In recent years, my employer has been progressively promoting more “woke” issues, as well as some health-related content. Our recent internal blogs on Viva Engage have been about Neurodiversity Celebration Week.
“This week is Neurodiversity Celebration Week; a worldwide initiative that aims to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about neurological differences. We want to use this opportunity to raise awareness of the experiences of neurodivergent employees, highlight the value of neurodiversity in the workplace, and provide tools and guidance to help all our people create an inclusive environment where diverse minds can thrive.”
I think it is a good idea to remind people that some people think differently. I’m unaware if I have anything like autism but I do often struggle when posed questions that are phrased in certain ways. When we first learned about Agile development, and started doing “Retrospectives”, some of the initial ones had obscure questions like “if the last 2 weeks were a chocolate bar, what would it be?”. My mind is just like “wut”, whereas everyone else on the team came up with an answer, even if they just chose their favourite chocolate bar and forced certain elements into it. “There were some really smart solutions to problems so I chose Smarties”. When I failed to answer many questions over the months, some people moaned that I wasn’t participating, but I just got frustrated with that line of questioning.
“These blogs perfectly highlight the fact that everybody, and how we each experience the world, is different. Depending on how our brains are wired, we think, move, process information and communicate in different ways. We all have a responsibility to create an inclusive working environment where diverse minds can thrive. Everybody should feel safe, supported, and able to perform at their best. Therefore, it is important that we firstly recognise an individual’s differences, and work to harness their strengths and talents whilst minimising the challenges they may experience”
I think some conditions do have strengths and weaknesses. As far as I know, certain types of autism can lead to some great ideas since they have a different way of thinking, but then can be awkward in different social situations. One person wrote a blog on their life and observations with autism.
Here are some key takeaways from their blog:
Autism is a spectrum, which means that everyone who is autistic can have a wide variety of signs and symptoms, and how it impacts individuals can differ greatly.
Everyone uses phrases that have subtle implied meanings. For people with Autism, the implied elements simply disappear, and everything can be taken at face value. So an example they gave was if they put a jumper on, and someone asks “Are you cold?” they would answer “no” because they are now warmer.
Their responses to questions can often seem rude or abrasive, yet they were only literally answering the question they were presented.
If you ask many questions quickly, they will then present an answer to each in the order you gave them. They are insistent in processing all information sequentially, and will want to answer all of them.
Sensory overload: They despise being touched, they feel overloaded by background sounds, and will need to be alone to recharge after a long period of social interaction.
They often talk over people
I was looking on our Sharepoint for the additional neurodivergent resources. I came across some strange statements:
“Most neurodiverse conditions are classified as disabilities, but it is important to note that not every neurodivergent person identifies with a disability, to avoid stigma and isolation.”
Is it really possible to “identify” with a disability? Like the autism blog described, they didn’t want people to treat them differently but they acknowledge their social awkwardness, and understand others need to be aware of their traits in order to not be offended, or to try and adapt their line of questioning. I assume that is the point the statement was trying to make.
“Diversity is important for any organisation to develop, and understanding neurodiversity comes with huge benefits.”
That’s another one that needs more explanation. I think some people can come up with interesting ideas if they have something similar to autism, but a lot of other neurodiverse conditions are only negative. The way you “benefit” is to try to reduce the impact of the negatives. The statement by itself sounds like it is only positive to hire neurodiverse people, when that is not the case.
I saw a recent BBC article where the caption claimed that Down’s Syndrome is “an ability not a disability”. I get the sentiment, and that people often misunderstand the condition, but I don’t think anyone really believes it is an ability. I’ve seen a lot of this reframing in recent years: Things that were considered “mental health” conditions are now framed as normalised/part of someone’s identity, so is a positive thing that should be celebrated. Then not only is this mentality being pushed by mainstream media, it’s now being pushed from inside company culture under the guise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Dave2D made a video covering two AI Assistant devices; The two products Rabbit R1 and Humane AI pin are launching very soon. He was suspicious because he is unaware of anyone getting a review copy to promote them, and the existing marketing materials have been a bit vague or suspiciously misleading.
It reminds me of when there was some controversy over a computer game that wasn’t reviewed before release – which caused suspicion that it was going to be released in a broken state; because if the company really believed in it, they would send it for review to be praised. Restricting reviews seem an admission that the product isn’t good, or as what it seems.
The examples they have shown is that you can use voice commands just like an Alexa, and can book trips, bring up nutritional information for food by recognising what it is, live translations. You don’t need your phone or to launch any apps.
The Rabbit R1 is the more popular of the two (100,000 units on preorder) and is $200 device, featuring a cute design, small screen, camera, analog scroll wheel, speaker and button; very simple. The Humane AI pin is a $700 device and it also needs a $25 monthly subscription. Instead of using a screen, it projects the image. So you clip it to your clothes and hold your hand out to view. It’s a neat party trick, maybe a little gimmicky.
In the marketing, both companies deflect any questions using AI buzzwords and using very specific examples. It seems it might be the case that they just do a subset of what your phone can do, but worse.
Personally, I didn’t understand what most wearable tech did like the Apple Watch. In that example, it seemed to be sold on the idea that you no longer had to take your phone out of your pocket to check a message, but it seems a simple value proposition for a device that costs hundreds.
