The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.
Better they uploaded it on torrent and asked for donations
Gross. Writers should be paid fairly.*
Edit: Previously read “Shame on Neflix”. See thoughtful reply below.
While I don’t disagree with the general state, I don’t see how it’s Netflix. They didn’t produce or create Suits, nor were the initial broadcaster, so the contracts were set long before Netflix
This is ignoring the history of how writers traditionally got paid. Residuals made it so that the longer the writer was in the game the more they were supported by the raft of their body of work similar to authors. Residuals were originally fought for by another strike ages past so that a writer was paid a little bit every time an episode was aired as a re-run .
Now re-runs barely exist because of on demand and writers for streaming get paid peanuts. Successful writers have to write like demons and face burning themselves out just to get by. All because the streaming platforms can technically say “it’s not a rerun”. We as a society respect creative IP… Until that creator is on the platform of industry content streaming because a narrow definition of what counts. If it were any other platform like a network it wouldn’t matter who originally contacted it- if you air it a writer gets a share. So Streaming platforms get a massive business advantage over everyone else by screwing over writers.
YouTubers get paid on a more respectable model for the content they produce on these same principles than industry writers.
How streaming doesn’t count as broadcasting is a tad too convenient for the studio to not be a deliberate loophole. Even when the language is tested in court the lobbyism favors the deep pockets asking to split hairs clearly in bad faith.
Ha, I didn’t understand that, but now I do. Thanks. And agreed that the general state is a shame. Writers deserve to be paid.
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I don’t understand the concept of residuals. You were paid to write the thing, so you wrote the thing, and you got the money for writing the thing. WTF. I DON’T GET PAID EVERY TIME SOMEBODY USES THE WEBSITE I WORKED ON FOR MY EMPLOYER, WHY IS CONTENT GENERATION ANY DIFFERENT!?!?!
Perhaps we should all get paid in perpetuity for the things we create that others use in perpetuity.
I think it has something to do with the nature of creative work. If we didn’t have some system in place to compensate creatives over time then people in creative jobs couldn’t afford to live between employment opportunities.
You are treating a written product the same as a commodity. The success of a creative work isn’t assured and fixed like a commodity is, basically working like fiat. So a piece of writing can either make very little money or a bunch. The initial cost of creating a show would be so much higher if writers were paid based on what the script is “worth”, since there is no real metric for show success and writers would probably just charge up the wazoo to be able to survive long enough till their next gig. This would probably also decrease creative quality, and you’d probably have shittier shows because of this.
Your work (and mine) could be done in almost the exact same manner by anyone with the same education and training. The work of artists is very specific to the individual. Not that no one else could do it, but if someone else did it, it would be a different product.
I’m a former musician and record label employee who’s been screaming “told you so” for years.
I hope the writers get what they’re owed, but don’t hold your fucking breath
I don’t get any money from the systems I setup at work as an IT worker years ago, even if they are used every day in perpetuity and make the company billions.
Where’s my income in perpetuity for creative problem solving?
Did you not get paid hourly or salary for the work? Your compensation package was different. Did you not have a steady job? Did you not know you were going in there next week?
I think the latent question here is - how were expectations and/or contracts for writers any different from hourly workers who have never expected royalties?
The previous comment did most of the work for you. Writers, actors, crew, and generally everyone involved in the entertainment industry does not have a salary gig like office workers. They aren’t working consistently–which has only gotten worse in the streaming era–and thus rely on royalties as part of their total compensation.
So, in summary, they are completely different situations that cannot be directly compared.
I don’t think I’m ignorant of the gig-work nature of these things - I am, by choice, a contractor, but in a different field (engineering services). But my contracts specify that the deliverables are “works for hire” and that the client owns all IP, and I am not entitled to residuals or royalties or any other income from the work I’ve done under such contracts.
I just genuinely don’t know if writers thought that they should be getting more. And if so, why?Because there are plenty of analogous (i.e. IP-generating) jobs that don’t have such arrangements.
It’s different with writers, because if their contracts worked like ours did they would have no hope of retiring. So when a fat fish like Suits comes along everyone who has a hand in making it is hoping to swing that either into money or more lucrative work.
That’s the way I’ve come to see it. Actual writers may disagree
“Works-for-hire” is exactly the key point here.
This is about who holds the IP. Sometimes, depending on the employer and contract, an engineer will get to share in a patent created in the course of the job. Or might have incentives such as Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) or options.
So it’s not true that the IT folks are exclusively paid salary. Many share in the risk as well as the returns of their firms.
Let’s unpack that.
Yes, there are ‘writers for hire’ in licenced tie-in fiction and comics. These authors get a flat advance BUT they still get royalties based on the number of books or comics sold. That is - base payment and then returns based on success if the product.
Film and television writers are compensated by residuals in addition to salary. The studio owns the IP but the creators have a stake. It’s a risk and return sharing relationship with the studio. That’s the standard arrangement.
How is this different from an ESOP or options as an incentive remuneration?
How would an IT employee feel if a firm licenced the IP and then excluded its value from the calculation of ESOPs and options due, or the dividends on the nonvoting shares issued to employees?
I just genuinely don’t know if writers thought that they should be getting more. And if so, why?
What do you mean by “more”, and relative to what? The main complaint from writers are that in recent years the trend has been them all getting paid significantly less. Not just a few percentage points, more like 1-10% of what they used to get.
