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I'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'm a *huge* proponent of distributed work and remote-friendly workplaces, there'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'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'll likely be assigned the better projects. They'll be first for promotions. Management, despite what they say, love to see people'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'll also employ rigorous policy change in order to properly set up remote employees for an even playing field and success. I'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've been the remote exception at a fully-onsite company and it sucked, to be frank.
It's demoralizing to be passed over in conversations because you're not onsite. It'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'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.
