theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Are there no employee protection laws in the US? What sort of contract do they have which would make that legal?
Salaried IT professionals and software developers in the US commonly put in long hours during certain phases of their product lifecycle or business plan. They are also extremely well compensated, overall.
At Intuit, we'd do this every year, to get the new version of Turbotax out the door in time for tax season. And we had pay and benefits packages that made it worthwhile.
Triple-A videogame companies do it on a three year cycle. The first year is all beer bashes and office parties. The second year, everyone buckles down and works on creating all the assets. The third year is a death march to get the finished product out the door on schedule.
Yes, it sucks. Yes, people get ground down and burn out. Yes, even getting paid a salary that would boggle an Egyptian Pharaoh or a Chinese Emperor, a software developer living in San Francisco still lives like a serf*. No, Elon Musk didn't make this happen. This has been a part of Silicon Valley culture for decades. For a lot of the people being laid off, Musk is probably doing them a favor. They'll take their generous severance package and their class action payout, and make an informed decision about whether they want to keep chasing that Silicon Valley lifestyle, or take this opportunity to step back from all that and find a job that pays well and has less stress.
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