A mobile phone is more versatile and often more personal because it’s easier to hide the screen. Whereas, if a device relies purely on voice, then people can overhear, it causes a scene, and maybe could be hard to hear in a busy environment. The projection idea might even be difficult to see in different lighting, although might be easier to hide from other’s view, although you look a bit weird.
Since these devices can’t do everything your phone can do, you still need your phone with you. Certain devices like an mp3 player became obsolete when smartphones were widely adopted because people didn’t want to charge and carry two devices around… Or most people anyway; I don’t like the idea that listening to music is draining my battery that I might need to use for phone calls and text messages. I listen to a lot of music so I like to keep the devices separate.
So back to these two AI devices: A good question is “why isn’t this just an app?” Google already has a Google Assistant that you can talk to, although I have never tried that out. With how AI has progressed, the likes of Bing gives you easy access to quick searches, summaries, image generation etc, so it sounds like most of it could just be an additional app to download, or would be quickly obsolete if Google just adds the feature natively to Android. The possible limiting feature that Dave mentioned is that with all the permission needed to work, it might be seen as a security risk for Android to grant permissions to your location, images, contacts, microphone, camera, passwords etc. If it’s the company’s own device, then they can access all features of such a device.
When you are on your phone, you have the flexibility to react on-screen and look at images, reviews and follow links in order to make a decision. Having something that’s basically fully voice controlled has less flexibility. You are kind of forced down a specific path.
Another thing to bear in mind is that the marketing materials have often shortened the sequences to make it seem more impressive than it is. Wait time is a massive factor in the user experience. If there’s too much delay, then the usefulness and appeal is reduced.
The size and weight of devices can be a problem. If you are expected to pin the Humane AI device to your clothes, then it needs to be light without tugging on your clothes.
If these devices are using their own AI models, then another question is “how good are they?”. What is their training data, and are the initial versions going to be poor, but get better over time when learning from the early adopters?
Personally, I could see this being like the Google Glass where it sounds like a cool idea, but then it’s actually a bit limited, overpriced, and you look silly using it.
When it comes to the end of the year, we often get an email from HR reassuring us that our wages will be analysed, and changes will be made so we are paid a fair wage.
Define “fair”.
When there is inflation, if your wage doesn’t rise to match, that is essentially a pay cut because the money you get just isn’t worth the same as it used to be. HR often say that it has never been a policy to give inflation rises, but how is that fair?
They will often say that raises will be given based on performance, but with some exclusions (if you have had a recent promotion or wage rise). Then they say they look at what other companies pay, but that’s purely based on trust.
How many companies do they look at?
How do they find equivalent jobs to base the comparison against?
We carry out external benchmarking to ensure our salaries are competitive and fair in today’s market.
We use external salary data to develop market rate midpoints for roles. This is the rate of pay for someone who is fully competent in the role and therefore individual salaries may be below or above the midpoint. Our salary frameworks are reviewed on an annual basis to ensure they remain fair, competitive, and are suitably benchmarked both internally and externally.
If you are promoted or move into a new role that is an approved vacancy, the new salary will be determined by the new line manager and HR , subject to approval by the Senior Leader of the relevant business area. If a proposed increase is more than 5%, it will need to be approved by the relevant executive member and the Head of HR)
HR
See, it is a wishy washy definition and claim. If they are paying fairly, why are there so many people required to sign off a rise of more than 5%? If you were underpaid before and deserve a large rise, then why is this process there?
There’s been times where people get promoted or change roles, and the difference in wages is very large. But they have the skills and the attitude to do it, yet are told the rise is too large, so it needs to spread over a few years. Yet, if they employed someone externally, they would give them the starting salary, maybe even allow them to negotiate a higher one. But the loyal employee that they know is good? – don’t want to give them the money.
Just remember: companies would rather pay $25k to a recruiter to replace you than give you a $25k raise
Just remember: companies would rather pay $25k to a recruiter to replace you than give you a $25k raise
Overtime
I’ve criticised overtime in many of my blogs. I think it encourages slacking because you can create the need for overtime by not doing your work during contracted hours. Since overtime is usually given based on your hourly rate, overtime is even more beneficial if you are already paid more, but yet you could be doing the exact same work that everyone else is doing.
When you reach a certain rank, our contracts then say that you can no longer receive payment due to “their contracts allow more flexibility to work additional hours to fulfil their duties”. I don’t even know what that means. We all have reasonably flexible work hours.
Total Rewards
Another way we get fobbed off is with the phrasing “total reward”. They claim that our benefits are first-rate even though I think our holiday allowance is pretty standard in the industry, and there’s the usual basic discounts like “gym membership”, “cycle to work scheme”, “voucher discounts”, and “free eye test”.
Our reward framework is based on a “total reward” approach. Total reward includes not only monetary rewards such as pay, bonus, incentives and “core” benefits (holidays, etc.), but also recognition (financial and non-financial), development and progression opportunities and work/home life balance. Our total reward philosophy is designed to ensure that our people feel valued, recognised and motivated to give their best at work every day.
HR
This is just HR buzzword spam.
Some of the rewards they hype up, but then it turns out to be rubbish. There was one where they said we could get “discounts on technology” so we could get cheap laptops/PCs/tablets/phones etc. However, when you read into the terms, it was an average saving of 5% from the recommended retail price. Yet you could go into a shop like Curry’s PC World, and find the same items on sale (>5%). Then going through the process was actually more effort because there’s loads of forms to fill in. More effort, and it costs more; brilliant.
