nephilimdj
Member
Similar thing happened in Australia a few years ago, an oil company was using Filipinos to be cleaners on oil rigs using skill shortage visa. They were being paid 20k, while Australian cleaners on same rig got 80k.
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Dean Hall (DayZ) in dispute with New Zealand govt, wants to pay devs ($USD) $23k/y
- Thread starter lord pie
- Start date
That isn't what is happening here. The government is supposedly requiring Dean to pay foreigners MORE than what he would be paying NZ nationals.
His issue is that he wants to pay foreigners the same as what he wants to pay NZers.
Edit: Dean is actually commenting on this over on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/3d1vkp/dayz_studio_disappointed_unable_to_import_cheap/
ugh_the_boot
Banned
^ Well that actually makes sense then because atleast this way the incentive is to keep jobs within the country.
NZ government has always been pretty good. This guy is beached as bro.
NZ government has always been pretty good. This guy is beached as bro.
King Gilga
Member
Straight up minimum wage for a graduate job, fucking disgusting.
What a grade A scumbag.
What a grade A scumbag.
Disclaimer: I admittedly don't know much(anything) about NZ law so there's a fair chance I'm going to say a bunch of stupid stuff, in which case please ignore me. I know a little about immigration and working visas in general because I moved around a lot when I was a kid so I kind of picked up a little bit on policies here and there, but that hardly makes me an expert on any of what I'm about to say. By all means correct me if I'm wrong on the specifics!
That said, I think that while I understand the complaint he's making, it's not a very good one.
In general, immigration policies come down to only wanting to facilitate foreign high skilled workers, if there aren't enough locals attempting to get that same job. For example, Canada didn't have enough doctors for its population so it facilitated the immigration of foreign doctors...though they still made allowing those doctors to practice their license a living hell due to completely off-topic if still interesting reasons.
Anyhow, the government's priority when allowing immigrants is generally..well, it's kind of hard to use the term generally here when it comes to so many countries policies and remain even a tiny bit fair. Still, a general principle governments tend to follow is "Foreign workers are not to be prioritized over local workers."
What usually varies a lot depending on what country we are talking about is the set of conditions upon which they allow foreign workers to come in. America for example has a set of tests that basically come down to(depending on the field) "is this person exceptionally capable, in such a way that the employer could not find a local equivalent to him?" and if so, they sign off on it. This is usually where it gets messy since there's a lot of back and forth on what constitutes good enough reason to bring in a foreign worker and this is easier to do on certain fields than in others. Countries and fields vary in the specifics.
With the above in mind, in general countries do not consider "locals want this set of jobs, but want better payment" as a fair reason for requesting foreign workers. This is because this type of practice is incredibly poor for the country's economy and only good for the company itself.
So yeah, the government is asking he pays foreign workers more than he is offering to pay locals...this is because--and this is just my guess--they don't want to stimulate the trend of "cheap foreign labor in place of skilled local labor" because that can become an incredibly destructive practice if left unregulated. This is a type of safeguard like "You want this foreign person to come work for you because their skills are invaluable, not because you are trying to exploit their home country's poor economy while making a detrimental move to our own economy."
I understand what point he's making, but I disagree that it's an issue at all. I'm far from a specialist in the matter, but personally I can't see how not doing anything against the idea of bringing cheap, skilled labor from foreign countries would not be harmful to NZ's economy. What he's complaining about just seems like a very fair safeguard to only allow foreign hiring to take place when you are after skill, not reduced costs.
I think most people are criticizing him here for the issue at hand, and most people seem to understand that.
Even if it was somehow about DayZ (which it isn't), this is a very scumbag thing to do, as 23k is fucking nothing. I don't know how much he has to pay programmers, but if he is going to run a company, he needs to be able to adequately compensate employees. If he doesn't, then he needs to either get funding from an external source, or go as an "indie" developer with only people that do it as a labor of love rather than necessarily for a living.
However, the reason people are bringing DayZ into this as it kind of left a sour taste in people's mouths, giving the feeling he "abandoned" DayZ. Now, we know he did intend to sell it to Bohemia, however him leaving did kind of come as a shock, as he had stated before he was going to see the project through before he left. Obviously he had changed his mind on this, which is why people began to understandably ask questions. I still have faith in Bohemia completing DayZ, and I actually checked it out about two weeks ago and there actually have been some decent changes to it since the last time I played, albeit the development is slow, I believe they will still finish it. It may not be timely, but I think hopefully within the next year or two it will be finished.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
This
Quick stop before jumping to London?
In my experience, NZers tend to go to the UK, Ireland, and Canada when they are younger (early 20s) for a couple of years for the experience of it, but make a more permanent move for career and lifestyle to Australia when older (late 20s and 30s).
