Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by aseipp 1651 days ago
Doesn't matter. She has the needed skills, she gets to set the terms completely. "I want X to happen" and X doesn't happen? No deal. Pretty straightforward. I read all the chat logs and I can say she was much nicer than she probably had to be, honestly. In the end, she realized they wanted to delay mGBA development, that their deadlines were shifting (they wanted no commits for 6-months post release of a product that hasn't launched 2 years later), and that it ultimately wasn't worth her time to even further negotiations.

"All about me"-ism, what a complete crock. Made-up MBA word salad used to shame a person for daring to exercise a shred of self-respect and autonomy, instead of being treated like a doormat.

> Building a product is hard. It's also expensive... and empathize with the people they're working with a bit.

Sorry to be a hater, but I don't care. I'm not going to cry myself to sleep at night because there's one less "product" to consume in the world. One less thing in the world that has my name tucked away in a measly, legally-obligated "About this software" window nobody views, for work that will get thrown in a landfill and forgotten in less than a decade. Sound the alarms everybody, there's one less toy in the world! And if it wasn't for this entitled person, you would have had it faster, with one more feature, for the same cost: the most important things there are. I bawl at the thought.

No, I truly don't care that building your product is hard work or that you have thin margins. Because if I did, I'd own stock. Simple as that. So until then, all that hard product-building work? That sounds like your problem. Not my problem.

1 comments

There's a deep and misplaced sense of entitlement here.

Some companies have money and want to complete a project, and some developers can do the work and want to be compensated. The process by which the compensation is determined involves negotiation. That is a two-sided process. In none of the presented screenshots did the author actually propose what she thought was a fair compensation for the work. She suggests $20K may work but that is the moment to say what she thinks is fair or what would have been worth her time

A lot of people who do emulator work are not based in SF. Many are in other countries where $10K stretches a lot further. The actual offer is not really insulting if the company didn't know she was in such a high COL area.

In the case of GBA emulator work, there is some sort of market. For example, MVG wrote the emulator for the Shantae re-release and there's no reason to believe others can't do the same.

If the author straight up made a counter, we could judge the reasonableness accordingly. In absence, it seems like entitlement.

> There's a deep and misplaced sense of entitlement here.

No there isn't.

> She suggests $20K may work but that is the moment to say what she thinks is fair or what would have been worth her time

Actually the "right time" to specify it, is literally any time she decides she's come to an adequate number, and put it in ink, at her own leisure. Again, she has the skills, she gets to makes the demands. Go make another offer to someone else instead. Not difficult to understand.

> The actual offer is not really insulting if the company didn't know she was in such a high COL area.

Again: your problem. Not my problem.

Shantae is a GBC game. It's a different kettle of fish. Of course others could write a GBA emulator or BIOS but mGBA is widely regarded as one of the best.

Why isn't it entitlement on Analogue's side to offer so low a bid and with ridiculous restrictions?

>>Why isn't it entitlement on Analogue's side to offer so low a bid and with ridiculous restrictions?

Because at the end of the day it's just an offer. She should have just said no, or named a price that was appropriate. The blogpost is literally about nothing, just a failed business transaction like millions that happen every day, but it gets weirdly personal for no real reason that I can see.