Is It an american issue ??
No it's a global issue, but like many other things it is more extreme in America. But many international corporations in the age of globalization wants to insert the same type of laws.
The arguments are the same too. More growth, more jobs, more opportunity. All is attainable if we just scale back on the protections, because protecting workers or capping these sorts of regulations will hurt their max revenue spot.
And that is true. It's easy to go down this road if you do not take a hard look at the consequences or have people who are ignorant to the realities of what it does to you.
It's not that long ago that a intern at Goldman Sachs died from overworking;
Goldman Sachs has officially announced that it will cap interns days at 17 hours, meaning interns are encouraged to go home by midnight and not arrive before 7 a.m. At the beginning of June, Goldman Sachs took on around 2,900 summer interns.
The announcement comes shortly after Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern Moritz Erhardt, 21, was found dead in his shower after working for 72 hours straight. According to an autopsy, Erhardt died from epileptic seizures that could have been triggered by all-nighters.
Still, after Erhardts death, some banks have been making an effort to scale back on the absurd rigor of their internship programs. The bank also recently restricted junior bankers from working on Saturdays.
Investment banking internships are notoriously grueling. Recently, an email addressed to Barclays Global Power & Utilities interns began circulating, outlining 10 power commandments they were expected to follow. The supposedly humorous instructions included: We expect you to be the last ones to leave every night
no matter what, Never take your jacket off at work, and I recommend bringing a pillow to the office.
In a statement, Barclays responded to the letter: We have implemented policies and training guidelines to enable employees to gain valuable experience while at the same time maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
The issue of workplace stress has crept into mainstream debate, largely thanks to efforts from people like Sheryl Sandberg and Arianna Huffington. According to studies from Yale and the Families and Work Institute, around one-in-four Americans report feeling often burned out or extremely stressed at their jobs.
Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein recently told interns that they shouldnt devote all their time to the company.
You have to be interesting, you have to have interests away from the narrow thing of what you do, Blankfein said. You have to be somebody who somebody else wants to talk to.
Recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Actto Congress, which, if passed, would require workplaces with at least 15 employees to mandate 10 days of paid vacation per employee.
What family values are about is that at least for two weeks a year, people can come together under a relaxed environment and enjoy the family, Sanders said. That is a family value that I want to see happen in this country.
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/gol...s_after_death_of_bank_of_america_corp_intern/
This is the expectation of people in many industries so people do it. People in this thread who argue that "they choose to do it" is a inane statement that betrays human nature that people are trying to grab whatever opportunity they can to improve their lives. The government is supposed to protect people from misuse by other people. Corporations are incapable of themselves putting out an agenda or take responsibility for the social constructs. They are in the business of operasting within the law, and as we have seen across industry after industry, they push the envelope of what is allowed to maximize their own output and expertise.
This is not on companies. It's on poor worker protection laws and a deafness to wanting to put a stop to abusive lower wage jobs. / This is not me talking about a creative director, but the mistreatment of everyday workers, who don't choose this, but are expected to do it, and do it through pressure due to societal norms shaping everything.
Daily reminder that the average working conditions in the US suck ass.
Unions are neutered and dismorphed in America, and a lot of it boils down to anti-worker right laws that killed them. In the early parts of the 20th century massive strikes decided the faith of American corporate life, and laws like the taft-hartley act was instated to make it illegal for the people to say enough is enough, to protest, to unionize.
It was a total assault against the labor movement;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Management_Relations_Act_of_1947
This is likely one of the main reasons why the US does so badly with regards to paid maternity leave, paid over time, paid vacation time and similarly. If you work for a company with good benefits, then that is great. If you don't, then you are open to being abused, and that in turn of course feeds into sexism, misuse and mistreatment of staff.
But in the name of more jobs and more growth nothing else matters. You don't need to be happy or content at your job if you're making real money.
I don't get it. I realize some overtime is sometimes needed but 80 hours a week every week? Why not just hire another person and split the workload at that point? Crazy hours like that sound mega expensive on top of everything else that comes with it.
It doesn't work this way. Outsiders sometimes think that if you can throw more staff at the problem and then it works, but you don't just get more expertise. Often more staff particularly in managing roles and decision roles means more beaucracy which halts a project.
Like many other creative leads in other industries- Like say, a show runner on a TV show, it is a role where you tie everything together, and the size of the project and the massive gigantic undertaking of the project cannot be done by more than one person by conventional means. hiring assistences or trying to delegate jobs to specific individuals can backfire.
Think about a project like Assassins Creed Unity where over a thousand developers are working across studios all over the world, and a few key personall has to tie everything together. Every new build breaks the game, milestones have to be met, investor meetings constantly have to satisfy, development grows to a halt as members have to prepare demos for shows and media, setbacks every day ruin it for other teams like a domino effect.
Another factor you have to consider is that training valueable employees with a high level of skill is difficult to find, and having a optimal team where the leads know one another and work together to effiency is not an easy thing. It's the arrogance of a dumb producer to think he can buy himself to a fantastic game by just hiring a million staff and throwing hundred millions after the project. Thats how you end up with a Call of Duty or Madden.
And you can bet that people on those teams- working on games that are not considered ground breaking, also work an insane amount of hours.
Many game development slave away because they dream about getting credit on games that made history. You're supposed to slave away throughout your career so you can climb the ladder and sit in a good cubicle later in life. So trends create the parameters for behavior which guides us all into a catch 22 feedback loop. expectations become reality, and really there is no place for you if you want to work on the next Uncharted if you're not going to put work in. Why would you hire a 9-5 joe, if you got a hundred other designers, programmers and artists lined up who is willing to bleed for your vision.
Thirdly, when projects are greenlit it happens in the room between investors and lead developers, and very often they will underplay how realistic it is to achieve the goals agreed on when a game is greenlit. Games run into problems throughout development and features are cut, but even when you get a game that is falling short on experience or which took many years to make, you're look at individuals at every project who gave their lives basically to even make a mediocre game. Many games are completely oblivious to that even mediocre or average large budget games are a massive undertaking and required massive levels of hard work, inginuity and impossible expectations.
Same thing with Hollywood movies. Transformers is not a good franchise, but the CG artists worked their asses off. the special effects people worked their asses of. The 1 AD and the runners and the technical and practical effects staff worked their asses off. It's convenient to forget all the hundreds of nameless faces because the only thing you think about is Michael Bay.