Another classic one is Costco membership. I’ve never shopped at Costco, but you need a membership card to shop there. For some reason, they restrict who can sign up, but some Costco representatives would come visit the office, and if you signed up and showed them your work badge to prove you worked here, then you could get a membership card.
Someone asked HR what the benefit is of signing up when the Costco staff come visit the office. The employee could go and sign up directly in the Costco store. The reply was that they often ”bring free cakes” to the office, and you’d have the advantage of “not needing to take your ID badge to the Costco store”. Wow, amazing benefit. Like I said, they hype up a benefit then it turns out to be not much of a benefit at all.
A few years ago, the directors announced they were starting a Programme to improve the company culture, and act upon feedback we had recently given them via an “Employee Forum“.
I do think due to working at home, there isn’t the same togetherness there used to be. Years ago, we seemed a close-knit bunch, but these days, I get the impression people just want to do their work and go home…although they are already home.
We were asked to give initial feedback from the scheme, and one colleague made a somewhat epically-written post, which ended up being his last.
“This “programme” is an exercise in indulging in the same old political rhetoric and transparent placation many of us have grown all too familiar with. Perhaps I have simply grown jaded and cynical, but we have corporate correspondence envisioning a future where all feel valued, and yet casual communication engenders entirely the opposite. To, on the one hand, read statements such as the above and then be told such things as “if you want better pay, get another job”, is insulting to the intelligence and dedication of employees. This, “programme”, is in fact a desperate response to the abysmal employer image the company has cultivated for years; to this day exhibiting a callous disregard for even its most dedicated employees – you reap what you sow.
In short, this isn’t a question of “focus”; rather, it’s a question of chasing each of these lofty goals with equal levels of tenacity, integrity, and humility. This “programme” is years too late and, despite a ledger demonstrating the contrary, the company has only ever proven itself to be more than “a dollar short”.
The goals outlined as part of this programme infer/suppose a complete lack of humanism in company culture and are a tacit admission of gross negligence when it comes to employees; the shoulders upon which the company stands.”
Rodger
The directors responded with predictable responses:
“this does not reflect everyone’s view of our business”
“this isn’t the right platform to raise these issues”
“we value colleagues feedback and encourage great constructive conversations”
“I can assure you that the people on the programme are thoroughly committed to making a positive difference in our dedicated areas.”
“judge at the end and not at the start”
Various Managers
I understand both sides here, they did ask for feedback and they got it. However, they don’t want something so scathing to be publicly aired. It’s a tough one though because such statements could cause people to be more confident in airing their views (which is what they claim to want), but firing him like they did will suppress people from giving true feedback.
The usual process is probably to go to your line manager, but they don’t always raise it with their line manager. Then since it has to go up a few levels of the hierarchy; the message is probably going to get lost. If you suspect that happening, do you bypass them and go higher up the chain?
It was also written a bit too poetically which meant it was hard to understand some of the points. I think there is a specific and recent issue which he was referring to, and in the following days, I did learn that an employee that had been around for 20 years or so and been forced out. I didn’t learn the reason, but that was being referenced with “exhibiting a callous disregard for even its most dedicated employees“. So I think it was coming from a place of witnessing instances of toxic behaviour and calling it out, and it wasn’t even a personal grievance; he is sticking up for fellow employees.
The obvious (or maybe I should say “predictable”) response was to sack him, which they did. But you could have actually gone the opposite way and actually let him participate in making the changes to improve the culture. I only interacted with him a few times, but he always came across as knowledgeable and dedicated.
He goes on to say others keep quiet because they need their job, although it is low paid compared to industry standards. Many roles are overworked due to restructuring and merging roles together. Managers were ignoring the problems when raised. Proposed changes in Support were predicted by many to end in failure, but managers dismissed their concerns. I have seen similar comments on Glassdoor, which is where you don’t want the feedback, since that is on a public forum, and posted after an employee has left the business.
On a quest to get some juicy content for my blog, I managed to contact him before he got deactivated:
[Yesterday 15:07] Me have you resigned. That post is epic
[Yesterday 15:07] Rodger No. But don't plan on sticking around long haha
[Yesterday 15:08] Me haven't you just started in development though? or did they do the classic "we will give you half pay until you prove yourself"
[Yesterday 15:14] Rodger Sad but true
[Yesterday 15:20] Me They are putting my notice period up from 1 month to 3. I made the point that this is contrary to the Employee of Choice which is supposed to be improving our conditions!
[Yesterday 15:20] Rodger Good lord, that's rough... And yeah, certainly feels that way
[Yesterday 15:21] Me can't remember who was in charge at the time, but he put it down from 3 to 1, stating they wanted to improve things, and now we are undoing it. Apparently Experts and Managers are on like 6 months which just seems insane.
[Yesterday 15:22] Rodger 6 months. That's ridiculous, what company would be willing to wait that long for a new employee...