So, they want to get paid the same as they used to, which is more than currently but not “more” when looked at from a longer time frame.
There are freelance/gig workers in other industries. Programming has had a massive freelance market for ages. It’s practically unheard of for them to receive royalties, so it seems like you don’t need to rely on royalties.
And writers do have a salary gig in the vast majority of cases. It’s just usually not a long term position. They are hired for the duration of the project, and then need to find something new.
That’s not unique to writers or Hollywood at all. Many people are hired for the duration of a project, including managers, engineers, construction workers and so on. None of them receive royalties.
Did you not get paid hourly or salary for the work?
Writing as a profession gets this too in many scenarios.
Your compensation package was different.
Almost everyone’s is. It’s all based on what you can convince people to pay you and the real winners are the ones who are friends and family of the ownership and/or executives, always.
Did you not have a steady job?
Can good writers not land steady jobs? Of course they can! Have I always had a steady job? Of course not!
Did you not know you were going in there next week?
I have had many roles in IT that you never know when something can or would happen to terminate employment. I’ve had an entire department let go so they could shift the work to another group. I’ve had acquisitions happen where getting a pitiful severance is commonplace (and severance only ever comes when you give up all rights to sue anyone at all ever who worked for said entity giving you said pittance. You’re paid for your SILENCE.) I’ve seen MANY contract roles where a hiring manager on a whim can choose to terminate employment and you’re left holding the bag. As an employee you NEVER know if you’re going in there next week, you just hope that you are. After all, you are an employee at-will. This is most roles as very few have duration contracts overall.
I wish IT workers would unionize and demand better pay - but then outsourcing would be even more prevalent than it is. Show business isn’t known for meritocracy in high paying roles anyway.
Paying people in perpetuity for doing one role for a small period of time is aligned with permanent ownership and dividends of something. Why writers wouldn’t just ask for stock or buy stock with earnings like everybody else is puzzling. There are so many stories about abuse with contract negotiation by people at all levels of showbusiness that i’d argue the whole thing should be overhauled but any disruption causes some to win and some to lose… and we couldn’t have anyone brought down to the same level of anyone else, could we? Let’s just keep those executive pay and bonus structures the same as they’ve always been too while we’re at it, wouldn’t want to stop their meteoric rise in wage y/y while the rest of us get boned.
Lol you getting exploited makes you a bitch. IP creators striking for better residual payments is pure common sense.
I’m sorry you don’t understand how markets work.
Maybe you should join a union about it
This just in: different payment structures are different. Different valuation of output is different. Unfair under-valuations are unfair. What a discovery.
You typed 3 sentences to say exactly nothing.
Yeah, but think of the calories burned!
It should be in your bank account instead of the pockets of investors that do 0 work and generate 0 value
Exactly. That person should unionize themselves and get that money back instead of complain that others might have a living wage.
If investors do 0 work and generate 0 value, why are they included at all?
Writers and actors should cut out investors and make their content independently. If they need money, they could borrow some under the condition that they share the profits if their content makes money. Wait a second…
It’s almost like there are multiple independent streaming services doing just this but without the vc money!
Sounds an awful lot like Nebula.
Ok… but then why would they pay to have it done in the first place?
I’ve solved issues that have saved transit riders hundreds of thousands of hours of time… but so have other people. I don’t know how such an accounting of the return for investment I made would work.
When my solutions stop working as well, due to misc design/need drift, how do we decide how much I lose and the next me gets?.
They wouldn’t, that’s the problem
I think I can see where you are coming from here. The difference between your creativity and writers, actors, musicians is that while your work is used by the company you built the system for that company isn’t selling it to someone else. You built infrastructure.
Writers, actors, and musicians work is being sold by the companies they work for as a revenue stream.
The platform that IT Engineers created for netflix is being sold by the companies they work for as a revenue stream.
See what I did there? Your argument is that they are more important but in reality they are replaceable like everyone is. Most of the writers out there aren’t in high paying GRRMartin level roles, they’re writing episodes of sitcoms and reality TV. The quality is all over the place.
so you saying, if a book are publish and sold, a writer only paid for writing the book and all the profit should go to the publisher only?
or song writer should be paid one off for writing a song and all the profit should go to music label only?
and no, netflix not selling the platform. it is like saying Grocery store sold their store everyday. it make no sense. the engineer is a builder, they build a platform. netflix pay them for the platform, netflix sell stuff on said platform.
you are dumb
How about if one person should make money in perpetuity for doing a job, everyone should?
You want to keep paying the architect, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and all the other construction crew that worked on your house right?
Oh wait… not that…
Maybe payment in perpetuity is a bad idea because it just funnels wealth to the few at the expense of the many… I mean it’s ok to charge people a billion times for something done a single time right?
There’s a huge philosophical discussion here, but instead you want to throw names. Things are the way they are overwhelmingly because of arbitrary bullshit.
Intellectual Property is a construct enabling monopolies and generating billions of dollars off the trivial reproduction of work done by others. All this perpetual money making bullshit is just piggybacking off of something that never should have been.
Intellectual Property is abused by monopolies, sure, but it’s not a construct made by those monopolies. If you write a book you should have rights to how that book is distributed. That’s the idea behind copyright.
