BibiMaghoo
Member
You can earn £15k a year flipping burgers in McDonalds. For programming, that salary is pretty disgusting.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Dean Hall (DayZ) in dispute with New Zealand govt, wants to pay devs ($USD) $23k/y
- Thread starter lord pie
- Start date
Theonik
Member
I do not have any experience with it but the premice of the op is that it does not?
I am actually curious, how is employee retention and emigration of skilled graduates like? Can you really attract skilled workers with these prices?
tattooed_dwarf
Member
Bit off topic but is there huge shortage of IT workers in NZ? I move to Norway soon to finish my engineer studies and I think next step could be possibly NZ.
The OP only relates to a single new startup wanting to pay international graduates less than Immigration NZ required minimum guidance.
It doesn't say anything about the success, sustainability, or retention of other existing studios within the country. The number of people employed in the industry and the overall revenue is growing at a faster rate than just about any other in the country.
In our specific case, our studio doesn't hire graduates from overseas. Our needs are more than met but local graduates, though we pay them more than what Dean is paying his new and prospective recruits. With respect to retention, I don't think we have it any harder than any other studio or industry. We actually just had another employee, a programmer, hit their 10 year anniversary with the company on Saturday. And we've had multiple programmers return to the company after working overseas.
tattooed_dwarf said:
Prospects for programmers are pretty good in NZ right now. Lots of open vacancies. Project managers/product managers/producers are probably the most sought after candidates here though.
DragonSworne
Banned
So instead of paying employees more money he's willing to spend even more money relocating and still end up with questionable if not worse quality programmers?
This man is a brilliant business man.
This man is a brilliant business man.
Alcoholikaust
Member
I wouldnt move anywhere until you have a job lined up-just saying-
tattooed_dwarf
Member
Well of course not, just testing waters.
BibiMaghoo
Member
I doubt it costs a great deal for 6 people to relocate their office haha.
Undead Hero
Member
23k is garbage. I made more than that when I worked at Food Lion pushing carts as a youngster.
Yeah, it's gross.
That's not really reassuring Dean.
. Really, though. He's definitely getting paid. At between $25 and $35 USD, since release, that represents between $80,253,650 to $115,224.550 USD in game sales. I don't know what share he gets of that, but enough to pay proper wages. This, in turn, represents the yearly salaries of between 3489 to 5010 of these low-paid graduates.
Artisst get to keep anything thats been in the break room fridge for more than a week.
Yep.
Based on the experiences I've had in my field, I'd say you're correct. Without tooting my own horn, the company I started out with was incredibly lucky to get someone of my skill for my initial salaryit was a solid deal for me too, but judging by the other out-of-college hires we tried out afterwards, the actual skill and experience you get with that crop of people can vary wildly. If you want solid work you're going to have to be willing to pay a wage that's better than what a just out of college person is willing to settle for.
"There are no one to do the jobs" usually just means "no one is willing to accept our peanuts".
That's not really reassuring Dean.
Probably because he already has a shit ton of money.
Making a livable wage right now at 10.75/hour so it's a little weird for me to see people saying wages around my wage are minimum wage garbage money. It really isn't (minimum wage in my state is 8.25).
edit: All the same though, for a job as skilled as this, 23k is not enough.
edit: All the same though, for a job as skilled as this, 23k is not enough.
SneakyStephan
Banned
You get experience? What is this garbage I'm reading.
People who work deserve fair pay for their work, not to be exploited by greedy employers.
"experience" doesn't put food in the table.
SlickShoes
Member
I work in IT Support and started off at a University, at the time it was the only place that would employ people with 0 experience in the field despite having a degree.
The pay was £11k per year (the same wage I was getting in an office sorting mail), all that ended up happening was people worked there for 2 years then immediately left once they had experience and doubled their wages at a bank or some other business.
They eventually realised this was massively pointless and started paying much better wages and now the staff are happy and stick around.
HideyoshiJP
Member
I see this man has read "Saving Money" by Unisys, IBM, et al.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Not defending his actions at all, but why do people think he gets a cut of DayZ sales, rather than just a salary while he was an employee of Bohemia?
Maybe because Day Z was his mod? Do you remember the impact the mod had on Arma II sales?
Triggerhappytel
Member
Sure; it was a mod he worked on while an employee of Bohemia. But still; why does that make people assume he's getting royalties when he was already a paid employee and created a mod for their game? Under typical contracts anything he created would be solely their property - particularly given it was their own game he was working on. He probably got a decent payrise being the project lead when they made it into a full game, but I doubt he got any more than that.
"But I get a royalty, and I get paid. I also sold (assigned) the rights for DayZ to Bohemia so I was remunerated there too. Compared to royalty rates for other "artists" and such I am probably doing very well. Compared to game designers (who mostly don't get royalties) I'm doing extremely well.
My royalty rate is not insignificant (it is fairly significant)." From his AMA.