[Yesterday 15:23] Me I don't see the point of changing the notice periods. Don't people just hand over their work in 1-2 weeks, take annual leave, then mess about for the rest of it paying an unproductive employee who doesn't want to work there is just crazy. Even if they are moving for other reasons like leaving the country, it seems like you have to then leave on bad terms. Just let them go. 1 month is enough to deal with
[Yesterday 15:25] Rodger Indeed. Don't get the mentality at all
[Yesterday 15:26] Me anyway, I asked Jeannette to raise it in the Employee Forum. I reckon they will just say something like "its inline with industry standards" or some corporate statement
[Yesterday 15:27] Rodger Oh aye, wasn't expecting a response. Just wanted the catharsis of saying it all Thanks regardless, though
[Yesterday 15:28] Me they will probably delete your post and not try and address it. Reminds me of the negative glassdoor reviews then Jacqui says "this doesn't reflect my experience at all" and I think, "how do you know what those jobs are like? you are on the big bucks, probably in your own office by yourself"
<NEXT DAY>
[12:05] Me I couldn't resist responding [my post was about lines of communication, and trying to start a discussion with others around Rodger’s points to try and diffuse the argument]
[12:05] Rodger Thanks haha
[12:07] Me have they actually said anything to you directly? It's good that they didn't delete your post but then I was worried they would just sack you for these outbursts. I do think you might be a bit too (passive?) aggressive, but then I reckon you do have some good underlying points that they should listen to
[12:08] Rodger Any aggressiveness, passive or otherwise, is only because the responses to my post have demonstrated a lack of understanding and contempt. My initial post is nowhere near anything combative... And, no. No one has spoken to me directly. People have spoken to my Manager and others around me though...
You've raised the right questions here. Where can one speak about these things
[12:11] Me I think someone did say (via a question) on our Departmental Meetings that the whole "we will take it offline" response just causes these problems. If there is an official response to it, everyone doesn't hear it because it was addressed one-on-one. Then I think that's what you are also calling out, because these Senior Managers are basically implying to contact them directly, rather than post in an open forum.
[12:12] Rodger Aye
[12:13] Me in my standup, one guy said he had to get a dictionary out to try and understand your points. It is super poetic. It makes it funnier but I do think it probably detracts from your points
[12:15] Rodger Fair, but it's genuinely the way I speak and I thought it best to be as erudite as possible when articulating it all; in an effort to not just be dismissed as a dribbling idiot or fool, etc.
[12:27] Me This does sound a bit extreme to me. Then that would be perceived to be an attack on the SLT "The goals outlined as part of this programme infer/suppose a complete lack of humanism in company culture and are a tacit admission of gross negligence when it comes to employees; the shoulders upon which the company stands."
[12:31] Rodger It certainly is a criticism. The company admits that its staff don't feel; rewarded, included, valued, etc. (as inferred by the programme itself). Is that not gross negligence? I am perhaps opining there, but it doesn't seem to me to be an unreasonable statement and I would be happy to discuss the matter if literally anyone else was...
[12:35] Me It can be a tough one because I think most people will complain about pay regardless of how much they actually get. Then if they don't get an inflation rise, they will moan about that but they might have been overpaid. So when people do complain, it might not be a valid point. but then I have been a victim of being underpaid
I think a common problem we have is that managers see us all as interchangeable. I have only been on this project a few months but we are gonna get our 3rd PO, and we have switched architects, and there was talk about moving one of our testers to another team. How can you be productive when that happens? can't build up knowledge or team chemistry. They still see us as "resources" they can move about. Probably doesn't help if a department is called Human Resources.
[12:38] Rodger Indeed
[12:38] Me I find it interesting how people like me moan, but yet stay here years so we must secretly like it
[12:39] Rodger haha
[12:40] Me I think it is actually a low stress job, and when I've known so many people leave and then come back, it does make you think it's not always greener on the other side. I also think other jobs will give you more responsibility. So I think it is comfortable here
do you find development stressful, or were your comments about your previous role?
[12:46] Rodger I guess I'm in something of a unique position. My comments were about my previous role, how things are now for me (which ain't "bad", just insanely busy), and everything I've heard and seen from elsewhere in the business
Conclusion
I think the lesson here is that if you really want to make changes to culture, then you need to be open to listening to “hard truths”. So if there was a problematic manager – if an employee openly reports the problem, it shouldn’t be the case that managers stick together. The claims should be investigated and if the manager is problematic, then they should be fired and not the employee.
I think we lost a couple of good and very dedicated employees here, and yet managers were pretending everything was perfectly fine.
One thing we miss now that we work at home is the free treats people will bring in, and some interesting food thefts. Here is a collection of stories I found from old emails and chat conversations.
Suspicious Chocolates
I was once walking past the security desk, and the security guard was quizzing a guy that had turned up with a box of chocolates. When the security guard asked who the chocolates were for, he kept on saying “for the person in charge”. Yet he couldn’t specifically name someone, or explain why they would be receiving such a gift. I couldn’t guess what his aim was. Was he expecting to be let through to wander around the office on his own. I think the best he could have done is for the security guard to take the chocolates.
Office Treats
When people do bring in treats, it was always a good read when they tried to write a humorous email to declare it.
Hi all,
There is a selection of young Tobleronette in the upstairs kitchen freshly picked on the Swiss Alps this weekend.
It’s been a poor harvest this year due to bad weather (caused primarily by the blocking highs in the UK) so you might as well take this opportunity to savour some wholesome mountain produce.
