It's clear asking a professional to do this and not being up front about paying $0 is unprofessional and a disrespectful waste of time, but I'm not convinced it's actually predatory or abusive.

If someone thinks they'll get more than $their_cost in promotion value, they'll do it. If not, they won't.

If no one does, the production company is going to waste a lot of time and burn their reputation trying to avoid what's probably a relatively small expense compared to the budget of their show.

It would be even worse if someone wrote an article about it.. oops.

This.

I see the biggest problem with the email conversation that the person asking was not up front with the 0$ payout in the very first paragraph of the email.

They can just say "no". Problem solved. No abuse, no predation, everyone just goes on with their lives.

And if someone wants to say "yes", who are we to tell them what to do with their own time?

Predation is the act, not the outcome.

If everyone says 'no', you're just an unsuccessful predator.

The promotional aspects could be worth much more than whatever money they'd earn.

If Netflix won't pay you, who the fuck will? Whats the value of 'promotion' at that point?

Normal people getting married would pay a premium for someone who appeared on tv.

Paying netflix would be a smart business opportunity.

Your photos might appear on this Netflix show, which doesn't mean that you/your brand will do so. Or it might appear in the closing credits that are usually skipped.

Then you add it to your own website/socials that you were in a Netflix show.

> If Netflix won't pay you, who the fuck will?

Couples who want that photographer they saw on TV.

Is photographer visible in the show? Do they know who she is and how to find her?

Aren't those the people already offering to pay in 'exposure' or 'experience'? I have strong doubt that taking no money from Netflix will help you extract payment from other people.

^ Hello, answer here folks.

How are they worth anything when this sets the standard that the work is worth $0? If anything this moves the needle down on what you can earn later.

The Super Bowl doesn't pay the halftime performer. How are they worth anything?

So who are the nobodies who had their breakout because of the Super Bowl?

When dozens of celebrities offer to work for free, they won't pick a nobody. So what are you trying to prove? Do you honestly think it wouldn't skyrocket a new performer's career?

I think it sounds like an example that doesn't prove what you aim to convince me of.

The goal was to disprove "this sets the standard that work is worth $0". And celebrities using it in the middle of successful performance careers seems to disprove that idea just fine.

You're the one that brought up breakouts, but the part you're demanding proof of is something that's obvious. No, I don't have proof that a nobody performing in the super bowl would have a huge spike in popularity. But I think you're being ridiculous if you think that wouldn't happen. If you want to find a flaw in an argument, demand proof of something that isn't obvious.

At best we can say it doesn't hurt some of the best-known and most popular performers in the world. If you're the Beyoncé of your field you can do whatever and it's unlikely to hurt you that badly. That has little bearing on the current discussion.

Willful ignorance is not a good argument. These performers have detailed public sales figures. We know with certainty that performing in the Super Bowl is a large boost to their sales.

But their business model is totally different from a photographer. They're not in the business of works for hire and are featured far more prominently in the show than a photographer is going to be in wedding photos. I just don't see how this example is relevant.

The PERFORMER pays for the half-time show! Obviously Lady Gaga is a terrible talent and a worse business woman.

Do they? My understanding was that the performer receives no money and lays out no money, with the Super Bowl funding the show and getting the star for free.

As in many things, this is an example of an equilibrium that probably doesn't precisely identify the relative value of each party's contribution, but which is very easy to agree on.

Yes and Netflix (or the organization making the film) can afford to pay more.

> The promotional aspects could be worth much more than whatever money they'd earn.

So now you can put this on your resume:

I did this job for Netflix. And by the way, they didn't pay me a dime.

The better question is why a company with as much cash as Netflix can't afford to pay their photographers.

And not even some new project done on shoe-string budget. But already known and popular one. Kinda makes you wonder of other aspects of their material. They must have some people to do some photo-shoots and some post-production. So why not use those? Or how are they treated?

As stated in the article, it’s a production company. Netflix buys the product, has nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of actually making the show.

Why not both then?

This is one of those things often asserted but rarely proven.

Brands often pay hundreds of thousands on product placement. I'm not sure that's going to help a photographer though. Coke product placement may motivate me to buy a coke, but it's not like I'm going to hire a wedding photographer 1000 miles away.

Yes, a big company have whole divisions devoted to advertising. But for a business operated by one person it's not really equivalent to talk about doing a full week of work for free, especially one that doesn't prominently display you or your name. Beyond the issue you already mentioned that this is a mostly local business.

You don't know of any person in a service trade that did promo work to build their portfolio?

I know auto mechanics, actors, hair people, nail people, home inspectors, photographers, and cooks who have done free work for free promotions.

Some people hate on the concept but it's how people get their start in an industry.

If you think the idea that people will stop valuing things they can get for free and refuse to pay for them is far fetched, I encourage you to see how your hometown newspaper is doing.

Your reply is odd. You wanted "proof" work-for-promotions happen and I just wanted to point out this happens in several trades.

Anyway, I don't disagree with your comment at all.

Certain trades are undervalued because it takes portfolio building or practice in a professional setting to get started. You seemed to be unaware that this happens but now it seems you do?

I didn’t want proof they happened. I wanted proof they have the touted benefits. That is what I am not convinced of. I believe “exposure” through free work is of very little value.

That's why I always pay the highest historical price for everything, regardless of changing market conditions. Fairness /s

Please expand on why you think so.

Edit: Any why this is the case, in this situation. Please explain?

(I'm not from the US - I may be missing something.)