If you write a book you should have rights to how that book is distributed. That’s the idea behind copyright.
Copyright is all about preventing anyone else from profiting off of your work by simply copying your work. Thanks to Mickey Mouse that duration is now life+70 years which is absurd.
Distilling the concept down and removing the nuance: As of today if you produce a written work you have monopoly control over that work for life+70 years unless you sign contracts stating otherwise.
Today, copyright as a construct creates monopolies that survive the creator.
In the case of Drug copyright, the duration is 20 years from the invention, which generally ends up being about 10 years after clinical trials to make money before anyone can make a copy. I struggle to see why the rules do not evenly apply, but the rationale behind drugs seems to be that humans benefit from them being available for as cheap as possible. If we had 20 year durations on TV and Movie copyrights it would be better for the masses and would give creators decades to earn profits on their work.
Drug makers try everything possible to extend copyrights on their drugs by doing things like creating medical devices with superior delivery methods in the case of injectable drugs. Since the new delivery method is more effective the old one is generally not used and so generics have to then wait for the delivery method to be out of copyright… This is just one example though. There’s no promises a generic drug ever comes to market if the drug is not widely used. The same shenanigans would be used by the entertainment industry to re-package their content with remastered versions or re-scanned original films like they have done with DVD, Blu-Ray and Streaming versions. Extended editions would also be an option… but the original copy would be free for all to enjoy after 20 years.
Why anyone is able to profit off of the original edition of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings for another hundred years is beyond me, it should just be free and available to everyone imo. The money has been made.
That’s my opinion anyway. Monopolies and income in perpetuity are horrible concepts generally only abused by the few at the detriment of the many. In the real world many just pirate content anyway. If it were up to rights’ holders NO copies even for personal use would be allowed. They would just have us pay per view even for copies we purchased.
wow, so dumb trying to sound intelligent.
“funnel wealth to few”. this is what happenning now.
the people striking won’t get rich from what they are asking for. they are asking for liveable income. they are only asking for a tiny portion from the collective profit of work that have their name in it. and they not only asking for money, they asking to be treated like a human being at their workplace.
architect are rich as fuck. plumber are very well paid.
“Intellectual Property is a construct enabling monopolies and generating billions of dollars off the trivial reproduction of work done by others. All this perpetual money making bullshit is just piggybacking off of something that never should have been.”. and wtf are you rambling here?
don’t talk shit when you never try working like them.
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book author get paid for writing their book, and plus royalty when the book are finish and sold to the public.
My argument wasn’t that they are more important. My observation was that the things writers, actors, and musicians produce is being sold over and over and over for other people’s profit.
Apparently my mistake was in thinking that the IT infrastructure created was purely infrastructure in the same vein as electrical, plumbing, or even physical buildings. I didn’t know that the IT systems created to provide streaming services was being sold to other streaming platforms without credit to the designers.
And before anyone thinks I am saying electricians, plumbers, carpenters and the like aren’t creative I am NOT saying that. A family member is a plumber and the stuff he has to dream up to get stuff to work is incredible.
Did you take your job at a rate of pay based on getting paid residuals in perpetuity?
This is like you taking a contract where they continue to pay you a licence fee for each server that they use your product on, then they move the product to a cloud system so they can get the output of 100 servers with only a single server licence.
Wait writers normally get royalties for their work? What the fuck that’s amazing, so Netflix is just in violation of a contract then? Why doesn’t the WGA just sue them?
If they have a contract to receive payment perpetually why are they striking instead of litigating?
Because the contract probably pays differently depending on the broadcast method and didn’t take streaming into account
I have the same stance. Just because I designed a product, I don’t get a percentage of each product sold.
Because if we did that for everyone who were responsible for it, it’d skyrocket the said products price.
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Honestly.
I don’t understand why people are so up in arms around artists and the entertainment industry. Flat payment is commonplace in most industries. These people agreed to the payment they were given.
You basically agree to it with a knife in your back because it is the only deal available and they’re using the money and power against your desire to be heard or seen.
Welcome to the world of minimum wage service jobs for something like 30% of the population.
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I don’t understand how streaming isn’t just considered syndication. It seems like a dictionary definition of what it was, even if it didn’t exist when syndication agreements were made.
It’s a rerun of a show on a separate channel/platform. And the writers/actors should get the agreed revenue for it the same as if it were on TMC, nick at night or Netflix b
Indeed. an impartial judge wouldn’t let studios split hairs over words like this but as long as they’re appointed by politicians, they will side with whoever has the deeper pockets, because that’s what’s required for a continuing bright career.
and no royalties? $3000, would be few, even for only one professional writer.
“It’s Free Money” ~ Studio Executives
If all content (all content) was paid for by tax dollars, it would not only be ad free, but there wouldn’t be huge companies standing in-between the artist and the consumer as far as getting the artists paid. And it wouldn’t cost that much. Like less than what you pay for having all streaming services simultaneously.
Lol. Lmao even. Have you never heard what happens to government funded research papers?
tell me you didn’t watch the video without telling me you didn’t watch the video
Government funded art has a tendency of being loyal to their patrons, i.e. the government, which stifles the very essence of the art itself. All content is not for every body, due to taste, and interest. You’re also talking about doing away with advertising, hahahahahahahaha.
