The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Crab in a bucket mentality.

    “I don’t receive residuals, so why should these writers? The executives are entitled to all the profit.”

        • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yep. My team is composed of brilliant engineers who lack common sense, and average engineers who might not have a deep level of mastery who keep them in check. It’s a working system.

      • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        I work in machining. The amount of drawing I’ve received from engineers that could not be machined makes me question the intelligence required to become an engineer.

          • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            You worked in a shitty industry, I’m in the valley and the marketing guys make top bank, I was a Sr principal at one of the biggies and they blow me out of the water.

            Sales is often on a different level, commission is incredible.

            Where do you think the money is going?

            • Gsus4@feddit.nl
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              11 months ago

              I was reading a book on this recently and it had a good reason for why some departments get all the money and some don’t. Imagine you have a market that is saturated with products, you decided you can and want to buy, but can’t choose. In that case, sales/marketing is what brings in the most money, so they have the most power and get paid accordingly.

              Now imagine the post-war booming economy where every car made gets sold and cars are fairly established as a product. Sales and engineering performance are not that important, but financial departments grew immensely, because the competition was on optimizing, cost-cutting, investment and consolidation.

              Last example: new industry, still figuring out the best methods, newest products and killer apps: engineering has the most power.

              Given the economy we’re in right now, where money is tight, new products outside the AI hype/boom are going to be companies fighting to sell you their product, so marketing is winning right now, but it may change.

              • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Easier answer: social skills + their whole job is ass-kissing, they get very good at it.

                Imagine how good engineers could be if they didn’t have to waste all their time doing actual work.

                • Gsus4@feddit.nl
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                  11 months ago

                  Yes, that same book also talked about how success and pay is only 5% performance and the rest is self promotion and sucking up…that helps put a lot of life in perspective

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            The estimated total pay for a Marketing Executive at Walt Disney Company is $106,208 per year.

            https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Walt-Disney-Company-Marketing-Executive-Salaries-E717_D_KO20,39.htm

            The estimated total pay for a Writer at Walt Disney Company is $69,619 per year. This number represents the median, which is the midpoint of the ranges

            https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Walt-Disney-Company-Writer-Salaries-E717_D_KO20,26.htm

            Disney pays higher than average. Writers can get paid a hell of a lot less. And it’s often only a part-time job that lasts only a few weeks or months a year.

            So yeah, I’d say the marketing executives get paid an unreasonable amount compared to the writers who actually make a huge contribution to creating the product.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Copyright law is ridiculously protective. You can thank Disney, the corporation, for that. The original law said 30 years. That was enough for the creator to make a career being creative. Micky would look a whole lot different by this point.

      • Zalack@startrek.website
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        11 months ago

        Why shouldn’t we, as engineers, be entitled to a small percentage of the profits that are generated by our code? Why are the shareholders entitled to it instead?

        I worked in Hollywood before becoming a programmer, and even as a low level worker, IATSE still got residuals from union shows that went to our healthcare and pension funds. My healthcare was 100% covered by that fund for a top-of-the-line plan, and I got contributions to both a pension AND a 401K that were ON TOP of my base pay rather than deducted from it.

        Lastly, we were paid hourly, which means overtime, but also had a weekly minimum. Mine was 50 hours. So if I was asked to work at all during a week I was entitled to 50 hours of pay unless I chose to take days off myself.

        Unions fucking rock and software engineers work in a field that is making historic profits off of our labor. We deserve a piece of that.

      • Ready! Player 31@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I guess it depends right? If a show or movie or other piece of art continues to bring income in, where does that money go? Particularly when the team that created it have effected disbanded and therefore aren’t technically on the same payroll that income is arriving on. I would argue it should not solely go to the owners of that production house.

        Residuals makes sense in a way that doesn’t really apply to engineering because typically engineers will remain at a company and their continued employment is how they continue to gain income from their work.

        You could maybe say an actual equivalent would be engineers getting shares in their company, which would function the same as residuals. I think that is a more apt comparison.

        • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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          11 months ago

          I think the shares in a company thing is a good comparison, because I went to university at a place that churns out a lot of grads who found or work for startups. It’s a minefield because often the reason early employees get paid in partly in shares is because they couldn’t afford to pay them the “true amount” upfront.