If every single employer has the same work conditions, then what? If the state of the industry as a whole is low pay and unpaid overtime, then it's not like a developer can just go to a better job.
A developer can go make crud web applications like the rest of us. There are options to get out of it they just don’t want to take them. I don’t know if this rings true for graphics artists, game designers, etc. But a programmer who develops game code can probably write a web app too without too much struggle
I did exactly what you described. Unfortunately there is an endless supply of fresh grads (and even very talented amateurs with no schooling) willing to work absolutely slave-like conditions to "live the dream".
This is also why being an aspiring actor comes with terrible pay, hours, conditions. And it doesn't seem likely to change. There's a long line of people who dream of trying, and they bid down the price at the auction.
Fair enough and 100% true. It almost feels like we need to police up the expectations of junior developers and teach them proper work life balance. But they are going to do what they are going to do I suppose.
This should absolutely be an expectation set early on ... I often wish that our industry had an apprenticeship model, so that our senior talent would invest in training newcomers. Coming from the IC level would remove a perverse incentive for employers who offer on-the-job training to teach them to be compliant early on.
Yes and no. Some things are more fun, a lot of things feel about the same (solving logic issues or UI issues or database issues are just about the same no matter what subject it's about), some things are harder and more frustrating (debugging graphics issues can be very frustrating at times).
But I feel much, much more proud of the games I released than anything I've done outside of the games industry, even applications/services I've worked on that have been used by millions of people.
In corporate dev it just feels too much like I could have been replaced by just about anyone and those applications would have been basically the same, or only mattered for a few years before the company decided to throw everything out and rewrite everything, letting my old code disappear whereas with games my own ideas and creativity and how I determined the mechanics should feel and I have something at least partially unique to show for it after that people can go back and play decades later.
Games have their own problem, in that there's so many games out there that unless you've made a superhit, your game will fade to the point where probably no one is playing your game anymore anyway, in place of one of the hundreds of other games coming out all the time, but at least there are people out there that try to preserve as many games as they can, and there's a chance someone will run into your game, dust off the cobwebs, and share it in a video with the world, and a few more people will discover it and enjoy it.
Like for example I'm currently collecting and searching for obscure, fun puzzle games on the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color. All sorts of cool games there that probably only a handful of people in the world are playing right now.
A really cool surprise I can only find a couple of videos for online is Klustar for Game Boy Color. It's Tetris blocks coming in from all sides and you move a central mass around and rotate it, and try to make those blocks connect somewhere on that mass, which alters its shape, and make large squares to clear them and shrink your cluster, meanwhile some blocks slip past and land on the opposite edge of the board and stay there for the rest of the game, blocking you and other pieces, until eventually your cluster is too big and ungainly and oddly shaped that you can't place the blocks in good places anymore and all the pieces attach in bad spots and you fill up the board and the game ends. Really addicting. I don't know of another game like it out there right now. And probably no one is playing it. But at least I found it and I'm enjoying it.
I work as a freelance web dev and typically have a week (or even a month) between contracts to chase that indie game dev dream. It’s a tough juggling act, but it’s better than trying to moonlight
Not every employer has the same conditions, and even within a single employer there can be a wide variance of the work conditions (generally based on project and the mid-level management's competency).
The success of a studio does not seem to correlate with how poorly or well they treat their staff.
In CA overtime is always paid for more junior staff (QA, junior artists/designers) as there were a number of high profile lawsuits against games companies back in the early 2000s. For senior staff and most programmers the salaries are (in my experience) competitive with general development work outside of the Bay Area and FAANG space.
The answer is, get a valuable skill set. If you are the only neurosurgeon in the world, and somebody needs a brain tumor removed, I'd like to see them try offer a minimum wage for the operation.
It's people's own responsibility to make themselves valuable. It's nice if some people offer pathways to becoming valuable (education, traineeships, whatever), but I don't see how anybody would be entitled to it. That would imply somebody would be responsible for delivering it, and who should that be? Why would anybody be responsible for it?
I’m not knowledgeable enough of unions to take an informed position on their merits. My impression was that unions are often an image of protection and nothing more. I could be wrong about that though.
Not unionized since unions cannot seem to stick to protecting my rights and always expands into supporting socialism and meddling with foreign policy.
That said my views on unions have become less negative: as someone pointed out - at least around here the construction companies with highest percentage of unionized workers are generally the most profitable ones year after year.
Why? I can only guess but I guess people work better when they know they are safe and also get a fair pay based on their work.
Yeah, I can respect that. No one else seems to empathize with this stance though.
Unions are a tool for workers to come together and collectively negotiate working conditions and compensation with their company. That's it. Allowing Unions to collect fees such that they can donate to political blurs the original intent of the Union in the first place. I would support a bill banning Unions from donating to political causes so that we can all get back to remembering that Unions are a useful, narrow, and focused tool that does one thing super well.
"Not unionized since unions cannot seem to stick to protecting my rights and always expands into supporting socialism and meddling with foreign policy."
Seriously?
You honestly think your employer, who you support with your daily toil, does not contribute to any political causes you might find objectionable?