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Programmer Sues VU Games Over Excessive Work Hours
eToychest writes "According to Reuters, a video game programmer has sued Vivendi Universal Games, claiming he and his colleagues were regularly forced to work extra hours and denied overtime pay. The suit, filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, is one of many filed against companies in the state in recent months, as employees seek to be classified as overtime-eligible to obtain compensation for working more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. The suit seeks payment of back overtime wages plus other damages. This comes the recent announcement that the company said it would cut more than one-third of its staff, excluding Blizzard. Of the things mentioned in the suit, the complaints include no overtime compensation, and employees being ordered to falsify timesheets to indicate they worked shorter days." This report is especially interesting in light of the recent IGDA 'Quality Of Life' survey for game developers.
I'm glad though, that they are doing something about the problem. I hate it when the Man exploits people and fills his already fat pockets a little more.
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
I'd say "yay for him". I'd sue too ... but.
there's absolutley nothing keeping them from moving the job I complain about offshore.
The way I see it. You can complain, win your court case, lose your job, ask people if they'd like fries with that.
or
You can work your long hours and take every ounce of free time for yourself during the day, just making sure to do a bit of a better job than everyone else.
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Wholly unregulated capitalism combined with high unemployment rates! The best way evar to disenfranchise the worker.
pooptruck
Many times when this occurs the employees in question are salaried employees. People who make a flat monthly rate are a bit harder to pay overtime for than your standard hourly employee. Also you will find that places will usually explain to those people that they may be required to work extra hours and perform overtime and this is usually seen in their pay.
Something I would really like to know is if any employers actually pay their salaried workers a bit more knowing they will have to work overtime or if they manage ways to pay overtime or give them extra time off for working the overtime. While quitting may not always be an option as finding a replacement job is not always easy, it is still available as a way to get out of these types of bad situations.
In reality it may come down to forcing states to once again rework labor laws. Since in almost every state salaried workers are exempt from overtime pay they can become slave labor and while some companies may seemingly be able to get away with this, it isn't good for the people they have working for them. While removing the exemption may cost some companies more money, the smart ones will simple hire more workers to lower the overtime load since that would be cheaper than paying someone to work 60+ hours a week every week.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Salaried, nonexempt employees are not paid for their hours, they're paid to get a job done, regardless of the time it takes. That can mean working extra hours in the crunch time, or taking off a couple hours early on Friday to play golf. Do these people really WANT to be hourly employees? I sure as hell don't.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
I worked at a pizza place while going to college. The managers there regularly worked 60 hour weeks for their salary. 9 hours to manage the business plus about 2-3 hours afterwards to handle closing and settling up the paperwork and bills for the night then dropping the cash off at the bank.
Salaried employees aren't paid x dollars for y time of work. They're paid x dollars to do a JOB.
I worked in the game industry too. Yeah, it was a sweatshop at times. It was also a LOT of fun. The sweatshop attitude wasn't entirely management's fault. They wanted a game in 12 months. We wanted a GREAT game and would regularly spend the extra time coding and experimenting to get the best result. Then, of course, we'd slip and management would hold us to our time. Then we'd get pissed at management and management would get pissed at us and the death march would begin.
The point is that it's not all "evil" management's fault. (Sometimes it is, but not always). But ultimately, the choice to work 80 hour work weeks lies with the individual, not the company.
And I somewhat disagree with your statement.
No one gets in the game industry to make great cash on an 'easy' job. Those that try usually quit when they realize how hard it is. And more money can generally be made doing other programming work, at least before mass outsourcing of such non-game work became common.
So yes, Game programmers typically make games because they want to, first and foremost.
Now, some people are workaholics, and would do the 80 hour thing, or near to it, by choice. But not everyone. Scheduling is pushed by the publishers, and management agree to it, and the programmers have to deal with it.
If a game company schedules a project assuming all staff will want to work 14 hour days for 3 and 4 month stretches, the game will suck.
Now, if a project starts to go bad and you start to have to work a death march that the employees were not told to expect at the outset, then the employer has breached the agreement. Salary is not a commission. Salary is "Perform Task X over time Y for amount of Cash Z". If they change the nature of X or Y, then Z should also change.
My boss compensates for overtime. Lord knows we have to work it, but it is ultimately compensated. Perhaps your company just is not as good as mine?
END COMMUNICATION
Imagine this attitude in a factory. You are charged with screwing X into Y and half way down your shift something somewhere breaks and the entire line grinds to a hault. Well obviously lost production, what happens then in america or according to these posters? You don't get paid? You have to work unpaid overtime to make up for the lost time?
