> the allure of what you do makes it less likely that you’ll jump ship to something less exciting but more lucrative (similar to how game industry devs tend to make less than regular software engineers, from what I’ve heard—you can exploit people’s enthusiasm),
I used to be a game developer and you're exactly right.
People tend to frame this observation in a negative way, but I hate that mindset because it portrays employees as lacking agency. The way I look at it is that people choose jobs based on the total compensation package: salary, bonus, on-site perks, coworkers, work environment, meaning, social cachet, etc. All of those are meaningful and valuable to people.
Obviously, sure, it would be great to be paid six figures to work on a tropical island for a few hours a day applying sunscreen to models while the UN videoconferences with you to express their gratitude at how you're saving the environment. But, alas, those jobs are few and far between.
In reality, people make trade-offs and choose the jobs whose entire compensation package fits what they are trying to get out of their life. And, for a social species like Homo sapiens, it should come as no surprise that for many people, some of the most important parts of a compensation package are prestige and glamour. So when a job with a lot of social cachet (journalist, novelist, actor) doesn't actually pay that much in cash, that makes sense: it pays more in other aspects.
I agree, I dislike the use of "exploit" in this context because it sounds like enthusiastic people are mindlessly accepting these poor paying jobs. I like to believe that they know exactly what they're getting into, why it pays less, and they are taking the job for other reasons such as the ones you've named: prestige and glamour.
I meant no offense by the use of the word—rather that I think game devs should be able to enjoy the prestige and good pay/working conditions ;) If anything it's a jab at the companies who make record profits and still don't compensate their employees fairly, not the workers who take those jobs.
Unless there are significant anticompetitive forces in your industry, unfair compensation is simply not a stable state. Since the gaming industry is very large and many upstarts seem to find success, how can the prevailing wages be considered unfair? Everybody would have a profit motive to quit their employer and become a greedy exec themselves.
Probably a lot fewer upstarts find success than you imagine - it may seem like "a lot" but the rate of success is abysmal. It's hard to get accurate statistics because it's not obvious what to count, but from the attempts I've read it's somewhat over 90% of games that do not breakeven and has been this way since the early 90s at least (probably earlier but it's even harder to find data the further back you go).
The vast majority of startup game studios go bankrupt within a couple years of founding and the vast majority of solo indie devs only release one game.
There is no international industry-wide wage-suppression conspiracy, the supply-demand equilibrium is simply at a lower wage level than non-games tech.
It can be "unfair" in an intuitive and specific case while still being the result of market forces (is it fair that I'm paying rent to my former landlord's son? he did nothing to earn it except inherit this building)
EDIT: I realize you were not claiming it was a conspiracy, I just wanted to correct a common perspective by industry outsiders that see a lot of success stories and think "how hard can it be?" - the world is big and the "many cases" you are seeing a tiny % of the whole, which are overwhelmingly unsuccessful.
Is it fair that you're paying rent to your former landlord's son? It is if the rate is fair. Being a landlord is actually a job and it can involve quite a bit of risk (property damage, housing market crashes, etc). It's not exactly rare for landlords to actually lose money. Maintenance costs, taxes, and that risk should be priced into your rent, plus a reasonable fee. If that fee is unreasonable, now you're in an unstable market state. There would have to be significant anticompetitive forces in the property market (onerous zoning, natural limitations) to keep it that way, otherwise you would want to move to a new landlord with a reasonable fee.
Whether or not private inheritance is fair is a completely separate debate. We could do away with private inheritance, and all these market forces would still work to keep prices fair.
Oh, absolutely the failing is actually of the city to get enough housing built as to create an efficient market. But my point wasn’t really about my landlord but that the fact that some executive at Ubisoft or Activision are paying themselves generously while paying employees worse than non-games tech isn’t an indication that the lower wages in the games industry are due to collusion, rather than supply/demand equilibria being different in different sub-industries.
> It can be "unfair" in an intuitive and specific case while still being the result of market forces (is it fair that I'm paying rent to my former landlord's son? he did nothing to earn it except inherit this building)
I think where it gets to be frustrating is fields where even the "dull" side of it is hollowed out. My original career plan was Japanese translation. I wasn't nursing any fantasies of doing literary translation or games or anything else fun but even then the pay sucked the few times I managed to get work and I decided computers seemed like a better option.
I've actually been planning a career shift in 5-10 years doing Japanese translation, so it's interesting to read your comment. I have no delusions about getting paid a lot or only working on creative stuff, but it's still something I'd like to do. From everything I've read there is a lot of demand for JP->EN translators, and you can make a living off of it, which is all I need. What's your thoughts on the industry nowadays? Have you thought about going back at some point?
I graduated in 2010, which was probably not the best time, and I had a hard time breaking in when many experienced people wanted jobs too. I also observed a couple trends that I think made it challenging:
1. Machine translation is not a replacement for a human translator... but it's good enough to muddle through for some people that they'd rather not pay. If not, a lot of times they'd rather pay someone to edit MT than for a scratch translation. I've never done this, but to hear others tell it, it's not that much less work but it pays worse.
2. Sites like Gengo and Fiverr have popped up ensuring you're competing with people who are desperate or not doing it as their main job. I did work for Gengo and a surprising amount of work from prestigious companies or requiring a lot of nuance (contract translations, for instance) came through on the basic tier. That was interesting to work on but if people are feeding that stuff into a service like that, it speaks to how little they value good translation work. Unfortunately there weren't enough jobs that this was even slightly consistent so it wasn't a great way to make money even at their low, gig-work rates.
I have zero interest in going back. If you're interested to hear more from people who are still doing it, this community seems to be somewhat active with real, working translators: https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslationStudies/
I used to be a game developer and you're exactly right.
People tend to frame this observation in a negative way, but I hate that mindset because it portrays employees as lacking agency. The way I look at it is that people choose jobs based on the total compensation package: salary, bonus, on-site perks, coworkers, work environment, meaning, social cachet, etc. All of those are meaningful and valuable to people.
Obviously, sure, it would be great to be paid six figures to work on a tropical island for a few hours a day applying sunscreen to models while the UN videoconferences with you to express their gratitude at how you're saving the environment. But, alas, those jobs are few and far between.
In reality, people make trade-offs and choose the jobs whose entire compensation package fits what they are trying to get out of their life. And, for a social species like Homo sapiens, it should come as no surprise that for many people, some of the most important parts of a compensation package are prestige and glamour. So when a job with a lot of social cachet (journalist, novelist, actor) doesn't actually pay that much in cash, that makes sense: it pays more in other aspects.