Making Sense of the Overtime Mess

I happen to work in a little different industry and saw this wonderful article. Every single employee in our company works 12 hour days, we are payed hourly and not salaried. I get to work at around 8:30am and leave most of the time around 7pm. Most employees get there at 8am and leave at around 8pm. This drives me nuts. I applied for a job that was around 40 hours not 60. They knock off 5 hours of overtime automatically as a company "courtesy". I think that's bullshit, that's my time I spent with you when I could have been home doing something else. I am starting to force myself to get there at 9am and leave at 6pm regardless of how much I have left to do. It's not fair to me to usurp all of my time regardless of my compensation. People still have to take care of themselves (mentally, physically, etc). If you want someone to work 60-80hrs a week normally then you should just be up front about it so they can make a choice about the job. It's always good to get a clearly written job description up front with your expected contribution. If your job description says "we require 40 hours of your time per week" and you're putting in 40-50 then you're doing your job. If they need more labor they need to hire more people. If you're inefficient at your job they should hire someone else. As far as I see it, if you're just an employee and you do your job and can't get it done in the time alloted then it's your responsibility to report the defficiency in labor to your management. Let it be their problem, take care of yourself, and do what you can

The solution to this problem is that Upper managment does NOT need to make 8 figure salaries. Pay the management like 2 million a year maximum then put the rest of that money back into the company for wages.

Oh wait, this is America, just branded myself a Radical Commie Pig for thinking the people that do the work should see more of the results of the work

You guys realize Ubisoft has already moved some operations over to China?

That's where SC:Pandora Tomorrow was made, the single player at least.

I can't imagine what the working conditions would have to be like for the chinese to consider them "bad".

Also, the current tactic is to pair an imported western developer with a group of locals so they will learn development by osmosis. Think Gung Ho but with more geek.

If you really enjoy your job and making ends meet I don't see why its such a big deal staying 10+ hours extra a week.

"One of the strengths of the tech industry has been that there has not been a lot of we-against-they mentality regarding labor and management," Miller said. "You run the risk of losing the collaborative relationship that has been so productive."

So basically what he's saying is that they use the programmers to make a lot of money, and now that they're asking for some of that money it's no longer a "productive relationship"?

Well, yes, Tarter suggested. He said the wisest policy for software tech support departments probably is to assume that employees are eligible for overtime--but that's not necessarily what techies want. "Tech support employees don't like being called hourly workers," Tarter said. "That's seen as applying to checkout workers at Wal-Mart."

I call bullshit. If I were working 80 hour weeks and only getting paid for 40 of them on a consistant basis, I sure as hell would want an hourly wage. Being salaried isn't THAT important to me, especially when I'm getting the short end of the deal.

The funny thing is, is that I can't think of a single company where the owner/CEO/President doesn't earn a shitload more than his/her employees, no matte what their skill level is. That said, why would we expect the game industry to be any different? I would love to see a company where the president might earn the most, but the difference between he/she and their employees is very narrow. Personally, if I owned a game company that was really profitable, I wouldn't find it necessary to make $500k+ a year. I guess I'm just not a materialistic person. Only need enough to live on. Greedy fuckers...

lollerz at oursourcing creativity.

Good job EA. I'm sure my opinion doesn't matter to them but I can tell you for sure that I will not be purchasing nor playing BF2 (or any other of their games).

I agree that EA tends to capitalize on the mainstream market, but what other multi-million/billion dollar company doesn't.......especially when it comes to entertainment?
Seriously, we(those that have been gaming for over a decade) have seen this coming for a long time.
Hardcore gamers are still here, it's just that many of us have been silenced by the masses.

Don't get me wrong though, I still hate how many of the developers of the games we play are treated; I just disagree with the opinion that EA some how thought of a way to "carve" out the hardcore gamer.

People need to realise that the only reason developpers are so underpaid is because there are so much of them, not because of evil firms who scheme to make to whole world a poorer place. Anybody would like to work in the game industry.

My brother works in the game industry, has worked as a level designer for the last 10 years for Xatrix, Monolith and now Paradyne.

All these companies payed salary not hourly, It was my impression that all game companies hire employees as salary employees not hourly because they know if they pay them hourly when crunchtime comes around a 40 hour week is not possible.

It seems to me EA made a big mistake paying these empolyees by the hour rather than salary.

Companies always threaten to move operations when labor tries to "strike back." The thing is that unlike making widgets making games is a creative and highly technical venture. Contrary to what most publishers/oweners may say there isn't a boat load of uber talented out there. There is lots of mediocre talent, but not that many truly talented developers. I think a great many people think that just because there are so many people clamoring to get into the biz that they will always their choice of the cream. If they move out of California they will have to offer a premium to people that don't want to leave.

