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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.
Are you kidding? If the option is "work overtime or lose your job", how many people are going to quit? How many are in a financial position to do so?
Don't forget too, that we're in a recovery period in the US economy right now, and a lot of these violations occurred during the recent past where jobs - and especially game programming jobs! - were very hard to come by.
Would you quit your job with no other job prospects and little or no savings just because you didn't want to work some overtime?
Employers have much more power than you apparently think.
Success stories like Sierra or iD or Lord British are yesterday's news. Today the money is earned by the programmer and taken by the publisher. Maybe the music industry would be a smarter comparison than the movie industry. Business is able to take the lion's share from the talent once again because a good product is nothing without advertising and distribution.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
The problem is, how often do you take time off to play a round of golf? If the company's doing their job viciously, never. Game companies especially, are not kind in the hours dept. They're typically understaffed and over worked. Once a game ships, you might get a week, or perhaps a month, off. Or you might complete Myst 3 and find yourself fired because your bosses aren't competent enough to keep the work coming in at a regular pace.
Basically, employers too often want to work a salaried employee like an hourly without the hassle of overtime.
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Open Source Sysadmin
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.
Another possibility is to band together with other IT workers, domestic as well as international, and demand fair pay for a day's work.
A unified group voice is the only counter to the dollars that management has at their disposal to throw around at election time. For me, I prefer to not be a sheep.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
With benefits and stuff, the breakeven is probably more around 70 hours (what you pocket is less than half of what you cost a company).
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
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
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!
I wish you were correct. I really do.
The bad thing about not paying your payroll taxes is this: You're keeping your business running by stealing from your employees. As a business owner, the employee contribution to payroll taxes (known as the "trust fund" portion of the taxes) ISN'T YOUR MONEY! It's money that's been earned by your employees but that they let you hold onto because you've promised to send it in to the government on their behalf. (See? That's why it's called "trust fund" money; your employees trust you to send *their* money to the govt.)
If you don't pay your payroll taxes, you're a thief. Plain and simple.
If you ever hear that your employer is in trouble to non-payment of payroll taxes, look for another job immediately. Your destiny in your current position is too highly influenced by a lying crook.
Now, as for your "under the jail" comment - it's just not true. Employers can get pretty darn delinquent on payroll taxes before the IRS notices. When they do notice, you can drag out the collection process to a ridiculous degree thanks to the neutering the agency got as a result of all that bogus testimony to Congress back in 1998. The resulting statute, RRA98, provides so many mandatory administrative reviews and expanded taxpayer rights (rights to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of legitimate tax collection, that is) that a smart lawyer can buy you ages before the government comes and shuts you down.
It happens eventually, but that "throw you under the jail" comment is a tad overstated.
Pity, that.
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.
In my case, it's cheaper for us to have our techs work 8 hours a day 7 days a week to push product out than it is to hire another person. Once you factor in benefits, training, paperwork, HR overhead, and all that jazz the cost of a new hire is cheaper.
When I switched from contract to full time employee, I requested a bump in pay to compensate for the fact that I would no longer get time and a half over 40 hours. I was flat out denied. I lose about $800 a month now because of it. I happen to know how much the contract agency was charging the company (I was replacing somebody so they brought me in through a contract agency to train). If they would have given me half the difference per hour extra, it would have actually been more then I was requesting.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I'm a non-exempt professional in a usually-exempt profession (CPA). Just being professional is not enough. It's one of the indicators that there's a *good chance* that you are exempt, but you still have to meet the other criteria. But companies get nailed for this all the time by making assumptions. Every place I've worked has been nailed on this. (But always before I was there.)
It's always been a benefit for me, because they've then had to be extra careful with how they treat their employees. When I've been exempt, I've had true autonomy to control my work hours and location. And when I've been non-exempt (like now) I've gotten compensated for the overtime I've worked.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
Wow - you didn't know that before hand? I suppose having had two salaried parents made me more aware of it earlier in life.
The whole idea of salaried workers is to avoid unplanned budgeting expenses and so overtime is built into the base pay. Unfortunately, it leads to far too much abuse, especially in the tech industry. Far too many of us are _expected_ to work more than 40 hours a week, which is just wrong unless they tell you in advance (e.g. you'll get $80k, but you'll work 50+ hour days every week).
>Salaried employees aren't paid x dollars for y time of work. They're paid x dollars to do a JOB.
And if a salaried employee consistently works more efficiently and finishes his JOB early, does he get to take that time off or does he simply get more work?
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