It seems fairly self-explanatory - the oversupply is of individual human workers, not some product. The individual at the bottom of the pyramid is hurt directly. A large business is treating a specific human at the bottom with disrespect. The name of the economic principle at play is morally irrelevant.

I.e. economic shrewdness is not equivalent to morality.

I think everything you read is true, but also I think speaks to the overabundance of supply.

To put this in a different light - people (here among all places) are especially sick of firms like Accenture/IBM/etc. of loading up projects with unexperienced junior people and putting absurd markup on their services. Which one do people want? Paying for soccer teams full of inexperienced people learning on the job or promising inexperienced person experience and exposure as compensation for their services?

For the record - I'm speaking about this from the perspective of market dynamics, not regulations/morality. I personally think a co like Netflix is in the wrong here.

It sounds like you're offering a choice between paying nothing but exposure or paying just as much as for the most senior experts.

If someone is less good, pay them less, but still a living wage. If they're not worth that much, and you don't want to train them to be worth that much, then don't hire them.

But that's all assuming the price of a contract is roughly proportional to the cost to implement it. Any "absurd markup" is a totally different issue.

> people (here among all places) are especially sick of firms like Accenture/IBM/etc. of loading up projects with unexperienced junior people and putting absurd markup on their services

Are people sick of the inexperienced teams, or are they sick of being scammed? IIRC, that business model usually starts with a bait-and-switch - they company will send their best people first, to make an impression and get the client to sign the contract, and then switch the project over to the cheapest team.

The reason I put Atos on my blacklist is experiencing a case where their contracted support was so bad, I had to do things twice - first I had to do what they should do, then design a step-by-step document that graphically showed each button to click (essentially "programming the person") and send that to them...

After escalations, they finally noticed client got angry and suddenly there was someone skilled at the other end. But I suspect it was exception and only for a short time.

Because exploiting people is wrong.

Can you elaborate how this is exploiting?

I am a SWE engineer with photography as a hobby.

If a tv show contacted me to do a wedding shoot, I'd be excited for the coverage and I wouldn't feel exploited since doing shoots is fun for me.

I could see how there are parallels to the "background actor" industry where, by law, you have to pay all of the talent on screen, even if its a nominal amount and the actor would of worked for free.

But that doesn't the case here?

I hope you can see the difference between doing something for free when it's your hobby, vs. doing something for free when it's your career.

If a TV show contacted you do create a web app, would you do that work for free? Would you give up other opportunities to get paid to do so?

> If a TV show contacted you do create a web app, would you do that work for free? Would you give up other opportunities to get paid to do so?

So, say no? (I've done that a couple of times in similar situations.)

> would you do that work for free?

No, because it is not fulfilling.

I do use my career skills to teach under privileged students how to program for free.

I totally agree.

I too have a photography hobby (or did, pre-kids). I release everything I do that's any good via Creative Commons attribution-only licenses. My pics have shown up on articles in USA Today, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and many many other places. Plus they are in a number of free and paid wallpaper apps. People sell prints of them on Amazon. I can go buy a cup with one of my photos on it right now. I was even interviewed for a small Discovery Channel video.

I think it's awesome. As long as they stick my name on there and follow the terms of the license, more power to them.

I've had people (especially in the local photographer's club) tell me that I'm being horrible and helping to kill the professional photography industry etc. But in my view there is just nothing wrong with giving away your creative output in exchange for credit.

Because you're a hobbyist and there's probably no chance in hell they'd contact you. This is this persons job and they look to be a professional. But imagine if Google or Microsoft or <insert whatever tech co> decided to ask you to do a software project for them for no money but you'd get exposure, would you do it? If so, I have a shit ton of work that I'll give you while collecting my salary and give you "exposure"...

Big organizations do that all the time. They call them hackathons.

They also have OSS projects like ES that accept free labor

The opportunity is worth a lot of future business.

Do you think people get paid when they give a radio interview? They are using the radio as a platform for selling.

Many professionals--yes, including developers doing something on the side in open source projects--can have a lot of different motivations. Yes, in some cases, doing free stuff is at least loosely connected to what they're paid for. But, especially in the case, of people like business and technology consultants, they'll often speak at a conference for free depending upon their business model and other choices.

People should be paid a living wage for their work.

There's an oversupply of humans but murder is still wrong. Treating people poorly is still treating people poorly, regardless of justification. You can't treat an oversupply of people the same way you treat an oversupply of goods. It's why we have minimum wage laws and other (insufficient) worker protections.

One time someone asked me for a favor. I thought it was unreasonable so I declined. I didn't realize this sort of thing was "abusive and predatory." I feel so victimized now.

Unless your neighbor is a gigantic corporate entity and the favor they asked was for you to spend a week dispensing your acquired skills with which you normally achieve your livelihood, then this seems like a totally unreasonable comparison.

> One time someone asked me for a favor. I thought it was unreasonable so I declined. I didn't realize this sort of thing was "abusive and predatory." I feel so victimized now.

This is uninteresting from my POV and against the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky.

Please help keep HN interesting. Thanks.

You're right, I should have left off the last sentence. But words mean things. Let's save the description "abusive and predatory" for things that are, well, abusive and predatory. A voluntary invitation to collaborate does not meet that standard, regardless of its reasonableness.

Perhaps, at the individual level, you can claim that 'voluntary' can never mean abusive.

But this would be too simplistic. Many 'voluntary' relationships are abusive.

Think about the system implications and dynamics over time here. There are power imbalances and changing expectations. People rarely have the unfettered freedom implicit in your claim.

And, if you think beyond the individual level -- at the society level, one's analysis must go much deeper.