Years ago, we were told that for GDPR (or for some other legal reason), we would always need staff in the UK so we can access data from the production database.
All the staff we hired in India would never be allowed access.
However, my employer once bought a house over the road from the office then allowed Indians to stay there for a few months. So they paid for the flight, Visa, all expenses accommodation to work in the UK for a bit. There was a rumour they could then access production databases but I’m not sure that is true because we have to have a DBS check to ensure we don’t have a criminal record.
Another colleague reckoned we brought them over because if you don’t promise Indians a chance to work in the UK, they will go work for an employer that does offer that. Once they have had their UK trip though, what incentive do they have to stay? Can’t they go work for someone else and get another free holiday?
An annoying aspect of it, is that it was still going on when we were going through a redundancy process, and yet they were trying to assure us the Indians weren’t taking our jobs. I did wonder what the cost was to employ them and pay for their brief UK stay. Kinda seems a hassle to organise as well.
I’m convinced I posted this before, but this was from Colin who shared his screen with an open spreadsheet of people’s wages.
Name
Role
Rupees
Yearly Salary £
Prasanth
Graduate Trainee
500000
4,295.00
Saranya
Software Engineer
650000
5,583.50
Hemalatha
Test Engineer
600000
5,154.00
Vinitha
Junior Software Engineer
700000
6,013.00
Vignesh
Software Engineer
1000000
8,590.00
Padmasri
Junior Software Engineer
650000
5,583.50
Hebsi
Software Engineer
1400000
12,026.00
Shoban
Software Engineer
800000
6,872.00
It’s crazy how much money is saved by hiring Indians. They have definitely taken our jobs over the years.
Over the last few years, my employer has gone Cloud crazy. We are a large company so we have our own data centres. These are costly to run when you need physical space, staff, electricity, software licensing, and a plan of action when things go wrong.
I wonder if it is better to have your own servers when you are a big company. I always think Cloud is best for smaller companies that don’t have the resources to host it themselves.
“Our reasons for using the cloud are the same as others using the cloud.”
Our CTO
Not really true though is it? From what I saw quoted for the virtual machines for our test systems, I think Cloud is more expensive over time. On-prem has a massive up-front cost which is what they don’t like, but we have the capital to do it, unlike small companies that the Cloud is perfect for.
The recent drive to move away from our data centres is that we needed to replace some old hardware, and perform SQL server upgrades.
I could imagine us moving to the cloud, managers then panicking when they see the monthly costs, then demanding we go back.
One aspect of an SQL Server upgrade sounded like they needed to migrate the data to a new physical server. One of the tables they were concerned about was Audit, which adds a new row every time the user edits a record, which they stated was around 9 Billion records. A copy of the changed data is then saved as XML, so then you can do a before/after comparison. So that particular column is a problem.
So for the data that would still remain in our data centres and moved to a new server with a modern SQL Server version, the plan was to migrate the table without the XML column in it. Instead a new boolean (true/false) column was added to state if there should be data there, and instead, the data is moved to the cloud.
So now we are paying to host the database on our own data centre, but then have certain data in AWS which sounds like it should be more expensive. The justification is that we didn’t need to buy as much hard disk storage which they reckoned could have cost a massive £500k! Then it would mean the migration to the new server in the data centre was faster.
Still, we needed to transfer the data to the AWS Cloud storage. I think the idea was that Audit data isn’t accessed much, so it’s better to move it to a cheaper but slower storage method, then request it on demand. So in our software, instead of displaying the data instantly when you view that record, there would be a “view more detail” button, and only then do we request it and show it.
I think the mindset is just to focus on the cost figures that are apparent. Seeing a figure like £500k sounds like a crazy figure, but if we look at the cost to store it over a few years, does storing it in our own servers outweigh the cost of paying Amazon to store it?
A new corporate buzzword that gets thrown around in this subject is FinOps, as in Financial Operations.
One of the challenges we have when we start to build a new service is around estimating the potential cost of that new service in AWS. This ultimately goes towards setting the budget expectation for that service and therefore how we monitor it from a FinOps perspective. Do we have any experience within the department or anything we can leverage to help us get better at understanding the potential budget expectations for a new service we’re building?
Concerned staff member
In one of the recent “Town hall” meetings, the CEO was ranting about how high our cloud costs were. He said we currently had £250k in AWS servers that are switched off (not sure if that was a yearly figure, or even more unbelievable; monthly). These were servers just for development/testing. If our testing teams are spending £250k on servers we aren’t really using, how much are we spending on ones we are actively using? Then how much does our live system cost?
Now when you see those figures, that £500k hard disk storage doesn’t sound too bad.
“FYI – Stopped instances don’t incur charges, but Elastic IP addresses or EBS volumes attached to those instances do.”