You need to watch the film Cradle Will Rock if that’s what you think.
You should watch it anyway because it’s a great movie, but it’s also based on a true story about people getting government funding and using it to put on a socialist musical, which made the government freak out and shut the show down. That is what would stifle art- not artists being loyal, artists not being allowed to dissent.
Such a great movie. So many things to think about after watching.
Sadly whenever I tried to get people to see it, they took the government side. Spending my High School years in Utah was horribly stifling.
You are talking to yourself.
But imagine the controversy a government would receive broadcasting various kinds of content. People deride the BBC as a mouthpiece of whichever party is in power despite immense work making it as impartial as possible
I think having all art that can find an audience funded this way would help this issue more than hurt it.
And then we get into the weeds of how do we decide who gets grants? I’m a fairly enthusiastic watcher of Linus Tech Tips, and he discusses that the entertainment tax grants the Canadian Government gives out are so complex that only the largest companies (the ones who do not need the grants) can hire people to navigate the bureaucracy for the tax breaks. Is choosing artists going to be an America’s Got Talent competition? A random draw? What source do we get viewer/listener numbers from?
I would love to resume the federal government’s artist programs like under the New Deal, but the reality is that our culture is more niche and divided than ever. Rather than swing and jazz being unquestionably dominant for music in the days of yore, now we’d have to check and verify every SoundCloud rapper, YouTube artist, and pop-megastar.
Some of your questions are covered in the video I linked. Others are kind of indirectly answered.
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Some years ago the BBC itself ordered a study by Nottingham University which did show that the BBC consistently was pro-whatever-party-was-in-Government, so not being pro a specific party but switching from one of the parties of the power duopoly in Britain to the other as they alternated in Government (funnilly enough giving very little airtime to the smaller leftwing-ecologist party and tons of airtime to smaller far-right parties like UKIP).
However that’s about the News, not the rest.
Mind you the BBC also does in it’s contents invariably beautify the view about certain slices of British Society and British History but that’s the same as the 100% private content producers in the US also do, so it doesn’t seem to be an explicitly “Public TV” thing.
I’m unfortunately not very familiar with the BBC other than Top Gear and some of their fabulous documentaries. Thank you for the insight!
Well, I lived in the UK for over a decade, having immigrated there from Portugal via The Netherlands, and was quite shocked after having been there long enough to start paying attention to Politics and Society as a whole, that my image of it that was formed when I was a kid in Portugal in the 80s was very different from the reality I found on the ground in the late 00s and beyond.
There is a huge “keeping up with appearences” strain in (mainly English, worse the higher the social class) British Society that would be seen as hypocrisy in, for example a place like The Netherlands, and that has a huge impact on the BBC because it’s always controlled (both via seats in its Board and those chosen as Editors) by people who come from the english upper classes, so you end up with the kind of things that are important in “Opinion Forming” of the Public (i.e. the News, politically relevant documentaries and such) being carefully managed to produce the “right opinion” (“rightness” being defined by that slice of English society that dominate the BBC’s Board and Editors, so for example they’re unabashedly pro-Monarchy).
Also the UK has Censorship, in the form of what’s called a D-Notice, where the Government can stop the publishing of certain stories if deemed “against the national interest”, plus things like Libel Legislation are extremelly broad and seem designed to stop whistleblowing, to the point that for example some years ago an Ukranian Oligarch sued in the UK an Ukranian newssite which had denounced actions of his in Ukraine, and the case was accepted by the British courts because “the website could be accessed from Britain”.
The result is that the creative and apolitical programs from the BBC are often top-notch whilst the rest is Propaganda, elegantly done and not at all in-your-face (mainly through half-throughts, false dichotomies, uneven selection of speakers for different sides and selective picking of things to report) but still done to “make opinion” not merelly “inform”.
Mind you, this is not just the BBC, though it does manage to be worse in this than the other TV channels in the UK.
Unsurprisingly the British Press is the Press least trusted by the locals in Europe.
Really interesting information! It’s a shame that they’re not as trusted as I thought in Europe, I revere their short-wave long range news broadcast worldwide. It’s an absolute tragedy Associated Press doesn’t do the same
Jesus Christ, if my tax dollars were going to the absolute garbage content that’s being currently produced I would personally run for office to repeal that legislation.
And if the quality is so low when billions are on the line, I am terrified of what we would get when it’s government funded. Even now, you don’t need to look far to see how poorly our taxes are spent. Look into how construction companies take advantage of government contacts.
Then why aren’t you running?
Sounds like you oppose PBS? no? Or the taxes the FCC pays to media corps that come out of your paycheck?
When can I expect you to announce you candidacy?
Go run, big boy. See how many people agree with your ideology. I dare ya.
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they are not shill or bootlicker. they’re not backing up anybody but themselves. “if i was paid one time for my job why would they get more” the same mentality with “homeless people should just get a job” and “why would i pay for others Healthcare”. typical selfish american.
No, it’s just ridiculous that these well-off Hollywood writers are demanding special treatment. Practically every other profession works on a salaried basis, in practically every corner of the world.
They aren’t demanding that their colleagues who work behind the scenes like the set crews, editors and support staff get residuals.
No, their motive is entirely selfish and they come off extremely entitled when they place themselves above the rest of the people who are responsible for creating a product.