All I can say is thank god for unions in europe then, real unions.
There are basically 3 kinds of jobs
It is up to the boss to ensure in all cases that the person they employ actually performs as desired during the working hours but if there is simply to much work for the number of hours then this is not the problem of the employee in the first two salary situations.
Of course now the questions is where these programmers belong. Are they no different from a person working the assembly line or are they a director level employee.
Funny thing is that despite huge differences in working attitude around the world it seems impossible to say wich way is the right way. Japan was at one time a leader and look at them now. America had the assembly line and the highly paid worker with a car and freestanding house but recent news stories suggest america is no longer able to keep that up either.
Europe is to fragmented to make any real conslusions. My own country holland is amazingly well balanced with work in every field from farming to high tech stuff so we tend to feel fluctuations less then say detroit in the US when the car market shifted (we lost daf cars and it was news but it means a few thousand job losses not an entire city going down the shitter).
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It sounds nice but in reality there are very few workplaces where the flexibilty goes both ways.
You should try suggesting that if you stayed late that the next day you will be in late. Most bosses don't even seem to get the concept. I did work at one place that was fun and had amazingly long hours (so long I even just stayed overnight rather then spend more time travelling home then sleeping) but after a while I realized that while I had more money coming in I had far far more going out (pizza, late night shopping, etc) then doing regular 40hr work.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've read forums about things like this before, where companies pressure employees to falsify timesheets.
;)
Often, the response from many is "so what, most if not all companies do that" or something similar.
I just wanted to say that the company I currently work for as a programmer started using timesheets, and from day one to now, at all levels, with no exceptions (and I work over 50 hours a week on a regular basis, sometimes over 60) it has always been clearly stated:
"Do NOT falsify your timesheets. If you worked 80 hours last week, write it down. If we don't track time accurately, we don't know if you're all being overworked, and we won't realize we need to hire more people. So BE ACCURATE and don't hide the fact that you're working longer hours."
It should be no surprise, then, to learn that we not only survived the dot-bomb years, but we're growing so fast worldwide we can't find enough qualified people to fill the openings we're creating every day, even though we're hiring a LOT of people.
There's a lesson in there somewhere.
I've worked for a bunch of game companies including Origin, Ion Storm, and elsewhere. And I'm here to tell you, they are _not_ fun: they are the equivalent of 19th century sweatshops. Most places I worked, myself and other programmers routinely turned in 80-100 work weeks -- not because we were excited or invested in our job, but because we were told point blank that we would be fired otherwise. There is practically _no_ compensation. Most managers sneer at the idea of comp days, and the number of folks who've received bonuses or royalties that equalled the amount of time they put into a project is pretty minimal.
Managers, of course, come and go as they please and don't seem to understand why everyone is so unhappy with the situation. Because, well, isn't this a fun place to work? Don't they buy you dinner when you stay late and take you to see that "Star Wars" film? And hey, you get to have action figures on your desk! The fact that your hourly pay works out to be less than the guys in QA is never mentioned.
And to that guy who thinks that this is just the price you pay in order to take off on Friday and "play golf," you're obviously misinformed. No one gets to say "Hey, I'm done for the day, how about a round of frisbee?"; if you don't have work to do, you're instructed to find work to do.
If the joy of making computer games allows you to overlook these issues, then honestly, more power to you. But to act like this guy is somehow biting the hand that feeds him is simply uninformed and ludicrous. I have no idea how the legal rulings will play out, but I wish him all the best. Maybe if one of these companies gets scared, then the rest will preemptively adapt normal business practices (like just about everywhere else), act like grown-ups, and then they really might be fun places to work.
--
Lewis
This story possibly has reprecussions for the entire IT industry. Just because it concerns a game company down't mean it should be restricted to the games section.
There are plenty of programmers who have been forced to pull an all nighter while the boss goes home to count his stock options.
May the Maths Be with you!
After a month or so of this, we started talking to the labour board, and guess what, doesn't matter if we're salaried, we are eligible for overtime for every hour past 40 in a week that we work. Considering that last month I had been averaging about 70 hours a week (not at my own choice), I ended up taking home a lot more than I usually did, and suddenly, they weren't pushing us to work overtime so much. Might have had something to do with the fact that they probably blew their salary budget for the next few months. Also interesting is the fact that in our labour code, you cannot force and employee to work more than 4 hours per week unless it is an unforseen emergency. I don't think an approaching, or past deadline would qualify.
