@Saka Here is hopefully a piece of more positive news: Blizard workers formed a union, World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild:
Hopefully, that will help them get fired pay and better work-from-home conditions, which in turn will improve the work they do on WoW. In an ideal scenario, at least...
@DoctorEldritch That's good. Gaming industry is very toxic, so it's good when there are unions to protect the workers' rights.
I find it interesting how in many places companies were pushing for the employees to return to the office once the pandemic was over. Most Finns went like nope, we are not going back to the office. Many of those just changed companies to keep working from home.
Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
*delete as appropriate
@Saka One would hope unions like this will be a positive change, yeah. I mean, unions in Hollywood just recently caused delays in film production, but that did result in fairer deals and some important rules about the use of AI. And in gaming development, the potential and danger of AI are even more evident, so it is good that now there may be a way for the developers to affect it with a union.
It is curious indeed. I thought the pandemic accelerated the "work-from-home" framework, but it was by no means new and the world was gradually moving towards it anyway. And they all have different reasons for needing the workers to come back to the office, be it from efficiency drop to fostering a corporate culture to who knows what else. And all the while studies keep coming out that say WFH is good or WF is bad depending on who is sponsoring the research (as is the usual way these days). And in the midst of it, as if it was not enough, that new Covid FLiRT variant came out, too. Crazy times...
@Saka I guess. Many companies are very unwilling to let go of control. But now when everyone got a taste of how it could be, it will be increasingly hard to make people willingly return to offices.
@DoctorEldritch Europe seems good in that regard. Other places not so much.
A friend of mine is dating a Japanese girl. They visited us recently when she used her entire time of PTO to visit her partner. Which was a whopping week of it. Compare that to Finnish 4 weeks per year.
During the visit we chatted about work and my spouse casually mentioned how he never goes to the office and the friend also nodded that only when something explodes at work, he would go there, so maybe once per two months. It was interesting to see the gal's face. 😅
She wants to move to Finland eventually, she did mention that she really dislikes Asian work culture.
Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
*delete as appropriate
@Saka True, most of the debate about wfh I come across comes from America these days.
1 week PTO per year is brutal... 😥
I guess it is a matter of preference, some like Asian work culture, but many do not. But I can see the appeal of Finnish 4 PTO weeks and wfh for someone who has not tried it before. I think I experienced something similar when I first started wfh as well.
@DoctorEldritch Depending on the type of the job, one could die from boredom sitting in the office in July. With half of the company gone on vacations, for many programmers there's only maintenance happening and the bare minimum.
July is the armageddon in Finland, where you just have to pray nothing bad happens, because there won't be any people left to take care of things. 😅
Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
*delete as appropriate
@Saka That's what the books are for, I want to say. Unless the boss is very strict about that sort of thing. When I just finished my studies I spent a bit of over half a year working as a hotel receptionist, I needed to stay in one place to do research about it, but staying there was too expensive with just the research grant, so I had to find a job. The pay was not good, but they provided board, and that's what I was after. Anyway, during the off-season I read all the Witcher series and a few other series (not to mention materials for my research) working there because there were almost no guests. So I'd say, make July a book month 😉
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DoctorEldritch
Hopefully, that will help them get fired pay and better work-from-home conditions, which in turn will improve the work they do on WoW. In an ideal scenario, at least...