Well duh, the lower your incomr is compared to others the less of life’s pleasures their able to afford. If everyone else starts doing better then costs increase as demand rises and now I can’t afford shit.
So I’ve got mixed feelings on this. First off I’ll start by saying the execs at Netflix, like execs in general, are vastly overpaid, and there’s definitely room to cut from there to spend elsewhere. The thing I have trouble with is reconciling the streaming model of paying a fixed $XX a month for unlimited watching with paying out residuals. Residuals easily work out when you’ve got sales of items like tickets or DVDs/blu-rays or broadcast licensing to play at specific times where you can split up the fractions and work out who gets what ahead of time. With streaming, however, you can watch an unlimited amount. So does that mean they take the total time watched of all shows/movies and divide the $XX a month among those based on licensing agreements? How do you determine what gets a bigger cut?
It’s kinda like how moviepass failed when they let you watch unlimited movies at the theater. In that case they were covering the cost of individual tickets and also physical theaters are much more expensive to run, but still there are issues with the “all you can watch” model. Another major issue is that there is so much content out there. Heck, most entertainment I get these days is from “free” youtube videos. You’re going to get a lot less in residuals when you’re competing with so many other sources of content. Execs and other higher-ups always got a disproportionately large amount of the pie, but on top of that, the pie is distributed among many more sources of entertainment.
I can’t think of a more fair model than "sum up what the user watched, divide that across what they watched, distribute according to whatever agreements they have with those rights holders. At least then Netflix gets out of the business of being the bad guy.
“Hey if you don’t think you’re getting your cut, take that up with the network that sold us your show for pennies”
Why make the math so hard?
If the company is selling/lending their content to another, just give people a fixed % of the deal, agreed beforehand, basically like ownership shares paying dividends.
If it’s first party, set an engagement metric or two (minutes watched or whatever) that trigger a bonus payment.
Seeing how writing absolutely nosedived after 2-3 seasons, I find it hard to sympathize with them for ruining one of my favorite shows.
Might not have ruined it if they were paid properly.
Are they complaining about not getting a fair salary while they were working on the show?
And generally the pay doesn’t correlate with quality in hollywood. I’m really confused about what gave you the idea that it does.
What a weird measure of time for a show. It’s not a song. Why not use something more suitable, like views?
Edit: it’s 50 million hours. If each episode is about an hour long, then that’s about 50 million views. If there are 10 episodes per season, then that’s 5 million viewers per season.
“suitable” ha
It’s semantics, but the equivalent for a song would be plays. I think the problem with using views or plays for a metric like this is that they don’t account for people that take in the entire piece of media. It considers people that accidentally click an episode and then close it after some seconds, and people who watch an episode from start to finish, to be the same. One of those people are going to see a lot more ads than the other, thus making the company more money. Just my hypothesis tho.
in case you weren’t paying attention, musicians get paid shit too
I wasn’t implying they get paid better. The comparison to views vs plays was done to address the “It’s not a song” comment. How did you get that implication from my message?
As someone who works in the film and TV industry, let me go ahead and say whatever you do in America, whatever industry: you’re undervalued, underpaid, and your wealthy executives are getting fat on your hard work while you starve.
As someone in America I’m not undervalued, underpaid, or starving. Maybe you should stick to speaking for your own industry.
“Um actually 🤓 ☝️”
Have some sense to not post something like this when you are aware of the plight of the average worker in America even if you are in the minority as a tech worker
(I’m also a tech worker)
Honestly even tech workers are not paid enough relative to executives. Shit is crazy out here.
And then lawyers be making like $1mil a year.
Keep licking that boot.
I don’t have to, I can afford my own
Found the executive
🤭 it’s funny because in my history of working in engineering, the guy (rarely gal) with this attitude is consistently the least effective or useful. I presume the same applies here, based on a number of factors you’ve politely lain before us all.
The attitude of “fuck them, I got mine” is a good way to get people to hate you. I hope you’re okay with that.
Engineer here - we’re undervalued too. We just happen to have more clout in the workplace at the moment, and so more individual bargaining power. That can change on a dime, though.
If that changes I’ll figure out the new way. Wouldn’t be the first time, don’t figure it’s gonna be the last.
What do you mean by the new way?
It’s also just relative scaling. A Starbucks barista might make $40k/year while its CEO Laxman Narasimhan makes $15M/year. Meanwhile, a Google engineer might make $400k/year, but its CEO Sundar Pichai makes $225M/year. So while an engineer will earn way more than a barista, as a fraction of CEO pay, engineers often actually make less. Both are symptoms of worker exploitation. It just so happens that technology companies tend to make a lot more money than coffee companies.
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If your CEO has money, you’re probably undervalued and underpaid. It’s how the incentive structure works.
Found the CEO…
Bootlicker confirmed
“I’m not struggling so therefore no one else is struggling”
Are you for fucking real?
That’s exactly the myopic thinking that put us in this situation, so you shouldn’t be surprised to find this person.
The thing is, he doesnt necessarily earn a decent wage…thats the real kicker.
Read the first comment though… it suggested that literally everyone is struggling
It’s fucking hyperbole. Obviously not literally everyone is underpaid (such as but not limited to CEOs). Like, if ya make a comment like what I responded to it comes off as a snarky and you will get shit on for it.
