I'm probably missing some back story here. Why did the developers agree to work for such low salaries? If they accepted the job knowing how much they will be paid, why are they upset about it now?
Because things change over time? There's a big difference between accepting a job at a low salary, and then staying on after awhile at that low salary with no raises, when you realize just how hard the working conditions are, and that you aren't saving any money while your friends are making steps in their financial lives and careers. This is basic at-will employment; you're free to decide you on longer want to do it at any point. I don't understand why you think that just because they initially accepted it, they should be OK with it indefinitely.
I never said they should be OK with it indefinitely. If I was in their shoes, I would have just quit immediately. But I wouldn't accuse my employer of bad behavior either.
Many of the other comments seem to be accusing the employer of acting in bad faith, or of immoral behavior. If the employees knew exactly what they were getting into, these accusations seem baseless.
It sounds like Squad was taking advantage of employees by forcing them to work very long hours. That's definitely bad behavior. Maybe you or I would quit immediately, but a lot of people don't. They still have a right to complain about it when they finally do get around to quitting. I just don't understand why you are going after the employees. What point does it serve? We know that burnout, being overworked, and being taken advantage of is a huge problem in this industry, so why go after the victims?
I disagree. I think he's unjustly going after the employees, or even if that isn't his intent, that's how it's coming off. I felt like I needed to speak up for them, because as an employee myself, I would hate to speak up about bad conditions in the workplace only to be dismissed by someone who knows little about the situation saying "But he knew what he signed up for, why is he complaining?"
To repeat what Eric said, I'm not "going after" anybody, particularly not the employees. They didn't like their working conditions, so they quit. Absolutely nothing wrong with what they did. My original post was mainly driven by confusion: many commenters talked about their yearly salary as though it is abnormally low. Hence my confusion about why these programmers would accept a job with an abnormally low salary.
Regarding immoral behavior on the part of the employer: I still don't buy that either. Someone can be a bad employer (ie, one that i would never want to work for), and still be perfectly morally upstanding. If someone, in a competitive labor marketplace, takes on a job which has low pay, I don't think they can accuse their employer of immoral behavior because of low pay. Such accusations should be saved for those scums that pull a bait-and-switch and refuse to honor their promises.
The disconnect here is that abysmal working conditions are a huge issue to me, and that the mere existence of them means that an employer is not morally upstanding. Employers have obligations to their employees to treat them well and fairly, and when those obligations are not met, I think people should both change jobs and speak up to save others from entering that same situation at their previous job.
Squad is taking advantage of its developers. There's no other way to put it. It's over-working them with massive crunch times (that may not have been communicated clearly to job seekers up front) and paying them a very tiny fraction of what they could be earning elsewhere. Who knows how much of that is related to false promises. A lot of scummy employers will say things like "The pay will go up after an introductory period", or "We'll give you a raise soon", and then it never happens. Maybe it happened here. We don't know until we listen to the employees' stories. That's why my first instinct is not to look for reasons why it's their fault.
If it's "baseless" to accuse the employer of acting in bad faith, then those poor working conditions are either an utter accident or the fault of the employees' decisions.
It's no different from people choosing a career in early childhood education. Some people insist on doing what they love, ignoring ugly financial issues caused by supply and demand.
I can't speak for the devs, but there are a few possible reasons:
- Working on games is their dream job. They want to do it so much they'd do it for free.
- Long-term unemployment makes one desperate. I have personal experience with this: I once took a job that offered no benefits and low pay because I had been unemployed for two years and was desperate for a job.
- For the same reasons people don't get out of abusive relationships ASAP. They come to believe they deserve the abuse. Again, personal experience: working at a company with low pay and abusive management convinced me I wasn't cut out for anything better, and it was a long time before I broke free of that mental trap and eventually sought employment elsewhere.
- They think that the low pay is temporary and that it'll go up when the product takes off. And then the employer keeps delaying the salary increases by moving the goalposts. Hey, another trap I've fallen into... (and yes, all of my personal experience comes from the same company)
