Has anyone looked at designing a headless distributed union? The coordination function of unions is theoretically very useful and positive, but the governance structure tends to resemble that of a large corporation.
> Would you say that bitcoin is also structureless?
I don't know enough about Bitcoin's power structures to know tbh. I've heard there are "core developers" who make decisions but I don't know if someone has dictatorial control or if they're elected etc.
I'm in an EU country where this is a thing (Austria), and IT workers do have their own national labor union here (like most professions), but strikes that impact the business are not allowed by law, because that would actually give workers leverage and we can't have that in capitalism, we just have to give the peasants the impression that their opinion maters.
So all the IT workers could do was parade around the capital holding up signs asking for a wage raise matching inflation, but not turn off infrastructure or leave it unattended to rot/crash and loose their employers' money, as that would be illegal, even though that would be immensely effective at getting their demands met.
So obviously, the protest and the union gave the IT workers fuck all in the end, resulting in a pitiful average wage increase below inflation levels, therefore an actual wage loss YoY. But hey, at least we can say we have unions on paper to look out for us, while IT workers here with Master's degrees earn less than janitors in Palo Alto, Cupertino or Mountain View.
Toothless unions are worth exactly jack shit. If the law prohibits them from causing monetary losses to companies (the only language they understand), then they might as well not exist.
From what I read here, I think only France and Sweden know how to do unions and strikes right in order to get what they want.
Interesting, I thought Austria followed quite closely the law in Germany (at least for work councils) and I did not hear of such a restriction there.
I am French and we have unions but anyone is free to go on strike on their own. Strikes are usually orchestrated by unions for the bang effect, but that's all.
You can also strike against your business, I did not know that it possible not to.
There are few exceptions for the strike freedom such as the police, army and maybe something more.
Now, IT would not really think about going on strike, they wild rather switch companies (in the current job market).
>I thought Austria followed quite closely the law in Germany (at least for work councils)
Workers' councils work similar to Germany (I think) but those are established on a per company basis and also have powers limited by law.
I was talking about labor unions which negociate the yearly wage increases for the whole profession (Kollektivvertrag) which is also regulated by law in what they can and can't do in a strike.
Basically you're allowed to publicly strike, as in make your demands heard, but you aren't allowed to sabotage or negatively impact the business in order to have your demands met. Isn't that convenient? /s
>Now, IT would not really think about going on strike, they wild rather switch companies (in the current job market).
That only works when the merket is red hot, but not now, not here. The market is dead for everything excepting skilled seniors. You have to strike for the good of those who aren't senior enough to have leverage over their employer, like juniors and mids. Otherwise it's no surprise an IT worker here makes less money than a unionized tram driver.
It looks like in France this is fundamentally different.
We have the labor law which is the same for everyone. It says the basic things, but it is complete. If your sign a job contact, you can almost skip reading it because everything is codified and you cannot be screwed up. This also means that the negotiation is limited, even for salaries (the general rule is that you cannot be wildly different from a similar peer in terms of your benefits).
Then we have collective agreements, which historically applied to a profession and were negotiated (sometimes very harshly) over the years. A company is part of a collective agreement and, on top of the labor law, applies better conditions from that agreement.
The "profession" part is historical - my company, a high tech one, is part of the "metallurgy" collective agreement despite having nothing to do with metallurgy. But the metallurgy agreement is arguably the most favorable one (or one of the 2, 3 best ones) so great.
Then we have unions, most of them are country-wide and a few specific to a company. They are bargaining with the company and form the core of the work council (this is France, do it is much more complicated than that :)).
Unions call for company, profession or country wide strikes. Usually when it is the worst possible time for the population. We have an extreme love-hate relation with them.
A strike (individual or group (the group one is 99.9% of the cases)) can (and does) impact the business, otherwise it would be quite useless. You cannot actively sabotage/vandalize your company (though it happens) but certainly do anything that hurts it: let it run unattended, block entrances, stop work and stop operations - the sky is the limit.
Without organization, labor has no power. It's unfortunate the unions don't have teeth, but I can't see a situation where individuals could ever stand up to centralized business entities.
And then the union folks do everything to keep the power to themselves, and if you are not a member paying the union, they are not going to "protect" you.
> Or simply go to a company that does embrace remote.
One does not simply go to another company right now. Hiring is slow, it's not 2021, and there's already thousands of others also looking for work. It's easy to say, harder to do. Especially if you have a family, in addition to a full time job at a game company (not exactly a low stress environment itself)
> Amazon tried this and I believe reversed the decision because so many devs quit.
Every single job I see on Amazon's page for Software is in-person non-remote. Maybe they made exceptions for some, but anyone joining right now won't be remote. Same thing for any other FANG/MAANA/etc, Correct me if I'm mistaken.
those poor employers just trying to support everyone's families and those ungrateful developers working 7 days a week taking advantage of them, "building" the "products" that make the company "profitable" :( and now these maladjusted workers are thinking of organizing together??? for better working conditions??????? ridiculous. just go work at mcdonalds or something amirite
it is if your work drives the company's profits and you can organize with your fellow workers and demand it!
> I prefer remote work and I'd only work for a full remote company, but in no way do I feel like it's my right to force a company to allow me be remote.
good for you, some of us see the employer beholden to the people who actually drive the company. try not to police your fellow workers while we advocate for better lives.