Ok but you attacked someone for saying that they personally aren’t suffering, even though they weren’t suggesting they speak for everyone either… unlike the other comment
I only said people are starving because some are, and it’s avoidable. But everyone in America is grossly underpaid compared to executive pay and corporate wealth.
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I don’t really have issues there, either. I actually get in hot water if I don’t take at least 6 weeks of PTO a year, and the maximum is unlimited so long as my work gets done.
Yeah right. Everything you’ve been saying has been absolute bullshit, elscallr.
Hahaha, 😅 uhh you most certainly are, buddy! Hate to burst your bubble and bring you back down to reality… I know you hate it when we take the binkiboot out of your mouth to let your breath for a second, but you got to give it up eventually… you’re too old for that now…
And here we have the typical “Fuck you, I got mine” attitude. How lovely.
You spelled capitalism wrong. Social market economy makes it a bit better - but yeah earnings through work and capital gains are extremely off balance right now.
Assuming the current all you can watch flat fee model is unsustainable, how do you think a model like videogame (Steam, Epic, etc…) would be perceived? Lower monthly sub. Originals are included. Wanna watch something else? You can watch 2 episodes to start. If you wanna continue buy the season. Sort of like videogames where there are demos.
Netflix got 3 billion from one show, plenty sustainable to me.
Yes, I agree with you. I’m saying assuming. I don’t think they’ll go… You know what? You’re right… We’re gonna start paying more. Something will have to give. I’m saying is there a diff business model?
You know Netflix doesn’t work that way right?
enlighten me
3 billion minutes watched does not equal 3 billion dollars paid to Netflix.
You said they got 3 billion as if they got 3 billion dollars. In reality Netflix paid for the rights to distribute a show and paid for the infrasture to stream 3 billion minutes of it in hopes that people keep renewing their subscription. It definitely made them a lot of money, but not 3 billion.
If those 3 billion minutes were watched non-stop 24/7 for the paying subscribers it would make at least $486,111.11 for Netflix assuming the subscribers paid for the cheapest subscription at ~$7. That’s still a lot of money, but they also pay for their own upkeep, servers and much more.
I know most people don’t have the cheapest subscription, and also that they don’t watch 24/7. But it puts into perspective that Netflix doesn’t earn that much on one series.
To add: they also make their own shows and productions and they pay to put shows up on their service that are not their own productions. I don’t know what a show like suits will cost to be put on Netflix, since they don’t produce the show, but I’d imagine that’s not cheap. And I guess the writers get a percentage of the money earned on the selling of those rights (depending on the contract they have with the original studio)
And the paying of the writers is in the hands of the studio selling the rights, not Netflix.
3,000,000,000 * $15 (assumed Netflix plan/user) = $45,000,000,000
Damn! Just for one show?!
Warning: unpopular opinion here.
From the article:
That means that despite the show being a resurgent hit, there were no big secondary payouts.
So, I am an engineer/scientist. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by billions of people. Most likely you, the reader of this comment are using it right now, because some of the products I worked on are telecom products, that are widely used to transfer information.
The amount of secondary payouts I receive is EXACTLY ZERO.
My honest question is, why those writers should be any different? They should be paid when they make their products, according to the contract they signed. But why many think they entitled to something more?
And no, I do not think that argument “but it is difficult work, it is not constant” works here. There are lots of difficult, non-constant, seasonal, whatever jobs there that pay even less.
Bootlicker spotted…
Don’t ask why they should be getting pay pay outs… Ask why you aren’t!
You should also be paid more, you have been instrumental in creating billions in wealth for people who cannot do what you can do, you should get more.
I don’t have an answer but I don’t necessarily agree either. However I updooted because it’s interesting discussion and you were nice about it.
You , I like your positive attitude
I think you’re missing a detail here, which is that before streaming was a thing writers would make significant amounts of their money by getting a show syndicated on a network, that was the whole deal. Streaming is being treated differently, effectively resulting in then receiving a very large pay cut because even if they make a successful show the payout doesn’t come.
And it’s true they could structure things so that they don’t receive a secondary payout, but their base salary was negotiated with that later payout in mind. You and I don’t receive secondary payouts for our work, but our salary is also adjusted to recognize that.
My honest question is, why those writers should be any different?
So I am also an engineer. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by millions of people. (I’m being a bit cheeky here by copying you, but this is true of me too.)
The compensation packages of engineers are wildly different than that of writers because our jobs are steady.
The compensation structure of writers is designed to carry them between shows when they are not making any money. They also need excess cash to fund retirement savings, insurance, and other benefits because they are unemployed for long and unpredictable stretches.
The residuals system was designed to address this very specific structure of the writing profession. As engineers, we don’t have these wildly unsteady employment schedules, so the residuals system is not warranted in our profession.
Your experience as an engineer/scientist is valid, but you have to understand how wildly different writing is as a career path, and how compensation packages are different out of necessity.
And no, I do not think that argument “but it is difficult work, it is not constant” works here. There are lots of difficult, non-constant, seasonal, whatever jobs there that pay even less.
Sure, industries like retail, tourism, and food service have similar weaknesses, but those industries are unskilled. Writing is highly skilled labor. WGA members are responsible for writing the most valuable media on the planet, American film and television.
The distinction between writing and these other industries can be measured in dollars.
