Apply for other jobs, once you have a secured job, confront your boss and discuss wages and hours. I hope this helped.
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Tom Brien
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If you live in Manchester and they are paying you £1 an hour, you could actually sue them for a great deal of money.
Breaking the minimum wage laws in such a grotesque manner is a serious criminal offence for any company.
You can't really benifit from this anymore than you already have, id say leave. I would think the only reason to stay is to build experiance for another job but youve already done that. Leave and start the search again
It sounds like you're being semi-blackmailed into staying; "If I leave, the boss may pass along a bad word to other companies." That doesn't sound pleasant, and certainly shouldn't be a reason for staying.
No-one can really decide for you, since you're the only one who knows all of the details; how nice they all are and the like. However, if it was the boss who said that they could get a better person for free, I think it would be better to leave 'for the good of the company'.
Also, keep in mind that the company/boss/whoever can find this and look at it, so be careful with what you say.
you could look at it as an internship. (free education while putting something on resume, basically). depends how close this project is to finishing and if it will be released to the public on any scale. i'd stick around until you have a complete project with them under your belt but if thats gonna take another year, i'd look for other jobs BEFORE you quit. if you still hate the job so much go back to indie dev till you find another REAL job then.
Wait wtf? Usually people doing contracting get paid MORE than most full time people since you don't get benefits and stuff... It just makes me wonder.. If your getting paid this shit salary and kids in 6th grade mowing there neighbors lawns are getting paid more than you.. How much do the full time people get?
I guess if your doing stuff where your learning a bunch of things that could help you later in the game industry you might be getting something out of it.. But if you are just doing a repetitive things that you already know then this job isnt worth shit and you should quit...
But hey you just gotta weigh each choice and pick out the positives and negatives of both sides of staying/quitting...
Good luck
Quit now and make your own games.
You don't have to quit your current job before you start looking for a new job. You can start looking now, and if you don't find something, you can always keep your current job. All that's really necessary is that if you do indeed find something better, you need to give your current job two weeks notice. That's the civil thing to do at least.
As for your current pay situation - that is abysmal, especially for the hours you put into it. If the game is released, and you get a percentage of the earnings, that might make things worth-while in the long run. But if you don't think its going to sell well, or you aren't getting any cut of the profits, you are working for sweat-shop wages. I did some math, and for your current work hours, you're making a pound an hour. I've made more money taking a shit.
So yeah, that's my two cents.
you cant really get other ppl to decide for you
it's your life and you descision
and it doesn't help that we ourselves are not in that position
so your gonna have to figure out how you're gonna direct your own life
and if you do need a opinion I'm absolutely sure you can get a better job and your wage sucks for those hours you'll meet better people elsewhere anyway
besides someone is gonna figure out why you should stay and once you do you might regret it
or maybe not... you never know
Obviously they can't "get a mate to do it for free," or they would have by now. If you're considering quitting anyway, why not at least try to work out a better deal ('cuz it sounds like they need you more than you need them :P). Flat out tell them ...you signed on to work 10-6:30, and those are the hours you will work. If they want you to stay late and/or work weekends, you'd be happy to renegotiate your salary.
...what ever you decide, Good luck!
If they have money to buy a $500 dollar statue of Big Boss they aren't putting money in the right places. I think you hit the nail right on the head when you said "That's my wages for the next six weeks". And your boss is trying to get you to take lower wages, with unpaid overtime?
I mean honestly, it's like saying that the statue is worth more than 6 weeks of your time. They feel a statue of Big Boss would benefit the company more then at least trying to pay their employees decently.
I've never been employed so I can't tell you what to do. The real world experience with at least some sort of pay is better then a free internship, and if you enjoy it then stay. If you want some sort of decent pay with decent hours maybe you should look around. Honestly though, if it were me, I would stay.
"I've definately heard "If we didn't have you, I could get a mate to do it for free." which I find insulting and kind of hard to believe."
Yeah, I'd quit. See if they can really get an animator for free. If you like the team, then... try and keep in touch? I dunno, it is a bit of a pickle.
I'm gonna go click all your ads because I feel sorry for you. <3
if you can make more money with your own games i'd go ahead and quit dude. as fucking cool as that job is, you could be saving and making a lot more money from home (plus no travel expenses either)
i gotta applaud you on goin straight for the big game instead of plodding about for 3 years in university
Yeah a lot of new companies are just fucking stupid when it comes to basically... everything.
Perhaps at the time they bought the Big Boss Statue, they figured they were ok financially. I am kinda in the same situation, a small company asked me to make mini games for their site and at first wanted each game for $50.. Since then they raised to $100-$200 per game. I know I would be getting ripped off for the amount of time Id be working on the games, but the woman there says she will introduce me to many higher up people in the industry.
I dont think I am going to take the job though. I am never that great with people anyways, so knowing people in the industry probably wont do a whole lot for me, unless I could somehow hire them or use them to make my games better.
But you are basically forced to work long hours for little pay. (no idea how much a quid is though in canadian dollars). And if they are talking to you about lowering your pay, thats even worse. I think what you need to do, is find out what your finished product of the game is going to look like. Ask yourself if you think the game will be good enough to continue working on. If it is, then it will open up tons of doors for you and thats when you can quit the shitty job or they will start paying you more by then.
Also you can ask them for a percentage of whatever money the game makes.
Some people might even volunteer their time to do a job like that, but they would have to be enjoying themselves to do it. Just make sure you are having fun and not working long hours like that and free up your weekends more. Otherwise I would say quit. If you are enjoying yourself stay, otherwise.. yeah, talk to them and see if things can change..
working for other people is almost always complete and utter shit.(with the occasional good job)
you know you can make more money working on your own stuff, and you should do that.
I don't have much to add, what with this being discussed at length already, but what I can say is that you should consider the option of making it Very Clear to them that you're about to quit and why, and see if that's any leverage at all for improving your situation. If they still treat you like shit, then you should probably leave because they think you're some kind of extra, useless part of the team.
This is what you should do before quitting if that's what you decide; if you decide it's worth putting up with the BS in the long run, then threatening to quit probably isn't a good idea.
Fuck THAT. Imho you're one of the freshest flash game designers out there, why are you wasting your time with people that obviously dont appreciate your talent?
If you sat and made games full time you'd make probably 10 times as much money and after a year have an awesome portfolio full of games. Youve already got a name for yourself and should be building on that, not being shat on by the man just so you can put their name on your CV. Just because they are an established studio doesnt mean they can treat you like shit and pay fuck all.
Quit that shitty job and make some more sweet games, its the best thing for you, you aint some generic animator.
OK wait wait wait. I've spent THIS year making more games and look what I did: Mighty Tower, an april fool's joke and Robot Dinosaurs. That's an embarrassingly low amount of progress. And I definately don't have a name for myself, even on Newgrounds.
I don't know if I mentioned or not, but the boss is out this week, and so's the deadline guy; so there are two guys left runnin the place and I don't wanna leave em in the shit because they're good at what they do and don't deserve for me to fuck up their jobs. So this week I've bin doin some fuckin pro animation stuff, and I'm gonna tell the boss to pay me like a man or I'm gone- when he gets back.
I'm starting to think they totally do need me to do this work for them, and would shit their kecks if I left.
ooo, you're definitely in between a rock and a hard place.
50 pounds conberts to about 80 usd
my parents make atleast 400 usd a week each
and they have pretty shitty jobs.
Troppus
Forgot to say, if you like your job that much ask them to pay for your travel fairs.
I-smel
That's basically all they are doing right now.