Who knows when you may get the chance again.
Bon appetit
David
Canteen
We used to have a canteen that was announced to be closing due to cost cutting. However, it ended up being very temporary.
Farewell canteen and the awesome staff that knew us all by name, how cool is that? They provided caffeine infused productivity juice that was both hot, fresh and cheaper than anywhere else. Hello vending machine, with your cold touch and bags of mini-cheddars. 2016 has really sucked.
Sausages
This is a weird email to send, admittedly, but has someone taken my sausages out of the downstairs kitchen fridge?
Thanks,
Andy
This triggered some humorous replies with various sausage pictures
Stolen Milk
Me: There's a note on our kitchen door saying that "someone has been SEEN taking DI Team's milk"
Andy: hahaha
Me: not sure why they didn't reprimand the guilty culprit
it's like he was only partially seen so couldn't be identified. But all they know is that he was non-DI
Fruits
A few developers had dried up fruits on their desks, like a shrivelled orange. They claimed the office environment naturally dried the fruit rather than rotting it, then they kept it as an ornament. I wondered if they took the fruits home and still have them on their desks.
Missing Mugs
Someone has left a black flask/cup on my desk this morning which says “Looking after your world” and “Hot Stuff…” on it.
If this is yours, please come claim it.
Morning,
If anyone has seen my ‘Slave’s mug’ mug please can you let me know? I left it in the upstairs kitchen with my teapot on Friday afternoon and it’s this morning it was gone.
I’ve had it 20 years and grown quite attached to it.
Thanks,
Kettle
Hi all
If you are filling the kettle please ensure you don’t dip the bottom of it in the bowl of water (perhaps emptying the water out of the washing up bowl first would be the way forward?). It will trip the electrics out (as has just happened) and water on the kettle base is potentially dangerous anyway.
Fí
Cafe2u
There used to be a van that came to the office to serve fresh coffee and snacks which was called Cafe2U. Someone mailed about it and typed U2. I made a great joke about it.
From: Me
Subject: FW: CafeU2
Like Coffee?
Like U2?
Check out Café U2. They have parked where the streets have no name.
Café U2 Promoter | Bono Enterprise
From: Gill
Subject: Cafe2u Yeadon
Cafeu2 are here.
Gill | Testing | Development
Ant Infestation
Me: Did you hear about the ant infestation caused by Chris? anyway, Mel said that Chris left a can of Red Bull in the office for a few days, and a horde of ants were around it, so they had to call pest control.
Andy: haha i’m sure we don’t call it pest control in england. yet again an americanism
Me: we call them Bug Bashers around here. Sam has spilled a drink behind his monitor and has left it. Mel is kicking off about it, fearing a new infestation.
Pig Balloon meeting
No idea what a pig balloon meeting is, but I love how passive aggressive this is.
I have made the executive decision, by reason of proximity to where these were left lying around unclaimed, to do something with the pop and dips left over from your pig balloon meeting.
I have put the pop (which is probably flat now) and the dips (BBQ – expire Sept 17) into the downstairs kitchen for people to take. If they are not used up/gone by Friday, they shall be binned. Please help yourselves.
Dorothy
My manager received an email from HR apologising for some erroneous emails:
Email Notification Error – PLEASE IGNORE
We are always looking to improve our HR processes and carry out regular routine work within our IT System to ensure we deliver the smoothest experience.
It has come to our attention that a recent tweak to our maternity process has accidentally triggered an email to be sent to some employees.
Please note, this email was sent in error.
If you received this email, please ignore it and we apologise for any confusion caused.
Many thanks,
Paul
The email they are referring to is a pregnancy email sent about male employees. I wonder what sort of change they made to their system. Were they modernising and allowing male employees to declare pregnancy?
Hello Andy,
It's now been a few months since we last contacted you, advising that Steven notified us of their pregnancy.
We'd like to remind you of a couple of things, should they be applicable:
Since completing the initial Expectant Mothers Risk Assessment, should either your or your team member feel their work circumstances have changed and would benefit from a further assessment, please complete a new assessment and upload to the "Risk Assessment screen
If the original maternity dates have changed, please remember to raise an HR ticket to ensure their payment during their maternity leave is calculated correctly.
Should you require any further support, please raise a HR ticket.
Unity have announced a new fee which they call the “Unity Runtime Fee” which is going to take effect in January. It affects all Unity developers, even people that have already released their game many years ago; which has caused mass outrage among the game development community.
I think the existing model states that once you reach a threshold of revenue, you have to pay a licence fee which works out around £1500 for the year. With the new model, once you reach a similar threshold, Unity is now going to charge a fee of 20 cents every time somebody instals your game on a new device for the first time.
The threshold is $200,000, which on the face of things, 20 cents per install doesn’t sound unreasonable when they have given you a great tool to help you create your game. They need to earn money as a business and deserve some kind of cut for their service/product. According to this tweet, it looks like they are burning through money so some drastic action is probably required
There’s a fair few aspects of why this is new model is complicated, but I still feel some of the anger is misplaced.
I think the whole scenario is similar to what I have written about recently where the CEO demanded we release our software weekly instead of monthly and we told him several reasons why it is technically, and legally impossible. Then later he then demands all our changes have a well-documented rollback plan, and again, we told him loads of reasons why it wasn’t possible. He still insisted and looked like a fool when it backfired and caused a few problems he thought he was solving.
