I once had three employers within two years - I have friends in the industry who had even more, jumping around every six months for a while. The combination of start-up culture and entertainment industry - new studios being started up by publishers who then need to unexpectedly reduce costs before a game gets made and shut down the studio. (Though in my case, it was also complicated by the recent movement of Chinese and Korean game companies into the US. They wanted US studios but didn’t do sufficient homework - only after starting the studios did they realize everything was really expensive, and shut them down. I learned not to work for new, Asian-funded studios.)
For programmers, presumably. “Creative” work doesn’t get overtime protection, and only programmers have so far convincingly argued in courts that their work wasn’t creative. The irony being that programmers are the best paid of all game developers to begin with. So all the artists, animators, sound designers and game designers get the unlimited hours and low salaries (even though the work really isn’t necessarily any more “creative” by the legal definition).
One company I worked for not only didn’t have overtime, even for programmers (though to their credit they tried to eliminate crunch), unpaid “personal time off” had to be taken on an hourly level (e.g. dentist appointment in the morning; came in to work late). So no matter how many hours one worked, one would almost inevitably end up being paid less than the stated salary. I’m not sure that was legal. I’m not sure they cared.
The Texas AFT can collectively bargain, it just can’t strike because of state law (just like police unions.) Can you say teachers’ flu?
Are you a TX teacher? If so, maybe you should add ‘agitator’ to your resume.
Speaking as a software developer of long standing, I agree everyone should join a union. American unions are a little odd, as are the larger UK ones. When I say “odd” I mean, they fail to act in their members’ best interests, for their own political reasons. Join the Wobblies! They are vigorous in prosecuting their members’ views and interests! https://iww.org.uk/
Will we someday find a gene that prioritizes ideology when it conflicts with self interest?
(also see, the brilliantly evil marketing strategy republicans have employed for the last few decades to get poor and/or patriotic people to consistently and passionately (via issues that specifically target the lizard part of the brain) vote against their interests). Horrifically fascinating (or fascinatingly horrific).
To continue the chain, my father was an engineering manager at Chrysler, retiring in 1993. He liked safety standards because he had worked on reliability as an engineer before he rose up the ladder to management. As for emissions, he was disappointed that Chrysler had dropped its research on the lean burn engine. He figured that better gas mileage would lead to lower emissions.
He did not care much for unions, because they shut down the factories occasionally. But mostly he ignored them.
