My current work is pretty boring to other people, but I like it. Would it be right for someone in my role who hates the work to make more money?
That's a narrow definition. Perhaps a better definition is when the other party knows you don't have leverage and takes advantage of it, you're being exploited.
Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation.
Horrible working conditions, wages, and abuse knowing you're an illegal immigrant with no recourse? Exploitation.
Knowing you need the job for visa purposes and asking you to come in for a 2am code review because a new CEO wants to feel like an engineer? Exploitation.
Closer to paying you little because there are others who will accept those low wages.
Yes. This scenario includes factors that are depriving the worker of agency, chiefly the lack of recourse due to their illegal immigrant status.
> Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation.
No. If the worker is passionate about their job and is willing to tolerate low wages and long hours that's their decision. Agency is not being deprived. The worker should rethink whether working in their dream field is a good decision, and change jobs. If enough people do it, then the company will not be able to fill positions and will have to change labor practices or close shop. But, chances are, there's plenty of people willing to fill this role and the company is simply following the labor market.
> Knowing you need the job for visa purposes and asking you to come in for a 2am code review because a new CEO wants to feel like an engineer? Exploitation.
Maybe. Was this part of the job description? Some companies are upfront about expectations around crunch time or oncall responsibility. Others are not. Are there factors limiting a worker's agency? I'd say it'd be exploitative to change the work responsibilities on someone who has limited agency to change jobs. An H1B worker whose residency is tied to employment, as you suggest, I would consider exploitative.
Most video game development falls in the middle category. The whole industry has a widespread reputation for demanding crunch time - I don't think one would reasonably say they were deceived if asked to crunch near release. They also have skills that are in demand with plenty of other fields. Heck, the company I work in now acquired a video game studio to work on a 3D Geodesy UI, and everyone's salary basically doubled and they were able to work roughly 9-5.
That kind of thing (collusion by big players to keep wages low) strikes me as exploitative.
You choose your job, though. I'm not overly passionate about what I do, but do it for the stress:compensation ratio.
Same thing happens in fashion, media and entertainment.
And many of those industries unionized to prevent the systematic abuse!
If there was a headline
"Abuser abused many girlfriends in a row" you'd excuse their behavior saying there are plenty of other guys out there they could go with instead.
Where was I excusing it? I was simply laying out the market reality. If you want to say certain classes of professions "deserve" less or more money, then shouldn't we expand this discussion to all professions (teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc.)? No one is really saying they deserve less, but rather that this is the market reality.
If gaming devs want to unionize then that's their prerogative.
If there are 200,000 devs who want to work in game dev and 4,000 roles then wages will be depressed by over-supply. This is observable in all sorts of industries, often bordering on exploitation of people who desperately want to work in a specific area and are willing to work on low/no wages to get experience.
You'll also see companies over-paying when key skills are hard to source as the natural complement.
It’s not about correcting a cosmic wrong, it’s about people wanting more power and using a tool to get it.
https://cei.org/blog/biden-says-he-wants-to-be-the-most-pro-...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/12/adversarial-labor-law...
These laws and actions don't make the world more just. On the contrary, they just add new injustices on top of the old ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4
"Your job is fun/cool/meaningful whereas my work makes me hate myself. Therefore, I deserve more money than you" is an awfully sour worldview.
Working conditions or health and safety, are not up for debate no matter how amazing or terrible the job is.
Reread your sentence and think real hard about it because you're saying the same thing, you're just conflating the premise. Gaming devs ARE based on supply and demand. As one of the other comments points out, the demand is outsized relative to other developer positions (e.g. SaaS dev). Simple supply and demand tells us if the demand is higher, then the price goes down. There ya go.
> Therefore, I deserve more money than you
No one is saying this.
I understand the effect of passion on supply. You might think I'm making a distinction without a difference but I disagree. We shouldn't normalize the idea that well-paying work has to be unpleasant. "It's called 'work' because it's not fun" is a harmful idea.
> No one is saying this.
Read the comment I originally responded to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34245152