The main Problem
The core problem stems from the idea that it is based on installations and not based on Unit Sales or Revenue. For comparison, the main competitor, Epic Games’ Unreal Engine charges you five percent of your total revenues after you’ve earned at least a million dollars on your game. Now, that can work out to be a lot of money and especially in the long run if your game is successful, but the difference is that they’re taking a cut of your money that you’ve already earned. When Unity charges you for an installation you’re being charged whether or not you’ve earned any money, or at different period of time to where you earned the money. That could turn into a cash flow problem.
Once you’re over the threshold, if somebody bought your game a long time ago and they’ve now installed your game on their brand new computer, it’s going to cost you 20 cents. I suppose if it is an old game, you probably won’t be selling $200k over the last 12 months, so it’s probably not actually going to apply.
If you decide to port your game to a new platform which is often fairly easy in the Unity engine, then all those new installations are also going to be hit with fees. I suppose if you are re-selling the game then it’s not a major problem, but sometimes developers make a free-to-play mobile version. Then you make money later with microtransactions. Often these games have 90% of players not paying a penny, but then you make your money on the 10% who often spend big. In this case, you could end up losing money on the average player of your game.
People also raised the point of bundles like the Humble Bundle where people buy a bunch of games for a small price but some of the money goes to charity. You end up selling high volumes but gain very low revenue. If you hit the threshold, and you are more likely to with a sale like this, then you could be hit with a lot of fees. I think the interesting thing with this point which people don’t seem to be mentioning; is that people often buy these games then never actually play them. So you actually have a sale, but no install, so don’t pay the fee.
Fairly similar to a bundle is a service like Xbox Game Pass, where people could play your game with an overall payment to the provider, in this case Microsoft. I think Microsoft often pays a flat fee to the publishers to gain their games but I suppose contracts can vary. But the theory is, you could get a flat fee, then either get low instals so you’ve gained, or get a surprisingly large amount of instals if it is popular and it eats into your profits.
Piracy
People who pirate games don’t pay but do install your game. This means that every time your game is pirated you’re going to be slapped with a 20 cent fee. There can be other malicious ways you could be charged, if someone abuses Virtual Machines. There’s programs that will spin up large numbers of them, so you could “Install Bomb” quickly with virtual machines, hitting the developer with a 20 cent fee. It’s like when people “Review Bomb” where you leave loads of negative reviews on a game you don’t like in a coordinated way, but in this case you need fewer people, and they directly sap the revenues of the developer instead of just hurting their online presence.
Target Price
Unity has always positioned itself as being pro Indie. They want to help new aspiring Indies learn to program, break into the gaming market, and get their career started. New developers are also much more likely to sell their games for cheap. There’s a lot of games like this on Steam which are sold for £10 or loads for £5 or less, and that’s before you apply discounts. Steam is renowned for its high discounts in sales, and so these games are being sold for just a couple of pounds. They’re going to be disproportionately hit by having to pay Unity 20 cents every time the game is installed.
In the extreme case, imagine you’ve made a Steam game or a mobile game that sells for one dollar and then you pay a sales tax of 10-20%, then Steam takes 30%, then you know you’re left with around 50 cents. If you use a Publisher, then they will take their cut too. Then Unity takes 20 cents of it for an install and then maybe another 20 cents for another install, then you could be left with basically nothing. You could then lose money if it isn’t sold for full price.
Meanwhile, if you sell a premium game for £40+ then 20 cents is nothing. So it actually hits the indies harder. Unity have ways of getting the price per install down, but they look more aimed at larger companies who will want to pay the upfront fees to use the premium Unity features.
Patch Quest
Lychee Game Labs’ Patch Quest released on 2 March 2023 and so far has reached 182,594 total key activations on Steam (people who bought the game on Steam along with everyone who got the game elsewhere like in a bundle or a giveaway or for review purposes). So if the game keeps selling, or people install on more devices, then he will be taken over the threshold then would start being charged. He did remark that “for the sake of argument, every single person who already owns the game decided to install it on a second PC, I’d be hit with a charge of $36,400. Now it’s obviously not likely that this would happen” but it does make you think how Unity are gonna deal with these outliers.
Unity Response
Within the day of the announcement, there’s a lot of angry people, and Unity has tried to clarify the points raised. However, it’s not clear if it’s actually possible to do what they claim. They reckon they have some sophisticated fraud detection technology which can prevent the “install bombing”. Then they say that they will have a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team. So from what I understand here it sounds like the onus will be on the developer to try and somehow keep track of how many of their instals are fraudulent and then if you have concerns, you contact the fraud compliance team, and then they will hopefully give you your money back. I think the majority of people don’t have a lot of faith in such a system when Unity have to put in some work to decide if they want less money from you.
Unity have clarified that if you’re part of a bundle like Xbox game pass or you’re in a charity bundle then you’re not going to be charged for the install, although it’s not exactly clear how they’re going to know which instals come from charity bundles or game passes. They seemed to imply that for Game Pass, they would send the bill to Microsoft but I can’t imagine Microsoft will be too happy to have sprung upon them. It would probably have to be negotiated in future Game Pass deals and it might just be the case that Microsoft just doesn’t add any Unity-based games to their service.