The Company I work for just got audited over the past 6 or so months by the Texas Department of Labor.
Needless to say I just got PAAAAIIIID....

What will most likely happen is that the Labor department that is doing the investigation will make a suggestion as to how to settle the claims.
If the Employess kept time sheets (we do here) then they would have a record and the DOL would base the recommendation off that value. Its some weird hair brain number too...:)
If they don't I'm not sure how they can prove how many hours that they actually did indeed work. Unless they happen to work in a call center and have phone records...
/shrug
Good luck is all I have to say...

haha all you guys saying that you won't play a game by EA because they are screwing everyone over.. BF2 i will most definatly be playing. At the end of the day. We are just gamers, its not an occupation, we just play the games, we are consumers. If a game looks good and gets good ratings we'll play it, whatever goes on in the other areas of gaming is there to let us know what is happening. I dont think it should affect people in who they buy they're games from. But everyones entitled to what they want to do, just that people who decide to go against companys will probably be missing out on a fair few good games.. Especially since EA have the burnout franchise, You really aren't going to want to miss out on Burnout: Revenge

Sounds like something out of Snowcrash.

EA will release BF2 news to quickly change gamers minds.

Saying that profits will be devastated if the people manufacturing the product receive compensation equal to their work, complaining about California, and threatening to make my games in China instead?


Jesus Christ, is EA reading The Wal-Mart Bible or what?

I read the article and, uhm... Did that EA spokesperson just threaten to outsource if their programmers didn't STFU about the overtime pay?

This is not just an EA thing. I saw on CNN a lot of buisnesses are thinking of leaving California due to this type of thing, and it needs to change soon.

I <3 free trade

Come on, couldn't we have gotten a more inflammatory headline? Something like, EA says "California bad. China good." Those are always fun.

One of my ex-girlfriends was a manager for a Wherehouse Music, and they had a similar lawsuit going on back then. Managers are paid salary and because of that are exempt from overtime, and the company feels free to require it's managers to work overtime and to do ridiculous things... same thing they're doing to the videogame industry. It's the norm, here in Cali.

Maybe I'm missing something but as an artist in the games industry I wasn't really aware I even had the option for overtime...nor do I get paid the ungodly amount that most programmers do.

Don't forget the other people in the games industry, please. Artists/LDs/Sound/Writers are people too. =(

I haven't really been at a company where it has been a major problem. Project management is getting better and a lot of times it's OK to leave at 5-6pm each day (although I still feel guilty for some reason).

If you don't like working at EA, work somewhere else. I hated working at Midway, and now I'm at SCEA. Certain months of the year I work long hours, but most of the years it's just under 8 hours. And I get 6 weeks vacation. I feel sorry for people who work at companies that push them so far, but there's a much easier solution and that's to change companies. I actually know someone who is suing SCEA in one of these lawsuits, and this person was about to be fired for doing 0 hours of work a day...ironic.

[/fired by chinese]/

If this isn't a call to go with online distribution and cut out the publishers then I'm not sure what is.
I'm almost inclined to put together an independant game dev company that's first rule is online distibution only, fuck all the traditional channel publishers.
IF decent, good games can start being delivered to my machine online, and the devs get a higher cut of the pie then that is the way to get back at the outsourcing to china folks.
Take away their money and they'll have to change.

So their record profits and bonuses being earned off the backs of poor game-loving grunts could be in jeapordy? You mean they may actually have to have FAIR compensation for their working masses? You mean they may not be able to spend lavishly on the most expensive Lisences, the most AAA voice talent, and the most ridiculously cost-inefficient processes in the industry in order to sell titles? They may have to fall back on gameplay instead of polish??? WHAA???? Dear god those $50mil plus earning execs must be pissing their pants. Oh wait they can just outsource it to china! Problem solved.

Did I read that wrong?

Or did that guy actually warn that if dev's get their overtime pay, their gonna move production to China for cheaper labour costs?

What a prick! Screw EA and thier BS...

Wait... you mean it's NOT just EA who has these problems with long hours? And you mean it's NOT just EA employees who are mad at their company about those long hours? And you mean it's NOT a problem for just EA, but the entire gaming industry??

*GASP!* Who'd have thunk it?

(duh)

Nice to see an article that actually discusses the issue in more depth, and not just another "Hey, remember that EA spouse blog? EA is evil!" over and over again.

Fucking EA. He's threatening jobs of the hardworking men and women who don't want to be screwed around anymore, by outsourcing their jobs to china. What a dick. Seriously, I hope this backfires in their face.

typical bullshit. Instead of playing by the books, find somewhere else where decent standards of society and laws can't catch up with them.

urrrrrge to not buy BF2.... risssssing :(