Seems the migration back towards NZ is being fueled by the economy here doing well by comparison, housing childcare and health services being generally more affordable here, and the government in Aussie being horrible.
He has done a pretty great job of building himself a reputation of snake oil salesman
Don't trust that guy a bit, I used to... not now.
Brerlappin
Member
You also get to experience trying to survive on minimum wage for skilled work! What a story to tell the grandchildren eh
Naa, Software Engineer is still one of the best career paths these days IMO.
Game programer is a whole other story thought, they are not pay as engineers.. they are paid just like other entertainment industry workers are paid (horribly)
I wouldn't live in Dunedin if you paid me 100k, let alone 35. It's a total dump.
Going off that reddit thread, the main issue seems to be this:
I can't disagree with the sentiment, but my issue with his reasoning is that the only reason he's resorting to hiring immigrant workers in the first place is because not enough NZ graduates seem to be biting at his current proposal. So to me it comes across a bit...disingenuous, to frame the issue like that when the issue only exists because of a different problem.
That said, I might just be incredibly naive but from what the guy was saying he didn't seem like he was trying to do anything terrible. I don't think he's trying to screw young graduates or anything of the sort, but I do heavily disagree with his reasoning and actions. I actually believe he's doing all of this just because he thinks this should work, because by his own admission he could have paid the slightly higher amount immigration asked and still made it work(the adjustment they asked for was still pretty cheap according to that reddit thread).
It's a little hard to feel particularly sympathetic because while his sentiment of "pay worker X same as Y" is admirable, this whole issue comes from him not wanting to pay worker Y enough. Like, I agree with the sentiment he's expressing but I don't think that really applies to the current situation. I can sympathize with a lot of his complaints regarding regulation being vague, but I just can't follow the train of thought that goes from what caused this situation to his issue with regulation.
I can't disagree with the sentiment, but my issue with his reasoning is that the only reason he's resorting to hiring immigrant workers in the first place is because not enough NZ graduates seem to be biting at his current proposal. So to me it comes across a bit...disingenuous, to frame the issue like that when the issue only exists because of a different problem.
That said, I might just be incredibly naive but from what the guy was saying he didn't seem like he was trying to do anything terrible. I don't think he's trying to screw young graduates or anything of the sort, but I do heavily disagree with his reasoning and actions. I actually believe he's doing all of this just because he thinks this should work, because by his own admission he could have paid the slightly higher amount immigration asked and still made it work(the adjustment they asked for was still pretty cheap according to that reddit thread).
It's a little hard to feel particularly sympathetic because while his sentiment of "pay worker X same as Y" is admirable, this whole issue comes from him not wanting to pay worker Y enough. Like, I agree with the sentiment he's expressing but I don't think that really applies to the current situation. I can sympathize with a lot of his complaints regarding regulation being vague, but I just can't follow the train of thought that goes from what caused this situation to his issue with regulation.
This. You're like -this- close to Queenstown, and you get none of the advantages of living in Auckland.
No deal, especially at 35k.
He actually says in that thread that he CAN hire all the graduates he needs locally, but that he wanted to offer the opportunity to graduates globally and to grow Dunedin in general by bringing in people from outside the region or from overseas.
However, in reading the situation a little more, to me it appears Immigration NZ are not requiring foreign grads to be paid explicitly more than NZ grads, but requiring that foreign grads need to be paid a minimum of ~$37.5k? And it is the desire to pay NZ grads only $35k that is creating the issue that foreign grads would necessarily be paid more? On the surface, I don't understand why the problem can't be "fixed" by having both NZ and foreign grads starting on $37.5k, especially when Dean is also saying "it's not about the money".
Come on man...
... JAFA's
He says that, but I'll admit that I kind of had some skepticism about that. That's not a fair position for me to hold since I can't prove he can't hire people for that amount though, so I'll be a little bit more fair to him.
And yeah I don't get that either. It seems like his problems with the regulation and his own situation are completely divorced from each other, since it seems like the slight increase would have solved everything. My best guess is that the government was a bit unclear in their responses, he responded emotionally and it snowballed from there.
Like he mentions at one point that the government doesn't care about how much graduates are paid only that immigrants are paid more, so it seems like he hasn't thought much about economic impact of bringing in cheap international labor and so forth, especially since he acknowledges some confirmation bias right after that. So I could see maybe him reading their probably vaguely worded response(as most responses of that kind are) and thinking it was a completely arbitrary decision instead of one that's meant to protect local workers.
I mean the cynical part of me thinks that he's just latching on to attacking the regulation to put some sort of positive spin on the situation and that it actually is about the money, but I mostly think it's better to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it's really not about the money and he got emotional over a vaguely worded response and didn't think through what he was saying much. Hopefully this will sort itself out.
I see a very simple solution to this issue.
