Near the end of Saturady night, an Irish-looking man sat down next to me in the booth. After exchanging introductions...
Me: How do you know the birthday boy?
Him: We were in the same frat at MIT.
Me: Oh cool. What do you do now?
Him: I handle recruiting for BeeYay (* name changed).
Me: I used to work in that field. [some details of my previous work]
Him: You should leave Google and come work for us.
Me: Ha, no way.
Him: Why not?
Me: [changing subject] So, it must be hard to recruit for your company.
Him: Why do you say that?
Me: Your company has an awful reputation for work-life balance.
Him: How do you know?
Me: Come on, I read that forum post from beeyay_spouse.
Him: You saw that?
Me: Along with everyone else in our industry.
Him: Oh...
Me: That's why I say it must suck to be a recruiter there.
Him: I'm not a recruiter.
Me: What?
Him: I'm the VP of HR.
Me: !
For those of you who are not in "our industry", you can read the dirt here: here
ReplyDeleteIs that kind of working condition in 'bee yay' allowed by law in america? sounds like a sweat shop to me.
ReplyDeleteSo he's the guy who sets the policies?
ReplyDeleteUnlike Google that uses peer pressure to work long hours?
ReplyDelete"Bee Yay" - hahaha!
ReplyDeleteIs that kind of working condition in 'bee yay' allowed by law in america?
Oh dear, yes. In fact, California has carved out overtime law exemptions for the high tech field. (Unfortunately for exploitative employers, they forgot it doesn't cover those paid less than ~87K/year IIRC. BTW, note for anyone thinking of working at BeeYay Canada -- BC also has a similar exemption, except I believe even the junior level coders, etc, are exempted from overtime protections.)
Also, BeeYay isn't the only company that does this (or "did this" -- some claim it's changed a lot since that very, very famous livejournal post, but I think its individual studios still vary) but it's certainly one of the biggest to rely on a culture of mandatory massive overwork.
Do your research if you want to get into the software field, particularly in the videogames industry. F'ex, ask your technival interviewer what was the last non-corporate fun thing they did. Check out GameWatch.org, which is the site now run by the former "beeyay_spouse".
Thanks for the info, Arc.
ReplyDeleteYeah I am not aware of the employment law in America, since I am working in Australia.
Here, overtime is pretty much common too, although not to that very extreme.