Unity tried to justify this whole new fee structure by pointing to the thresholds and saying “if you don’t already earn loads of money on your game then you’re not gonna pay extra”. This is where I think a lot of developers are wrongfully attacking Unity, when they would never pay them anyway. I suppose in the Patch Quest example, I’m not aware of it being a major hit, and he has pretty much reached the payment threshold. But given that it’s been many months after release, you would imagine sales will now be low and he will only be liable for minor fees which he should be happy to pay.
Conclusion
There probably is a clause somewhere deep in Unity’s terms and conditions that says something like “we retain the right to change our terms and conditions”. Companies love to have that kind of future-proofing in their legal small print, but how many actually go through with major changes? It can be logistically difficult to implement drastic changes, and evidently a PR nightmare. However, despite that, many companies are against Unity for switching the Terms and Conditions with only a few months notice. When games can take years to make, you need that predictability to adequately budget, and if Unity can charge you more on a whim, then it’s unpredictable. People also wonder if they really can change the terms built on an older Unity software version as you essentially have an agreement at the time of release; but that needs to be left to the lawyers.
Switch Engines?
I think a key statement that many are using to justify their decision to abandon Unity at this time is “Is this the last time they’re gonna change their terms?
Jumping ship to another one might be possible when you’re just starting up on a new project but the deeper into development you get, the harder this becomes. Your game gradually ends up dependent on the engine it’s built in. Switching to Unreal Engine will require programming in C++ plus instead of C# which is a massive learning curve. Godot seems to be gaining popularity but people seem to say it specialises in 2D games at the moment. I think C# doesn’t have full support so their own GDScript is more popular.
Unity Pricing Thoughts...
For context, we are a small studio (7 people) with a Steam game with 3M~ players.
I'm seeing many non-developers tell developers that this pricing change is not a big deal, here is why the entire community is lighting a fire:
• Massively disproportionately punishes indies
• Only three months notice
• Double dipping (Licence fee/ads cut)
• Dangerous precedence for charging "runtime"; you no longer fully own that exported build. If Unity continues to struggle, pricing could become more aggressive
Here are a few examples:
• Unity's own example on their site has a hypothetical scenario:
-- $2M USD Gross in 12 Months
-- 300k Users/month (200k Standard/100k "Emerging Market"), $23.5K USD/month
-- This means $282K/Year in fees, 14% of gross revenue, 3x Epic's 5%.
• F2P Games that are NOT excessively monetised are penalised:
10M Players:$1M USD
1M Players:$10M USD
The first case, with a vastly less predatory set of MTX is now punished significantly worse than one purposefully building money-extraction machines.
Our team has been hard at work for 2 years on a massive update to our game, with a F2P mobile ver coming next year. We built this from the ground up to be ethically monetised/for whaling to be impossible, so we are particularly unhappy with the news.
This affects developers everywhere, of all sizes. I am grossly disappointed by any industry figures brushing this off as "developers complaining." that do not understand the severe damage this can cause smaller studios.
Unity's trust within the games industry has been steadily eroding for years now, this latest change is a testimony to how horrendously mismanaged the board is. Personally dumped all of my Unity stock after this announcement was made.
I'd bet heavily on the people making these decisions have never even opened the editor, let alone released a game.
From <https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1702189840383832408.html>
Recently we have had several major incidents due to: software bugs, incorrect configuration being applied, not renewing licence keys, and migrating servers to the cloud and failing to check all services were correctly configured and running.
Our Hosted Services team gave a presentation of work in their department, and gave more insight to even more failings that have happened recently. As far as I am aware, Hosted deal with servers, data centres and networks.
Hosted explained that due to the decision to move all servers to the cloud, when their usual time came to replace old servers – they didn’t bother. But the migration has been a slow process and delayed which meant our software was running on inferior hardware for longer than anticipated.
“We don’t need to invest in the in the architecture that we’ve got, which was not the right decision in hindsight
We had a team of people who, in some cases, were the wrong people. They didn’t have the appetite to go and actively drive out issues and reduce the points of failure in our networks.”
Hosted Manager
He then goes on to say the change in strategy caused many of their long-term staff to leave. These people that really knew how the business worked.
“So we lost around about 90% of the team over a relatively short space of time and that put us into quite a challenging position to say the least. And needless to say, we were probably on the back foot in the first quarter of this year with having to recruit pretty much an entire new team.”
Hosted Manager
Then, because they were short staffed, their backlog of work was increasing, putting more stress on the people that remained:
“We had to stop doing some tasks, and some of our incident queues and ticketing queues were going north in terms of volumes, which was really not a good place to be.”
Hosted Manager
I’ve written about this situation in the past. It has happened in the Development department when a new CTO comes in, and says that manual software testing is archaic; so people have to learn automation or lose their jobs. Then a few months later, they realise their plan isn’t so feasible, yet have lost some good software testers to other companies, or allowed others to switch roles and aren’t interested in going back. Then the releases slow down because we can’t get the fixes tested fast enough due to the last of software testers.
They go on to say the Firewalls suffered 50 major incidents in Quarter 2, and now they have “procured new firewalls” to solve it. They have reduced bandwidth into the main data centre by routing certain traffic through an alternate link. The “core switches” at our offices and data centres are “End of Life” and will be upgraded to modern hardware (Cisco Nexus 9K).