Honey is a browser extension now owned by PayPal. It promised cheap deals to the user by automatically searching for vouchers and applying them at checkout. However, there seems to be some possible foul play in the way that it worked.
Honey was adding itself as a referrer which sounds logical if the user has made their own way there. Referral links give a financial kickback to the referrer so would be fine to give Honey some credit for assuring the end user completes the purchase.
The end user uses honey with the promise of searching for valid voucher codes to save further money. However, even when Honey couldn’t find anything, they still stole the referral. To the end user, this didn’t affect them because it was the referrer that was missed out. So all those YouTubers that had affiliate links will have lost out money, or future affiliate deals and sponsorships.
The ironic thing is that Honey gained a lot of new users from YouTube partnerships themselves. So YouTube audience would install the Honey extension, then any future affiliate links from the YouTuber (and any other YouTuber) would be then hijacked by Honey. So the YouTuber has been completely scammed but would be unaware it was happening at all.
There was another suggestion that Honey even did deals with shops to limit the discounts offered. So if there was a voucher available for 20% off, they would lie and say they have found 10% off. So Honey promised to find the best deal for you without you making any effort, but they were just finding mediocre deals for you and you could have got a better deal if you did put the effort in.
For some sales, you could say that the value proposition to retailers is dubious since they are giving customers discounts on products they were already about to buy.
Legal Eagle is filing a lawsuit against them, which is going to be interesting to see the outcome. I’m Suing Honey .
For the last several years, we have used Slack as our primary way of communicating in the Development department. However, company-wide we have Microsoft Office 365 licences, so other departments use Teams. I always thought it was a dumb decision to use Slack due to essentially paying twice for a communication tool. Slack isn’t that expensive on the lower tiers but it adds up when you have a large amount of staff. Plus, due to stricter security policies, we wanted to use single-sign on so had to upgrade to the Business+ licence which didn’t seem to be worth the cost.
As time goes on, we keep “improving security” which I often think is just an excuse to get rid of certain software. How do you really determine which software or companies are secure anyway? They could tell you they use certain security practices or have some accreditation but if your data is exposed in a data breach is another story.
“not sure what you can hack via Slack. Just over reacting like everything these days. 2FA all the things!”
me
On Slack’s Enterprise licence, they boast even more security features and with our new strict security policies, the management decided that we would have to pay significantly more to keep using Slack, or just get rid of it. So they decided to get rid of it.
To be fair, Teams has improved a bit over the years, and although I prefer the way Slack looks, and its excellent emoji support (you can add custom emojis!); I can’t justify the cost.
why is slack not secure as opposed to teams? probably just nonsense. Where does the data go when it is lost? surely doesn’t leak out onto the dark web!
Rob
We somehow had over 900 members according to Slack Analytics but I reckon that was every historic user since we started using it. Scrolling down the list and roughly estimating, we seemed to have around 300 which could reasonably be called “active”. Then looking at the Business+ costing, it should cost $45,000 per year. Enterprise is one of those tiers where it says “contact sales for a quote”. One manager reckoned it would cost $250k a year to use which doesn’t sound right. How can you justify such an expense for a chat application? Even if it did cost that much on paper, surely you can haggle that down significantly. I’m sure Slack won’t want to lose us. Surely charging $60k is good profit for them.
I often think the way companies charge for software licences doesn’t make sense. They often just charge “per user per month” but there will be times where people don’t actively use the licence due to the work they are doing, or maybe have annual leave to take. Then there’s people that join temporarily, then people just naturally join/leave the business over time. So who really tracks what the accurate amount you need to pay. Companies just end up overpaying for licences they don’t need. Slack seem to suggest they charge just for active users. But what happens if you just send a few messages for 1 day in the month; is that an active user for the month? I often think the best approach would be to charge for a certain amount of users, but then give out an extra 25% keys for light usage.
One thing that I found interesting when looking at Slack Analytics is that most people seemed to be sending as little as 20 messages per day. I think that they are either super focussed and just work independently, or they are chilling out. It’s hard to believe that you can work well in a team, or even have a good relationship with them if you only send 20 messages. I find that some people use instant messaging by sending a sentence per message, which will inflate the message count which makes the numbers even more surprising. For example, they could send 4 messages for this interaction:
Hi
Are you free?
I was wondering if you can help me work out this error
I have just got the latest code but am unable to log in
The decision to remove Slack was disappointing for some, but the bizarre thing is that we got told by our manager on the Wednesday, it was formally announced on Thursday, and gone by Friday 4pm. If you were on annual leave that week, you would be confused when you could no longer access Slack on the following Monday. There was some great information that we had on there, and was great to search for common errors and find solutions to them. We didn’t have enough warning to try and extract the information.
“Has the cost of the loss of productivity and collaboration been factored into the decision to remove slack?”