Sure, industries like retail, tourism, and food service have similar weaknesses, but those industries are unskilled.
I understand what you are trying to say, but no they really aren’t. They require a very different skill set than being an engineer or a doctor, but I guarantee that you do not have the skills that I do with knives, playing with fire, and making knives. I know this because an engineer doesn’t have the time to spend 20 years working as a cook/chef, and 2 as an apprentice blacksmith. That being said, I’m useless if you hand me math above pre-calculus. I can remember algebra and pre-calc, but I don’t remember calculus any more.
There’s no job that is “easy.” In all actuality the lower the pay, the harder the job is to do. There are very few exceptions to this rule.
I took hard jobs because I’m a pyromaniac and so I made that work for me. Cooking and blacksmithing are just playing with fire.
Smithing is definitely skilled labor. It’s the classic example of an artisan.
But work in most of the food service industry (front and back) is unskilled. And by “most” I mean things like fast food, cafeterias, diners, chain restaurants etc. In all of these cases, you can hire Joe Shmoe off the street to wait tables.
Fine dining is a special case. Obviously you need significant skill/training to be the chef at a Michelin star restaurant, for example.
And I’m not saying that unskilled labor is easy. It’s not. I spent a decade in food service as an unskilled laborer (mostly fast food and cafeterias). It’s exhausting and difficult. And I’m not saying that unskilled labor is undeserving of a living wage. What I am saying is that the labor pool for unskilled work is much much larger, so it’s near impossible for that kind of worker to demand residuals or equity in the same way as an engineer or screen writer.
They could if they unionized more probably.
Another counter argument:
Residuals are analogous to equity in the tech industry.
You almost certainly received part of your compensation as stock or stock options. You can hold onto your shares and receive dividends long after you have left the company you contributed to.
Residuals are like equity in a movie or film, rather than a company.
Ooh boy you’re gonna get the “anyone rich is evil give me free stuff because you have more” mob all animated.
But you’re right. They have a contracted rate to do a job (good or bad, fair or not). It makes for a flashy headline to say “look what the downstream revenue was”.
Instead of making up a scenario in your head and then getting riled up over it, why don’t you read the level headed and educated responses that have been written?
Only 14% of SAG members made enough money this year to get health insurance. Similar is true for the WGA. The low income economy that industry is fueled by only ever worked because of the residual system.
Okay you weren’t picked for any shows the past three months but that’s okay because your residuals cover rent and health insurance.
Not anymore, because the streamers refuse to pay residuals.
You couldn’t make a less informed comment about this affair if you tried, really. There was an existing system, companies took advantage of a loophole in that system to profit more and give execs massive pay days whilst giving the people who did all the work nothing, and now the people who did all the work are refusing to work until they get paid again.
I don’t know what people like you are hoping to achieve here other than demonstrate a profound level of dumbassary.
So, I am an engineer/scientist. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by billions of people. Most likely you, the reader of this comment are using it right now, because some of the products I worked on are telecom products, that are widely used to transfer information.
You’re an employee, actors are (generally) independent contractors so the comparison breaks down. Most people who don’t understand the situation have been making this comparison.
The closer analogy for you would be if you, as an independent engineer, created a library that Oracle licensed instead of bought. Something they are bundling into their latest database server.
Should you, as a developer, take less per unit because Oracle starts selling through a new channel? Say the Windows app store instead of through their website directly?
I mean, it’s ok if you feel like that’s ok but I don’t think most people would agree with you when they really understand what’s going on.
The unions gave the studios a sweetheart deal in the infancy of streaming so that it wouldn’t smother in the crib. Now that it’s profitable, don’t the artists and writers deserve the same level of compensation for streaming as they get through other channels? Not more, just the same.
As the other poster stated, you get what you negotiate for. If you don’t negotiate for those secondary payments then you don’t get them. It’s right to argue when it’s “right or wrong” for those payments but you can argue whether it’s fair.
The corporations take on the risk but when it pays the payout isn’t fairly distributed. It unfairly goes to the top players who didn’t take any risk on because they are seperate from the corporation.
Also just because you don’t get any doesn’t mean nobody else should. You can try and negotiate that with your employer if you want. If you keep that mentality then you’re only bringing everyone else down to your level. We should be elevating each other. That mentality is just jealousy and it will keep you where you are.
Sure, but when the risks the capital takes are so low & long-term as in showbusiness (everything got consolidated af), and the payouts so huge compared to cost (especially excluding like top 5 most payed ppl on the project) … you might think that the negotiations weren’t made fairly on equal grounds.
Otherwise, if there were meaningful risks, the corps would have no problem sharing (=lowering) that risk at least with immediate stakeholders/workers. I bet most writers would take minimal or no pay to get in on the profits (that can last decades). Most writers work on several projects a year so so if business risks would be actually important, lowering them via lower initial costs for shared uncertain future profits would be a win-win scenario.
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Who is getting money from your work? Do they deserve it? More than you?
Having the good fortune to have money earlier shouldn’t entitle someone to more money later. Investors are important, but shouldn’t be allowed to have all of the benefit.
It’s because of people like you that scientists get treated like crap. You also deserve to get paid for the things you create.
I’m an engineer too.
You’re an idiot, we should get paid more, the money goes to the moron marketing druids, not the ones who actually make/patent things like us.
