[Spooky23]

This is just the upside of running your own business. Summer food trucks have been a fixture in my city for decades around the state capitol. Some folks make a great living doing it.

My favorite was an older couple operating a small hotdog stand... they made a ridiculously delicious meatsauce and basically worked a 35 hour week in the summer in the Northeast, and a similar schedule for a couple of months down South.

They owned a nice house in city, were active in the church and community, and were genuinely good people, who made a great living selling hotdogs, mostly to government and Verizon workers.

But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer.

[freyr]

> But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer.

Small business owners should be able to plan ahead for rainy days and the slow season. Squirrels can do it. Humans can too.

[potatolicious]

Normal weather you can plan for, but there are outlier events that can still wipe you out that's basically impossible to predict or prepare for.

Sandy in NYC flooded a great deal of infrastructure and left buildings without power or communications for a long time. Large parts of downtown were completely depopulated for weeks on end - that sort of event takes out independent business owners, and you can't effectively plan for it.

For the most part food vending isn't so profitable that you can build up a thick cushion for longer-term outages.

[criley2]

We commonly say that hackers should save up 3-6 months of floating money, especially if they are in the self-employed or contracting/consulting world. You never know when the next job is, you never know what could happen.

I don't see how being a small business operator of something like this is different. The source of income is different, the wisdom is the same.

Hopefully they were able to set aside months worth of floating money, and even weeks due to a natural disaster wouldn't wreck them.

[MrFoof]

>We commonly say that hackers should save up 3-6 months of floating money

It's not hackers, it's adults. This is called an "emergency fund". 3 to 6 months cash that's easy to access in the event of a genuine emergency, including loss of work. Personal Finance 101.

[shawn-furyan]

Exactly, and if your monetary stream is inconsistent, then 3-6 months should really be considered insufficient. You're shouldn't be regularly be eating into your emergency fund.

[TDL]

Totally agree. I would say closer to a year, but some would disagree. Less than 6 months is not enough, especially for freelance/consulting types.

[silencio]

I co-own a restaurant as a side job. Saving 3-6 months or more worth of emergency funds for my personal use is the trivial part. The real problem is covering everything that the insurance policies won't cover to a sufficient extent: everything from building damage (maybe the landlord takes forever to rebuild/repair) to replacing equipment and any fees to go through processes and get all kinds of permits all over again. That's if there aren't external factors in play that causes problems (like maybe everyone else in the neighborhood got fucked by a major earthquake too).

This is totally different from my freelancing mindset since I have to start thinking about tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars just for floating a brick and mortar business for even a couple months, whereas my biggest investment for my main line of work is...mostly a nice computer. All this after insurance, so then it's time to start thinking about FEMA and bank loans (as if the stingy as fuck banks will give out loans).

All of this is on top of other hassles (SF, Alameda and LA counties are ....nuts for restaurant owners, to say the least) and it just sucks to think about. Maybe food trucks get more leeway or whatever in a lot of areas due to flexibility and size, but if I'm having these thoughts about a pretty profitable decent volume restaurant I shudder to think about the smaller fish out there.

[officemonkey]

Actually, after a disaster, if you have losses that aren't covered by insurance, businesses don't initially get assistance from FEMA, they apply for a low-interest loan from Small Business Administration (see: http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/loans-grant...) instead.

[silencio]

Yeah, I took a shortcut when I said FEMA loans, it's not directly from FEMA but they'll help you with the SBA to get a disaster loan.

Pretty nice to have a safety net, but the government can be picky too. Many people I know got rejected for loans after the Northridge earthquake 20 years ago for trying to make a quick buck selling batteries etc. way above the regular price. FEMA people commented to my parents (they owned a small biz at the time) that they were one of the handful of businesses that didn't price gouge anyone within the area. I had no idea the government could pay so much attention to what people were doing in such a big area.

[lotsofcows]

Yup! That's why there are more squirrels than humans!

[untog]

Unexpected health issues? That's a little more tricky.

[nodata]

And what does an American employee do about unexpected (long term) health issues?

(For short term issues there is insurance, whether in the form of savings or actual insurance.)

