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‘This is such a weird industry’: Marvel Rivals lays off NA-based team amid explosive success (www.polygon.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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NetEase Games has reportedly laid off the entire Seattle-based studio working on the game.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Looking at NetEase on LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter...

Very high probability these people were all contractors.

NetEase uses a number of contracting agencies to hire for the actual game development roles, whereas only senior/business management positions are actually directly posted under/by NetEase.

Its incredibly shitty, but this is what a whole lot of the tech industry has been for a long time.

People will very often say 'oh I worked for so and so' and not mention that they're actually a contractor.

Hell, I did 3 V dash (9 month contract) gigs for MSFT a decade ago, so I guess I might as well put 'Former Microsoft DB Admin' in my bio, right?

If they were contractors, its very, very disingenuous of their team lead, who is likely an actual, proper employee of NetEase, to just entirely not mention that his latest batch of contractors got let go, just like the last ones, just like the next ones will be.

There is no job security for roughly 70% to 90% of American tech workers, because roughly that amount are contractors, and its very taboo and can get you blacklisted if you are vocal about how bullshit this is.

My first contract job at MSFT, my actually cool, actually MSFT employee boss just showed me the invoice for me vs what my contracting company was paying me.

Double. MSFT was paying the contracting company double, per hour, what they were paying me.

Corpos will do everything they can to keep shuffling people around, because if they don't, they're usually legally obligated to make you a full, real employee after some amount of time, give you better benefits, healthcare, stock options/401k, harder to fire, etc.