So it sounds like they have a plan, or at least are doing the best with what they have. It sounds like all departments are currently shooting themselves in the foot at the moment.
Elon Musk fired 6,500 employees at Twitter. A little birdie told me it’s down to:
– 2 designers
– 6 iOS developers
– 20 web developers
– Around 1,400 sales and operations people
How is it possible that we are still using this website? Two words: Parkinson’s Law.
Have you ever wondered why seemingly simple tech companies have tens of thousands of employees? Sometimes, it’s because they have huge sales forces or tech support/operations people. But often it’s also due to Parkinson’s Law.
Parkinson’s law is like lighter fluid for bureaucracy. It’s a business tapeworm that slowly eats away at companies, making them less and less efficient and innovative over time. Parkinson’s Law is the idea that the work will generally expand to the amount of time, budget, and number of people allocated to it, and no matter how many people you allocate to it, those people will feel busy. They’ll feel busy because, due to the excess time/slack in the system, they’ll start focusing on less and less important tasks.
Here’s how it manifests on an individual level: Let’s say you have a report due in a week. The report might only take you around five hours to finish if you really focus and work efficiently. However, because you know you have a week to complete it, you might find yourself spending a lot more time on it than you need to. You’ll be more prone to distractions, take longer breaks, or perhaps decide to add more details, tables, graphs, and so forth. Essentially, the task becomes more complex and time-consuming purely because you have more time in which to do it.
And here’s how it manifests across organizations: Imagine a big tech company. A social media company with various departments. Each department has tasks that it must complete to contribute to the overall productivity of the company. Now, suppose each department is given a budget and a set amount of time to complete its tasks for the year. According to Parkinson’s Law, each department will use its entire budget and the entire allotted time, even if the tasks could have been completed more efficiently. This is because as resources and time increase, departments tend to become more complex and less efficient. For example, a department might add more steps to its procedures, requiring more approvals and creating more paperwork, which slows down the process. Or it might use the full budget on additional personnel or equipment that doesn’t necessarily improve productivity. The department might also use the full budget to justify the same or larger budget for the next year, since budgets in many organizations are often determined based on the previous year’s spending. This is a phenomenon known as “budget padding” or “spend it or lose it” mentality.
Inefficiencies can also develop in staff allocation. If a department expands, it might add managerial positions that aren’t strictly necessary. More employees are hired to manage, creating layers of bureaucracy that may not contribute to productivity and can even slow decision-making. I have seen this occur over and over again in my career. The larger the team, the larger the budget, the longer the timeline, the less gets accomplished. I’m very curious to see how many more tech companies come to this realization.
To carry on the recent trend of failings and causing Major Incidents (see Printing Licence Key Expiry, and The Outage), we recently had another major problem for a small group of users due to migrating their server to “the cloud”.
From what I understand, everything worked apart from one particular service which they forgot to check, and left the feature broken for a few days. The most embarrassing part of it, was that it was our main rivals that told us it wasn’t working when they were calling our interoperability API and it was failing. It had been broken for 3 weeks!
This caused another instant reaction from our CTO and Technical Director who demanded that everyone creates a Datadog dashboard to monitor all services, regardless of what they are.
Datadog is a recent monitoring tool we purchased licences for, and is the cool thing to use and impress the senior managers with (see Datadog, and Datadog – The Smooth Out).
I discussed problems in both those blogs, but a concern with all metrics is;
What do you want to measure?
Who is viewing the data? And when?
What does “good” and “bad” look like, and who acts when that state is shown?
Another key point was made by a colleague:
“But we can’t expect some pretty Datadog dashboard templates to solve the historical problems that have meant we have lots of live services in the business with nobody who understands where they are, or how they work…
The company has a long history of developing a solution, moving the team that developed it off onto a new project, and leaving that solution behind. Combine that with a massive wall of confusion between Dev and Hosted, you have Hostedrunning a bunch of servers that they have no idea what they do.”
So do the developers really understand the way things work once it is deployed? Does the development team know how to create an effective dashboard, and how to act upon what it shows?
After the CTO had decided every team needs a dashboard, I was invited to a meeting with several people from different teams. One of the Test Managers said it was
“a knee jerk reaction. We want this and we want it now”
Test Manager
Then he goes on to say:
“I know nothing about Datadog, yet have been told to make a dashboard”
Test Manager
People were also told that it was the number one priority and so we need to pause our current development. The CTO claimed it:
“should take a week. A relatively simple ask
ANYTHING you are doing at the moment is secondary to this. The only exception is a major incident. If you get invited to any other meeting, invite the Tech Directors and they will get it cancelled”
CTO
People that knew more about how Datadog works raised concerns with performance issues. If Datadog is running and sending metrics every minute, it will cause way more network traffic than we had before – and we already have a problem with our networks not being able to handle the current load.
Again, someone came up with an idea that the servers could send their metrics to a server which acts as a middle man, then that can send the data to Datadog. But this idea doesn’t make sense, you still have the same number of servers (well, plus one server) sending data on the network, then the central server then needs to send a massive amount of data in one go.
Are people going to create good dashboards?
Is the data they are showing accurate?
Are we going to act on them when they show that something has gone wrong?
Is the increase in metrics going to create performance issues?
Stranger Coding Tings 