[pcl]

Long-term disability coverage has been part of all the insurance plans I've had over the years in the US. I assume that it's pretty common across US insurance plans, at least for full-time employees.

Such coverage pays some percentage of your salary for many years from the beginning of a long-term disability. I think that both of those numbers vary widely from plan to plan.

[bandy]

Provided you have insurance in the first place. (The rest of this post is seemingly invalid in California:) Contractor? No, you don't get insurance. Don't you have COBRA? You can't afford that? Well, golly, better hope that you don't get sick.

[RHSeeger]

If you're a contractor w/o insurance, you're doing it wrong. You should be setting rates so that you can afford insurance.

Health insurance, business insurance, vacation time, holiday time, sick time, equipment, etc. All of these things go into the calculations for your rates.

[pcl]

Indeed. The GP's question was about "American employees", which I interpreted as "full-time employees at a company in the USA".

Contractors are subject to the health care plans of the company they work for (or whatever they buy on the individual market, if they are self-employed). Part-time employees (less than 30 hours per week, IIRC, although that's probably state-by-state) also receive different treatment. Some companies have started to manage hours to have more part-time workers instead of fewer full-time workers as a means to game the heath care laws: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/06/w...

[yummyfajitas]

Long term care insurance.

[TDL]

Long term disability is more appropriate. Long term care is more appropriate for the elderly. To your point, however, insurance products exist to assist when a long term health issue arises.

[Spooky23]

Oh absolutely.

I just point out that many people are programmed to be risk-averse. A shitty job with a steady paycheck is perceived as lower risk than a potentially more lucrative job with a big company.

When I was in college, I sold extended warranties with computers. People would buy a PC for $2,000, and 80% of them would buy an extended warranty for $400. They felt like they were winning, because their liability was now limited.

[latj]

I should do what squirrels do.

[Ygg2]

The fact that even with all that they are better than a game programmer is really sad.

Game programmers are the equivalent of children workers in a sweatshop.

[alex_c]

Why is that really sad?

More people need food than games.

More people want to make games than sell street food.

The food business is brutally hard work, and I have a lot of respect for anyone doing it (well). There's no a priori reason why game programmers should be rewarded more than street food vendors.

[justinhj]

You'd need to sell a lot of bread to make even an average US game programmers salary. The reason being that the work is creative and technically skilled. There are fewer people able to do it and that pushes up salaries. Like any industry there are exploitative employers, but it's just a case of finding or making a good place to work. The video game business is constantly changing in terms of the types of games people will pay for and the technology used. There's a never ending demand for new games.

[alex_c]

I don't have numbers to back this up, but I strongly suspect your average hotdog cart sells more hotdogs per day than your average indie or solo game developer sells iPhone games per day.

A new street food vendor only competes with other food vendors in the area. A new game developer competes globally, against both established studios and hobbyists happy to work for free because it's fun. You have people who want to make games so badly they'll fight to get in, knowing fully it's low pay and long hours.

Any way you look at it, the reason game developer salaries are relatively low is because supply for the jobs is higher than the demand.

It's a bit silly to compare the two because the economics are so different (local, non-scalable product vs. global product with zero marginal cost), but I stand by my assertion that there's no inherent reason why game developers should earn more, on average, than food vendors.

[justinhj]

Inherent reason to me would be that the skills of food vendors are more common and easily acquired than those of game developers. I have a BSc in CS and over 10 years experience. This guy learned to make bread from his girlfriend and opened a stand shortly after. You're probably unfamiliar with the game industry beyond popular articles and headlines, but I can assure you tha demand for qualified engineers is very high. At least in the parts of the industry that are profitable. i.e not the millions of bedroom coders or cheap labour that pump out mediocre games.

[alex_c]

I guess we're talking about different things - you're talking about the high end positions, I'm talking about the average case. To get my analogies even further muddled up, you're talking about musicians signed with a major label, I'm talking about all musicians, from rockstars to people busking in subway stations. The expected value is going to be very different if you're only taking the top N percentile.

(not particularly relevant, but I have friends with similar qualifications and experience as you who work / worked in the industry at... shall we say more mediocre studios. I suspect their perspective on this topic is somewhat different from yours.)