You don’t seem smart enough to be a very good engineer, but then again you typed this almost certainly using tech I worked on.
Engineers are absolutely the shittest negotiators. They bring so much fucking value and are happy to get a mug and a pat on the back for inventing something that makes a company millions. Compare that to sales where often the top performer can make close to the CEOs pay.
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I am not that guy, but this is not how science work. Science and engineering are the product, and scientists and engineers do it as writers do it…
They are absolutely comparable.
Actors would be a stretched comparison, but writers… It’s a pretty good one
I am not that guy, but this is not how science work. Science and engineering are the product, and scientists and engineers do it as writers do it…
They are absolutely comparable
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A lot of people kwows how to write. Less people know how to use autocad.
As said it looks like you don’t have a clear idea how science and engineering work.
“Someone else’s idea” is the idea of scientists and engineers. They are the people who have the ideas, design products and implement ideas. Products are created by them. There is no suit who come up with ideas, and you cannot replace scientists and engineers with suits. Considering them as easily replaceable is the way companies fail. This is the reason their contracts come with more perks and benefits than other positions. You could compare them to writers, directors and crew members in a movie. What science and tech are missing are actors. The 2 guys you mentioned are more comparable to actors than writers.
That said, scientist and engineers deserve a piece of long term profits of the products they contributed creating, similarly as writers. Unfortunately they don’t have strong unions as writers… But they should
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Like others have said, this is the wrong mentality. Instead of asking “why should they get it when I don’t?”, You should simply be asking “why don’t I get it?”
Turning us against each other is how the ruling elite stay in power. 💪
This is the right answer! I agree that this is the point
What’s he’s saying is those ruling class shouldn’t be getting it either because it’s a silly concept lol.
Road crews don’t get paid from tolls. Power plants don’t get paid beaucoup. Etc. Etc.
The root issue is the company profiting endlessly or simply not paying appropriate wages. IP law absolutely needs to change.
Melancholy Elephants is a great Hugo Award winning short story about this train of thought.
I worked on products that many Lemmy users are using to read and post. I don’t expect residuals because that’s not how my industry was built / ever worked.
Writers are in an industry that previously paid them every time their work made money. That’s the difference.
Writers don’t get paid engineer salaries.
Do you get stock RSU, Stock options, or other in incentive for general success? For writers residuals are more directly tied to their work. And there’s a bit of a difference in terms of residuals being understood as part of the upfront contract risk/reward.
Well what jobs are you thinking about?
- farmhand fits your description, but they pay less because they don’t need skilled workers, anybody with a working body can do it. Can’t just drag in a random guy to do your writing, acting, or VFX.
“unskilled labour” is a myth.
How so?
Bcs taking someone’s work & capitalize on it just because the original worker didn’t have the means to do so … some people might see as immoral in a lot of cases.
One of the cornerstones of capitalism tho.
Also note the huge difference scales, bcs it matters a lot: if you sell a peace of tech, or business, or property at fair price (like dcf or whatever), then you already got compensated justly or as close to that as possible with the information available at the time. But if you were forced to sell at an arbitrary fixed rate bcs the buyer forced you into it from their position of power over you (and made a huge profit in a short amount of time from that) … you might feel different about the situation.
Like, even your, if you would be able to get secondly payouts, would you not collect them?
Also, if the negotiations & payout would be fair, the strike would not make financial sense for any party, or have an effect on the business.
You get what you demand, and what you bargain for, which is why they are now on strike. You valued your knowledge, experience, and expertise in telcom, in different ways, and less over the long term, than workers in the entertainment industry, who, for the majority of the entertainment industry’s existence, have been taken advantage of by the producers of that entertainment. You decided to work for a salary and benefits, and got yours upfront, their industry works a different way as a result of historically predatory entertainment industry practices.
Crab in a bucket mentality.
“I don’t receive residuals, so why should these writers? The executives are entitled to all the profit.”
If all us engineers got paid every time our code was used, the Internet as it exists would be absurdly expensive. Really, it couldn’t exist. Thank god engineers don’t have the same “I need to be paid every time something I created is used by anybody” mentality. You’re building on the work of millions of people before you, you owe it to others to contribute (and make a living in the process).
Of course, the industries are different in important ways. But you should be able to explain the differences, not just wave them away with “ur just jelly lol”
IMHO, copyright and IP law is ridiculously protective. People should get a few years to benefit from their creations, then they should be public domain. This lifetime-plus-70-years bullshit is stupid. Companies are exploiting those stupid laws to milk us on every platform for decades with each media artifact, and artists and writers just want to get a cut of the action. IMHO, it’s the wrong fight, and I can’t really support them in it: “give writers a share of the rent you milk from us” is not a cause I wanna get behind.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But the sales and marketing morons deserve to be paid for everything, of course!
No, they shouldn’t be profiting from rent on IP any more than anybody else does. The government should make some major changes to intellectual property law to stop that.
Anyway…do sales & marketing people get paid an unreasonable amount? Are they rolling in cash while writers suffer? Seems to me that most the marketing people I’ve met in my life were just getting along like everybody else. They don’t seem like the right people to be angry at.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Not very smart for an engineer
You don’t have to be smart to be an engineer. Just resourceful.
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.
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.
I’m an engineer that makes those drawings and I can’t dispute this at all.