> the article is about the game industry. it's kind of well known for its toxicity and poor working conditions.
Ah yes it's about the gaming industry, not a specific topic like company shifting to office work during the last period of development and workers not wanting to go in to the office.
Makes it easy to shift that goal post when it's just about the industry, but you're also arguing that remote work is a right, so I'm not sure you even fell for that.
Is Rockstar demanding 7 days? No. What you said is false and irrelevant.
Don't try to conflate things that are irrelevant to this particular discussion.
Either you view remote work as a right or not. I don't.
the article is about employees angry that they're being forced back into the office when they already deal with poor working conditions.
rockstar doesn't demand it, it's already a part of the culture of the industry. hence, why they're so upset.
the first pull quote is literally "After so many broken promises we now fear management may even be paving the way for a return to toxic ‘crunch’ practices."
please read the article before shitting all over people who are trying to better their working conditions.
> Don't try to conflate things that are irrelevant to this particular discussion.
it's not my fault you have poor reading comprehension and disdain for your fellow workers.
> And I'm not upset sooo you must suck at mind reading or can't realize you're projecting I guess.
i didn't say you were upset. i said _they_ were upset. there's that poor reading comprehension again.
edit: oh, you deleted that line? is it because you just post without reading anything, like the article? quoted:
> For years, Rockstar had a notorious reputation within the video game industry for brutal crunch in the making of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead games. However, following the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 and the shocking stories about the human cost of its development, media reports suggested changes were made to the company’s culture to avoid the same thing happening during the development of GTA 6.
> Austin Kelmore, IWGB Game Workers Chair also hit out at Rockstar: “The workers in the IWGB Game Workers Union at Rockstar are pushing for transparency over pay and promotions, a healthy and inclusive workplace culture, and work life balance centred around what each worker needs. It is unacceptable that Rockstar leadership have gone back on their word time and time again and have ignored the workers' requests for basic working conditions.
read the article, dude. rockstar (ESPECIALLY rockstar) has a history of this behavior. we call that "evidence," so when people have "fear" it's because it's well-founded based on historical fact.
"This crunch culture is deeply intertwined with the lack of work-life balance at Rockstar Games. Many employees reported feeling pressured to prioritise work over personal life, leading to burnout and mental health issues. The expectation of long hours and constant availability fosters an environment where employees struggle to maintain a healthy balance between their professional and personal lives.
A former employee stated that they had “worked 80 hour weeks at Rockstar until [they] had a breakdown. If I hadn’t, my contract would have been terminated.”
"Rockstar's broken work ethics: Former employees detail mandatory long hours, unpaid overtime, and a culture of fear at studios behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption" - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/rockstars-broken-work-ethics
"poor working conditions" includes promising to support remote work and then reneging on that promise and forcing workers back into the office after they've moved away, an allegation _which is in the article that we are currently discussing_: "The IWGB also alleges Rockstar had insisted flexible work options would remain available in an employee-wide email that said: “This isn’t our first step to five days a week. No one wants to go back to the old way of working.” The IWGB went on to claim Rockstar management has so-far refused to engage with workers on the issue, and will “pull the plug” on remote access to technology on April 15."
i'm not going to quote the entire articles here. enjoy!
So they reserve the right to work there because they're making cool stuff?
But they also reserve the right not have to go into the office?
I don't view remote work as a right. It's a policy decision of the employer, same as it's a policy decision of the employer on what they work on, including GTA.
I'm just saying working on gta 6 is not fungible, is all. I agree remote work is not a right, but for someone working on their dream project, the most advanced game in the world (arguably), it's probably not as easy as just going and working on something else.
I think the disconnect is that rockstar made a lot of noise about trying to eliminate crunch after the nightmare crunch of red dead redemption 2. So if they are making people go back into the office to force crunch out of peer pressure, then they just lied.
They are 7 years "overdue" from the previous release, but that means nothing by itself.
The last GTA game took the longest and would have seemed past due before release, but look at the level of depth it had. It's still the top game over a decade later.
Most importantly they never give a due date too early for this exact reason.
Yeah looked it up, so only half a decade, corrected my post.
My point was, it takes a longer time each time and without seeing the level of gameplay you don't know whether it's mismanaged or simply an extensive game being developed.
You also don't know the percentage of their resources they put towards it. I'm sure maintaining and developing GTA Online took at least some resources.
Either way, I'm not going to shit on the one company that actually knows how to make full games.
Looking at you CD PROJEKT RED... (cyberpunk was a joke right?)
Yes. But many of those people are probably so proud of working on it and wouldn't want to stop.
Also, rockstar did make an effort to cut back on crunch after red dead 2, so the result is longer timelines. R* going back to crunch probably feels like backsliding to employees.
QA often has night shifts, daily builds are tested at night and bugs are logged for the next morning.
That said this is very much a relic of a time when game development was “simpler” and given the production pipeline today I’m not sure if this still makes sense.
I listened to an interview with a former Blizzard QA engineer who goes by Piratesoftware, and he explained that there were night shifts for QA to maximize the number of testing hours before launch.
Maybe for things that can't be parallelized any more, e.g. only one designer at a time can work on a specific (complex) asset, but it might be possible to hand over the work to the next shift?