[jdmichal]

Are you implying that cooking is not a creative and technically skilled employ? Because I'm sure there are several people that would be glad to argue that point with you. I mean, sure, a line cook or something? Maybe not. But someone running their own food stand, responsible for everything from the menu to presentation?

[justinhj]

There are skills involved, and I wouldn't say they were lesser than those needed for programming. But in the same vein, I'd say spending a few days learning to make bread to sell in a cart does not compare to the years it takes to become a competent programmer.

[jdmichal]

I would say that speaks more to the formalization of baking than anything else. Software engineering is so far interesting in the sense that it doesn't have a kind of "technical" employee. That is, there is a huge difference between someone who can bake bread from a recipe, and someone who can create that recipe to start with. The former is just being able to follow directions; the latter involves a lot of in-depth knowledge and experience about, for lack of a better term, baking chemistry. In the same line, a lot of traditional (physical) engineering professions can utilize drafters.

I guess the equivalent in software engineering would be someone who can only implement designs and algorithms from other people, and any ambiguities or questions about the design would result in them stopping work until a clarification is received from the "engineer".

[jonnathanson]

Salary distributions in the video game industry are starting to look a lot like salaries in the movie and TV industries. The bottom tends to pay peanuts and demand long hours, because there's an oversupply of willing applicants relative to the demand for low-level talent. (The question "Who wants to make games/movies/TV shows for a living?!" will always be exciting enough to attract entry level applicants by the boatload).

The top tiers of any of these industries, however, pay millions. I'm not talking millions because people started their own businesses and got acquired. I mean millions in salary and/or bonus per year, as employees. This is because, as you put it, the supply of extremely talented and skilled workers at the higher tiers is outpaced by demand. (And also because they're hit-driven businesses -- and, absent any real data as to a causal relationship between Superstar A's presence and Supergame B's performance, Superstar A receives the full benefit of correlation).

So you end up with a sort of pyramid structure to the business: lots of workers at the bottom, slightly fewer at the middle, very few at the top, and the compensation flows disproportionately from the top down.

A lot of industries function this way, but the various entertainment industries have especially interesting distributions because they're so inherently attractive to potential applicants.

[justinhj]

People outside the industry make these kind of generalisations all the time but in practise it's nonsense. Sure millions of kids may want to be video programmers, but very few are qualified (i.e: can program well enough and have sufficient CS background to cope with the job.

Where I work we have a good mix of veterans and recent graduates. Typically they are from top North American Universities including Stanford and Waterloo.

[silencio]

> The reason being that the work is creative and technically skilled.

Given how fast I've been going through potential (literal) burger flipper cooks at my restaurant, I'm not sure that's totally the case. Some people are surprisingly _terrible_ at a job that many people consider to be the lowest of the low.

There is also a never ending demand for food ;)

[Mikeb85]

Yup. And it's quite difficult to figure out how to efficiently sell that much bread (or hotdogs, or shaobing). But once you do, you're in business.

You miss the key part of the equation though. More people want to make video games than want to sell street food...

[justinhj]

See my other replies. Many less people can make video games than want to.

[CodeMage]

Why is that really sad?

It's not sad that the conditions for a street food vendor are better, it's sad that the conditions for a game programmer are so bad.

[Ygg2]

Sorry for late reply.

More people need sex than food, yet we pursue it with greater fervor than food.

More people don't need social networks, yet HN is filled to the brim with new social network or social site.

You got a point about it being a more desirable/glamourous job than selling food.

My point was that people get away with that kind of abuse of employees (and yes I'm aware its due to supply/demand).

[im3w1l]

It is sad because it is too close for comfort. It could happen to me. It also sets a bad price anchor for programmers.

[netcan]

Really?

Being a game programmer is a choice taken by people with good choices available to them. They could be working less hard and/or earning more elsewhere. They choose not to. I don't see why that's a travesty.

Sweatshop is working is horrible conditions that no one would choose if they had any decent options.

[nilkn]

It's not all bad. Valve compensates its programmers the same as Google and Facebook, sometimes better. I believe their revenue per employee exceeds that even of Apple (but don't quote me on that).