Skellig Gra
Member
Lol who would go for this?
Visualante2
Member
People with parents willing to subsidise the early years of their child's career. Suppose it's a step up from the 6-12 month unpaid internship.
Syph Medwes
Member
If only they had the choice to not take the job
hmm...
hmm...
Yup, one of the (many) reasons young people struggle with social mobility and why certain professions feel like a member's club. When we hired interns, I made sure the two positions were advertised at the London Living Wage to avoid this very problem.
The Dean Hall guy sounds exactly like the type of arsehole who I'm all too familiar with - advertise a position at way under market value, claim you can't fill the role(s) and require foreign workers, then threaten to leave if they're not granted. Meanwhile they're too selfish to do what so many other startups do when they can't afford competitive salaries - offer them a small piece of the business.
ricardo_sousa11
Member
You can ?!
Im a licensed designer, and with a job i'd get 600 a month (7200 a year), that is if I got a job.
I really need to move out of this place :c
This.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
This is absolutely disgusting.
Theonik
Member
Earning national minimum wage and working full time 5 days a week you'd be making about 1072 GBP a month or 12,864 GBP a year. Of course a burger flipper would usually not work in this way.
BibiMaghoo
Member
If you are over 18 it's £7.46 an hour. Full time is 162 hours a month, that's £14,502 with no overtime or pay rise for a better position. A programmer, qualified no less, should be earning considerably more than the chav that cooks my BigMac while talking to his mates on my side of the counter.
Theonik
Member
I thought it was 6.70. Was it changed?
LunaticHigh
Member
For a software engineer starting out at $23K USD is nonsense. I would assume any less than $40k USD would be extremely low.
I started out at a very low salary at a crappy employer and was able to parley that into jobs that didn't suck later. I have trouble accepting either side of the argument entirely. Yes, it's exploitful, but it is also not slave labor. It is a decision made between consenting adults. You can't recruit even mediocre talent at that level, and if you develop the talent they will then immediately leave.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Thanks for the clarity; I stand corrected. I'm amazed that Bohemia had to buy the rights to DayZ and continue to pay him royalties. Which makes it all the more sickening that he wants to pay his employees at Rocketwerkz such a meagre salary. Actually makes me dislike the guy all the more; what a fucking cheapskate.
family_guy
Member
Could also be bad for the career though. Try negotiating a good salary when your potential next employer knows you'll work for almost nothing.
BibiMaghoo
Member
As far as I know, yes. I don't work for them though. My point was that you could get the same, or comparable doing just about anything. My local University offers £7.87 for emptying bins. Tesco offer a similar amount for stacking shelves. This is not a wage a graduated programmer should be receiving. It is the higher end of the lowest payscales out there.
Regardless of the share he earns (or doesn't earn), one would think that the money the game generates should be used to hire the employees that are making the game. Whether through his (Dean) decision or the publisher's, that money is going somewhere. The game won't develop itself.
Prophet Steve
Member
Do we expect every company to reinvest the profits of a product back into the same product? I don't think so.
Besides that, I'm not entirely sure how that is relevant in this game because this game is different and not from the same studio.
I would say that the pay is not the problem. It is an acceptable salary for an entry position job. If you look at Eastern Europe and South Asian countries, it is a fairly competitive salary. It is a crap salary if you can make that much in McDonalds while living with your parents. Perhaps the studio can provide huge housing benefits or even a free housing.
The problem is that an entry position should be supported by seniors and experienced project leaders to guide juniors. Juniors take a hit in the salary in exchange of less responsibilities and more support. As soon as a junior employee can handle and execute all tasks, he should be promoted. I don't see how his studio, which potentially has a lot of juniors, can provide the right supervision.
His statement about not making money as a CEO is not relevant at all.
The problem is that an entry position should be supported by seniors and experienced project leaders to guide juniors. Juniors take a hit in the salary in exchange of less responsibilities and more support. As soon as a junior employee can handle and execute all tasks, he should be promoted. I don't see how his studio, which potentially has a lot of juniors, can provide the right supervision.
His statement about not making money as a CEO is not relevant at all.
Theonik
Member
I was just thinking NMW not MCD. I have no idea what burger-flippers make.
The reddit thread they link has some quite interesting (and *gasp* civil) discussion between Hall and other Kiwis. No punches pulled, lots of facts, figures and insights.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/3d1vkp/dayz_studio_disappointed_unable_to_import_cheap/
Visualante2
Member
I think it's good that he is getting his point of view out there in more depth, but two letters of approval from unnamed New Zealand developers (who likely want to employ the same cheap labour practices) is hardly a ringing endorsement. I don't really understand why he is trying to muddy the issue of the salary by turning it into an anti business agenda.
I still think the way he has presented this has just been to throw mud and trade on his name. It's sleazy.
I still think the way he has presented this has just been to throw mud and trade on his name. It's sleazy.