from Hacker News

CD Projekt Red devs unionise after its third round of layoffs in three months

by ciceryadam on 10/8/23, 11:14 AM with 30 comments

• by ricardobeat on 10/8/23, 12:34 PM

  One would expect them to be drowning in cash after the success of The Witcher, and Cyberpunk 2077, 80M+ copies sold. That’s billions of dollars in revenue.

  Even a headcount of 1000 at SV tech salary levels (which Poland definitely does not have) would barely make a dent. Why cut costs now?

• by omgwtfusb on 10/8/23, 12:32 PM

  Interesting, seems like developers unionizing is getting popular in Europe. Is there any union for general software devs in Germany? I know workers council (Betriebsrat) is popular but that's very company-dependent.

• by Detrytus on 10/8/23, 5:27 PM

  Ok, so it is a clear sign that CD Projekt is going under. You cannot have a labor union and still be a successful company. Unions are cancer.

  More to the point: IT job market in Poland is based on freelance (B2B) contracts. The fact that CD Projekt staff can unionize proves that they were mostly employed on Contract of Employment. Which means that all the best stuff have already left CD Projekt long time ago, because no self-respecting programmer would work on Contract of Employment when they can make twice the money as a freelancer.