Hire locals
Crimsonclaw111
Member
Wouldn't be the first time he's ripped people off.
Someone doesn't live in NZ
Angelus Errare
Banned
We kill the Bat?
$23K might actually buy you something in Spain. I can't afford to pay for rent and food where I live on $23k.
Coke costs $75 a gram in Spain. It's $480+ here. Wages in themselves don't mean much, you have to factor in the cost of living.
tattooed_dwarf
Member
Yeah, imagine if you lived in Vietnam with that salary, it would be more than decent! 😒
Triggerhappytel
Member
I think this is what's pissing me off the most. They even had a nice CGI trailer which probably cost tens of thousands, for a game that's likely 3 years away. I get the feeling Dean Hall is a bit in love with himself and overestimates his own importance.
I do think this is bad practice, but when I graduated with my Computer Science BA I would have jumped at an opportunity like this. Any graduate willing to work for that kind of money is obviously finding it difficult to find a similar role paying the proper wage. It's not a great situation and it is clearly exploitating that desperation, but it's a better option than ending up in admin and earning the same kind of wage in a role which doesn't allow you to develop your skills and experience in the actual position you want. A year or two doing something like this would have been a godsend for me.
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
Does New Zealand offer working holidays like Australia does?
If so, then I'm sure you could oversaturate the place with eager Korean and Taiwanese graduates fairly quickly. It would sure as hell beat packing strawberries in Queensland for NZ$0.20 per punnet.
If so, then I'm sure you could oversaturate the place with eager Korean and Taiwanese graduates fairly quickly. It would sure as hell beat packing strawberries in Queensland for NZ$0.20 per punnet.
You can do working holidays in NZ but I don't know about doing working holidays for high skilled jobs like programming.
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
The only restriction in Australia is that you can only work for one employer for six months.
Some of AusGAF should make a game studio and carry out what I suggested.
shaowebb
Member
Boy they ain't fucking kidding. So many folks just rotate in and out unpaid interns to do the job and pay them in "portfolio experience" these days that its disgusting trying to even get your start.
I had to change careers to pay the student loans and go indie to stay involved and I was one of the fortunate ones who even managed a fallback career to resort to in order to cover the loan debts from their education. The gaming industry is brutal and even once your in its not that glamorous. Folks in this industry move around more than folks with career in the military and I think the last report I read on averages stated the life expectancy for the average employee term at most studios is around 2 years these days. Good luck settling down with that life.
Its a hard life bein in the industry. It takes a lot of strategy to survive it these days.
Alcoholikaust
Member
ouch 23K is pretty crap.
edit:cost of living in NZ is insane
edit:cost of living in NZ is insane
28K? Maybe in 1985. I would have laughed at that when I graduated college 15 years ago. You must live in a dirt ass Podunk town or be just too far from it to know accurately.
For reference, my brother in law gets paid about 50% more than that in his internship... in Kansas. He's staring his junior year of college in the fall. Now his. Getting paid $50K+ with an engineering degree out of college is very doable, maybe even a bit low nowadays.
If anybody is actually getting paid $28K with an engineering degree... Move. I don't care how cheap it is to live where you live... It ain't that cheap.
Gas is about $2.30 here with $2.50 milk too... Those are commodities sold in an open marketplace. they can only get so cheap.
bodyboarder
Member
It's always about the money.
NZ$60k isn't "standard" for an entry level programming graduate in NZ, and Immigration NZ has since revised their guidance down to $37.6k it seems.
The NZGDA puts the range at $35-45k for games in their letter of support. I'd personally put it at $40-45k.
While I'd consider $35k "low" for a programmer graduate, I don't know what his contracts and employment policy are. He has mentioned that there is some sort of bonus scheme, and says on the Reddit thread that employees have unlimited leave and no minimum work hours requirement.
SlickShoes
Member
That's not really reassuring Dean.
All that tweet says to me is "I am already comfortable and don't have to worry about money month to month to survive".
The people he would be hiring are not run of the mill graduates, programmers are very talented, to pay them such a low salary and have them living paycheck to paycheck is a bit grim.
I am guess most programmers put in a lot of work so they don't come out of uni having to work for minimum wage, I only do IT Support and I wouldn't get out of bed for a salary that low.
Wolf Akela
Member
NZ law requires 65k minimum for foreign software develops.
I have literally never seen an ad post for a 35k software developer. Most fresh grad salaries pay in the 40s at the absolute minimum.
I have literally never seen an ad post for a 35k software developer. Most fresh grad salaries pay in the 40s at the absolute minimum.
Theonik
Member
It's actually a pretty horrible deal and part of the reason that NZ lacks said industry. People forget that the labour market is becoming increasingly globalised.
NZ actually has a vibrant and rapidly growing videogame industry.