In case your wondering, they did try and designate us as professional employees, and thus get away from paying overtime. However, there are precious few positions/professions that qualify. Programmer, Network/Systems Analsyt, etc. do not qualify.
Quit wasting time filing lawsuits and GET BACK TO WORK!
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Try to explain (especially to an HR person) during an interview why you haven't been working for a year.
At 9 out of 10 interviews, "Because the economy is shitty and I didn't want to work in sweatshop-like conditions." isn't going to cut it. They'll smile, nod, figure there's something wrong with you that you're not admitting, and quietly circular-file your resume.
Good way to ensure your job gets sent overseas. BC
Please. When were you born, 1997? High unemployment would be double digits. You know, like it is all the time in Europe. Many economists still think that full employment is 5%. Today it's at ~6.5% and jobs are being created faster than ever - luring more people from semi-retirment or non-working status to unemployed/job seeking status. Get a clue, Democrat.
I know I'm not the only programmer out there that isn't a total slave. :)
The normal routine where I work is about 50 hours a week for a non manager programmer. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Mostly not on the more side. I believe we are fairly compensated for our time too.
Of course everyone is assigned in a group and thus stuck supporting a small range of apps and new development. Maybe this helps but it also limits your future opportunities.
Overall I'm betting lots of programmers aren't getting the raw deal we see here. And trust me, I'm enough of a devotee to my off time that when it gets back to 60 hour weeks, I'll be looking for a new job.
Be well,
Tojosan
That the CEOs aren't working long hours for low pay.
Medical interns regularly work 100 hour weeks. So do articling lawyers. So do investment bankers. So do finance research analysts. So do lots of bankers, senior managers, etc.
Personally I blame mutual funds. As more and more people started to buy mutual funds and become educated about the stock market, there was increasing pressure on companies to return higher profits. The easiest way to do so is to squeeze employees, either through overwork or layoffs.
So, theoretically, overworked employees should be getting the same return as they would have from overtime from investments in mutual funds. Unfortunatly, it didn't work out that way. Institutional investers got most of the gains, or at least those left after senior management was done siphoning them off for themselves.
OBPersonal Experience: I used to work for Nortel Networks back when it was still Northern Telecom and BNR. We used to get paid overtime as software developers. Then they took away the overtime, and the hours stayed the same. Then they took away the $15,000 annual compensation for carrying a pager and being on call 24/7, saying it was "part of the job." All of this real compensation was replaced (in theory at least) by stock options.
When I left, I had a ton of options at about $180 a share while the stock was at around $30. Same year I left the CEO got many millions in bonuses and stock options (that somehow weren't underwater.)
Nowadays, my attitude is that I'll work the unpaid overtime if it (a) needs to be done and (b) it's my fault. But when managers come calling saying "we need you to work overtime because {our schedule was unreasonable | we mistimed the market | Our forecasts were wrong | We need to boost the stock price}," I just go home.
The only difference in the working conditions between american and european game companies is that you won't get that much money in european companies. You can ask about anyone who's been in the industry for a while that "get the job done" is the thing that is important. Usually combined with a subtle "or the company will f*ck up" which happens often enough anyway.
But I experience the same problems. I'm a salaried employee doing engineering research, but I'm treated differently (as salary or hourly) based on which best suits the company.
If I don't get my 40 hours in for the week, I'm docked personal time or vacation, and if those are gone, I'm docked personal or vacation from the next year. If I do get my 40 hours in, and go above, I get nothing in return.
So what used to be one of the benfits of a salaried job (if I got my job done before the work week was done, I didn't need to come in) no longer exists.
So it is allright if they demand you work 22 hours in a row for 5 days?
Give me a break, some people should get a sense of what is logic and what is ludicrous.
You may have signed a contract but there is a point where demands put upon you are not reasonlable, no matter what you signed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Such a schedule would be illegal in the European Union.
Amazing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So you can keep your pride. I'll take the money and free time, thanks.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I may be reading these multiple negations incorrectly, but am I to understand that this person whose primary work requires knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired through a prolonged course of intellectual instruction and study, as distinguished from a general academic education and from training is not qualified for overtime pay if he/she earns more than $1,150 per month?! When was this written, 1970? Where are you going to find people who meet those criteria and earn less than $13,000/year?
in our labour code, you cannot force and employee to work more than 4 hours per week unless it is an unforseen emergency. I don't think an approaching, or past deadline would qualify
:)
Is that meant to be 40 hours per week? Or 4 hours overtime? If not, where are you working?