Sad developer
One developer had a crazy idea of developing our own solution:
“We are a software development company. If we’re that desperate, can’t we write our own messaging system, protected to the security standard we want?”
Ambitious developer
The thing is, we already made a chat application for our users. I never understood why users would want a native chat app when they could use something more widespread. Since we already have a chat app, then it could actually make sense to add more features to it; then use it internally.
Making your own tools isn’t as cheap as you would think. If a developer’s wage is £35k, then paying only 1 developer to develop and maintain it each year is £35k. You may as well just pay for Slack then. But if we are using it and selling it to our users, then it does make more sense.
The weird thing is, for our upcoming software, we originally used Okta for the login functionality but it was decided it was too expensive, so a few developers got together and made their own solution. That seems bonkers to me because that is about security, so surely you should leave it up to the company that specialises In security. So the fact that we do make custom authentication makes the idea of making a chat app even more realistic.
However one of the architects working on this upcoming software ironically replied:
“We need to move away from homegrown solutions, especially based on the presentation happening now from our Head of Security”
Hypocritical software architect
Another architect supported this claim:
“This is about minimising home grown solutions when an off-the-shelf solution would do just as well”
As a software developer, you are always given projects without knowing the contractual details involved. However, there was one project that I was originally assigned to do, and was forwarded some documents about the project. In the document, there were some fairly formal documents which included some pricing.
The project was actually straightforward because we already had the functionality for users in England and they wanted users in Wales to use similar functionality. It was the same for the most part, but there was some minor customisation required. So it mainly involved deleting or tweaking a few files to remove the validation based on the country. Then there would be some testing involved to make sure the feature really did work when configured for Wales.
Some Senior Developers and Architects had estimated the project at 6 months which was a bit extreme, and reckoned the cost of development was £442,404, then some miscellaneous costs for “platform, network and migration” which would take the total to £445,620!
On the face of it, that sounds expensive. But when I think of the labour cost involved, where I work, a Junior might earn £25k a year, then Seniors are more like £32k-£45k. So if you have a few developers and testers on a project, with some managers involved, and it really does take 6 months, then the costs soon add up. Then you want to make a decent profit on it too.
I guess the cheeky thing is, the customer might not know what you already have; so you could charge as if it was new but you are just recycling/reusing existing code.
The end result is the same for the new customer isn’t it?
What I didn’t understand in the document is that there was a line that said:
“The requirements described within this CCN must be delivered by January 2024 in order to support a proof of concept with a limited number of users in a live environment. Once the proof of concept is complete, an implementation plan will be defined by the programme team to determine the pace of the national rollout, to be complete by January 2026.”
My question is, does it make sense to create a proof of concept (POC) that works well enough, but then have 2 years to actually complete the work?
Well people don’t have any experience of what they are suggesting so are just making it up. I agree though, if you have a proof of concept you’re kind of almost there. Depends on how hacky the POC is I suppose
Robert (Senior Developer)
Even more confusing is that we didn’t deliver the POC by January, but we did deliver the completed feature by the end of March.
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.
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>
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.
In the last few years, my employer hasn’t bothered matching inflation. When challenged, the HR Director has said they traditionally don’t do this and are not obligated to do so.
It’s basically a wage-cut if they don’t though, and each of these years they seem to be posting record profits. Always seems really sketchy when you get told there’s no budget but they seem to forget they are a Public Limited Company and need to announce their finances, including director’s bonuses and all that.
This time they acknowledged that inflation is very high this year, and are hyping up how caring they are because they are actually giving an increase… although in most cases it still is going to be under inflation. It was pretty predictable that it was going to rise further than the 5% they were benchmarking against. The current figure published by the ONS was 6.2%.
They claim to be giving “an excess of 7% rise“. Everyone is getting a 2% rise, with a further 3% at the discretion of line managers but they can’t give it if your salary has changed in the last 6 months. Last year, when they finally acknowledged I was underpaid, they staggered the increase in 2 instalments so I only got my full rise in January so that means I don’t qualify for this 3%. They are also giving 2% profit share which is a one-off payment and not a salary increase at all. Pension will increase by 0.5%.
So according to their maths, 2 + 3 + 2 + 0.5 is 7.5%. But 2 of that is the one-off payment so at most you can get 5.5%, but 0.5% is your pension, which is nice, but it doesn’t end up in your bank; so we only get 5% direct in our bank.
Personally, I just get the 2% plus 0.5% pension. That is supposed to cover the 6.25% inflation, and is it even going to stay that way? Could rise further.
I love that in the FAQ they provided with the announcement, they went with:
Will I receive a salary increase if I leave?
Surely no one would even think that. How can you get a salary increase from a company you are no longer employed by.
Stranger Coding Tings 