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I& #39;ve been hearing a lot of push from game industry professionals hoping that permanent WFH will be an option in a post-COVID world. And while I& #39;m a *huge* proponent of distributed work and remote-friendly workplaces, there& #39;s something that terrifies me personally. Career growth.
The game industry already has a *major* problem with compensating people fairly and with appropriately offering timely promotions in exchange for good work. These things are all going to be magnified if wide-scale WFH becomes a thing in games.
Countless studies have been done showing that remote workers are 10-20% more productive and/or work longer hours than in-house employees, yet they& #39;re promoted up to 50% less than their in-house counterparts. And this is at *very* remote-friendly places.
The AAA game industry, at best, is going to become "begrudgingly remote". Many parts of development are still easier/better done onsite, face-to-face, particularly those with high levels of brainstorming and gigantic asset downloads.
The people who are onsite at hybrid companies are front and center. They& #39;ll likely be assigned the better projects. They& #39;ll be first for promotions. Management, despite what they say, love to see people& #39;s butts in seats as an indicator of their engagement.
I hope that if the game industry becomes more accepting of remote work, that they& #39;ll also employ rigorous policy change in order to properly set up remote employees for an even playing field and success. I& #39;m skeptical.
But since we already have problems with equal pay & promotions between genders in a non-remote world, these issues will only be magnified. Especially when women are more likely to seek out remote roles due to bearing a heavier childcare load in most families.
For those who see "I can move wherever I want and keep my California salary" as a major upside, I just want to encourage caution because it might be at the expense of your own career growth. I& #39;ve been the remote exception at a fully-onsite company and it sucked, to be frank.
It& #39;s demoralizing to be passed over in conversations because you& #39;re not onsite. It& #39;s hard to watch your career stagnate while others who are onsite fly past you or are offered better perks & affordances. Make sure you push for policy change and not just remote-capability.
Game studios have a chance to do this right. There& #39;s major diversity and happiness upsides to being remote-flexible when systems are setup to not just support it but allow distributed employees to flourish.
