Get Paid when you Work

There will always be people with chutzpah, and some who will have so much that they expect you to work for them for free.  Not only do people need to stop agreeing to do this, but they also need to name and shame the people and companies who dare to even ask for it.

There is no reason anyone should work for free, and it doesn't matter whether the one asking is just a dinky start-up trying to get a game idea off the ground, or a huge multinational with millions in profits every year.  They'll all ask, and the answer should always be no.

I mostly see the complaints about this coming out of fields like graphic design and marketing, but this is not limited to creative fields (though I think they see the worst of it).  Sadly, in most fields now there are people who will ask you to work on spec, for the "exposure", for the "great experience" you'll be getting, or for equity (if their idea ever makes money).  Don't do it.

On one side of it, people don't value what they don't pay for and if you work for free, they won't value you, either.  On the other side: you often get exactly what you've paid for.  I have some personal experience on both sides of this.

A while ago I worked for a small company whose management decided to have the marketing plan drawn up (for free) by a group of students who were doing "real world" marketing plans for their MBA marketing project.  The final plan was late, incomplete, disjoint, and  inaccurate.  It completely ignored the briefing materials we'd put together for them.  It was a prime example of a school-based group project.  It was cover-to-cover trite phrases and worn-out jargon.  It was -- make no mistake -- utter garbage, and they should have received a failing grade for it (but I doubt that they did).  We'd really have been better off asking an eight year-old to focus our marketing efforts because at least they may have come up with something novel we hadn't yet thought of ourselves.  That eight year-old might also have been considerably more forthright and left out all the padding and bullshit, which would have been pretty refreshing by that stage of the game.

(Later, the same manager also asked a graphic designer to work on spec; the designer sent work that I could only perceive to be a giant "eat shit" message considering the level of the other work in their portfolio.  Seriously: the image was of a man covered in brown smears surfacing out of a toilet.  The manager remained clueless.)

And I've also worked, essentially, for free.  Twice I've been involved with very large MMOs that had programs by which regular users could assist other players.  We were given rudimentary training; a toon with extra powers to reset quests, load a few objects, and shift players who were stuck in the scenery; and access to the CSM system the players used to file help tickets.  We were to spend a few hours every day deciphering the kinds of notes frustrated players write when they think no one will ever read them, then trying to assist them (or trying to methodically reproduce the bug and write a report for the devs).

In exchange, we were "given" the prestige of being in the program which, technically, we weren't actually allowed to tell anyone about. (No joke: for one of the programs I was asked to sign an NDA that specified I could not even tell my spouse that I was in the program.  The NDA was so ridiculous that I was also prohibited from keeping a copy of it for myself.  Definitely sounds legit!)  For a mere 5 to 15 hours a week of customer support (depending on your "rank" in the program), we were "given" subscription-free access to the game, and free expansions when they came out.  So, for 20 to 60 hours a month, we were compensated with something that would otherwise have cost us $19.99 a month, and, about once a year, a bonus equivalent to about $40.

Now one of those programs gave me lifetime, subscription-free access to the game after I spent a year in it, and I still have that (but I have also not used since leaving the program).  The other has gone "freemium" in the mean time so basic play is always free in it now, anyway.

The carrot that was always dangling here was an actual job with these companies, doing something you loved doing.  There was always the implication that if you did a great job, there was the possibility that you'd eventually be hired, when they had the budget to do that.  The truth is that they always had the budget to do it, but they had no plan to ever hire for positions they could get filled for free by dumb-asses like me.  That horrid piece of patriarchal advice about the cow and the free milk?  Turns out it's not so true with dating, but totally true with jobs. If that company can get you free, why the hell would they go to the expense of hiring you?  You've already told them, in no uncertain terms, that what you do isn't worth a paycheque.

And it can be hard to say no.  Last term in school, another student in my class emailed the professor asking for help with their project and the professor told them that I knew how to do it, so they should email me.  I said no -- because I'm not being paid to instruct the class.  Yes, I felt bad about it and I think he genuinely needed some help, but I wasn't being paid to instruct the damned class, and I had enough on my plate as it was.  The help I gave him was "make her tell you what she expects from you on this -- that's her job."

It happens everywhere.  I'm active in gaming spaces where requests to provide tech support are rampant.  This is support that, frankly, the game maker should be providing but doesn't -- the current state of affairs is that, instead of support, game publishers set up a "community" that's supposed to help each other because we all paid our real money for the same broken game and that makes us all comrades-in-arms or something.  These companies would do better to pay a few sensible people to answer actual questions from actual users with actually useful information and advice, but meh -- crowdsourcing is so much cheaper!

And hell, I'm guilty here too.  After I troubleshoot a problem, I write down how I fixed it and make the solution available to others, for free.  But of course, the means that two or three times a week (no kidding) I get requests for real-time voice chat support to help someone troubleshoot a game or hardware problem.  They often seem angry, upset, or baffled when I ask how much they're paying.  I am supposed to schedule a block of time with a stranger to hold their hand through troubleshooting a technical issue, for what?  Love of the game?  No, sorry, I'll be over here playing the game, instead.

No matter what it is:  If it's worth getting someone else to do it -- either because you can't or because you don't want to -- then it's worth paying them to do it.