with that group? I'd rather
try to be one of those awesome engineers. This dynamic doesn't exist in other
well-unionized jobs. For example, all plumbers can do the same work in mostly
similar way. So nobody is losing out by unionizing.

~~~
sonnyblarney
I don't think the dynamic of 'stigma' as you allude to will be a concern - if
a company 'goes union' effectively everyone will be a part of it anyhow.

FYI - there is a _vast_ difference in quality and talent between good and bad
plumbers/carpenters.

