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[TRENCHES] Thursday, July 19, 2012 - Photographic
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Photographic
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/photographic
Perspective.
AnonymousAt the townhall company meetings, the developers would air their grievances about how unfair it was that their bonuses were *only* 6% that year.
Mind you, this was their annual bonus they were talking about, not their completion bonus, nor their performance bonus. They would fuss and whine for a full two hours about how unfair it was, meanwhile the testers were taking home less than $18k a year.
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With respect to the story, everything's relative: more than 80% of the world lives on less than $4k a year. So next time you get made that someone's fussing and whining over their 6% bonus, remember that someone is probably pretty pissed at you for fussing and whining over your $18k.
I suspect they'll be a little more thorough in vetting new hirees for a while.
Still awaiting word on who leaked his story. I'm curious to see the reasoning.
Yeah, the story isn't that the people with the skilled jobs are being paid more than the job any vaguely bright spark could do? Shock!
It's that it's not very tactful to piss and moan about wage issues in front of your lower paid co-workers. Implies you think of them as menials rather than colleagues.
It is somewhat annoying to get two different links to the same basic page every time you update.
As for the story, the person is just incredibly naive. That's about all I really have to say about that.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Poor Marley.
"Next time you see this man, give him a raise!" would work much better with that photo. :P
Less effort: white-out one line, add another, F becomes H. "If you see this man, hire him again!"
For some reason the LBB having the old polaroid camera cracks me up.
Cost of living differences make such statements great for shock value but worthless for actual discussion.
Yeah, cost of living is pretty low when you're in a one-room shack with no electricity or running water. :P
And there's also a reason that most companies consider it a fireable offense to openly discuss salaries.
Yeah, I really envy all those people living on 4k a year, i mean, the malaria and cholera and famine are totally worth the lower cost of living.
There are actually new laws in place that protect employees discussing their pay. A company in the US can no longer prohibit their employees from discussing their pay with each other. This was passed a year or two ago, its due to the fact that there can be a great disparity in pay for two employees who perform the same job, like if one happens to be female and the other male. Those kinds of policies made it difficult to know if discrimination in pay was occurring.
I thought of the same thing. And you and I, sir (or madam, as the case may be), have just dated ourselves.
ETA: but I don't mean 'dated ourselves' in that way, I just mean... oh you know what I mean.
From this it looks like it WAS Marley blaming his pet rabbit or maybe that elephant thing
Seriously? SERIOUSLY?
I mean I'm British, we're too polite and reserved to discuss salaries, but the thought of being fired for it?
Let me add it to this ever growing list I have over here entitled, 'Fuck American Employment Culture.'
Maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention? Maybe it's just that the strip only updates twice a week? I dunno. It just feels that they way this story is being told is kind of muddled and unclear.
Also that being said, it indeed relative. A tester can get a job, often times without a whole lot of credentials. Devs and Artists are competing for a small number of positions that few are qualified for but everyone wants, and most of these people have 25-120k in student loans with 5-20 year payments (which means they pay exponentially more due to high interest). They study for years, work up from really awful art/dev positions (unless of course they are genius savants from the beginning) and go through a gauntlet to get those good jobs, they have the right to fight for higher compensation. If anyone should be complaining about "wage" differences, start looking at the executives (of any big company. not just games).
The kinda consensus in this thread is that Cora was the leak, because she was pissed off with how the whole thing was just wrong for the players. Isaac caught up to that and had that weird conversation at the fries place. Then Q told a different rollback story to each person, as a way to identify the leak, because the leaked version would indicate who knew that one.
But then Marley got fucked, I don't know why.
I agree that the storytelling in Trenches is not very good at all. I wouldn't have understood all that without reading each comic's thread.
Why would you ever think Isaac was the mole?
There was a whole series of comics where Isaac thinks Cora is the mole and tries to talk her out of leaking and she appears to defend her actions.
Yeah, I'm sorry, I just don't think you're paying attention, or you have a short memory of the comics...I guess only updating twice a week could play a part in the latter.
Marley let slip his version of the story to Isaac, and the assumption is that Isaac leaked it himself to shift the blame for the earlier leaks to Marley.
I kind of like this style of storytelling, there's no need for it to beat you over the head with the obvious stuff.
Unfortunately judging from the threads it apparently isn't obvious to a segment of the readership. Not trying to be insulting to anyone when I say that, I am just honestly flummoxed about how people can find this so confusing. Maybe it's a difference in the way people read or process information in their memories or something.
I understand what they're trying to do, and this kind of narrative technique is really cool when it works. But the medium and the update schedule are not very helpful, and I do believe the writers could do a better job overall. It would be a lot clearer if this was in a comic book. I read and work on way to many books and games and strips, so this kind of structure ends up falling short, I guess.
TC you're making a disingenuous argument here. $18k in one country doesn't carry the same weight in every other country. In America, $18k isn't a whole hell of a lot. I think you're trying to take this "first world problems" type stuff to an imaginary level.
Doesn't that seem like the fault of management? Why would that discussion be taking place in a town hall style meeting? Is that the only time the developers could air the grievance of pay?
*cries at the incredible description of my life*
Is it just that it's really difficult to cut someone's salary, but easy to cut someone's bonus?
Perhaps, but It also costs less to keep you around for the long haul if you just get a misleadingly large bonus rather than half as much as a raise.
Gratuitous example:
Even a 4% raise vs 2%+6% has you earning more per year in year 5, and breaking even on lifetime earnings after 6. 3% is far less exciting, taking 7 and 13 years to match up annual and lifetime earnings respectively.
Shall we add your posts the growing list of things people won't be seeing in this thread?
Basically, you could make $18K go a lot farther if you were willing to live like a Mexican. Heck, if you were willing to live like an American in 1956, your salary would go a lot farther.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate