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Relevant to this discussion:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/27/warhammer-maker-games-workshop-hands-staff-5000-bonus-after-lockdown-sales-surge

beast_gts wrote:
TheGoodGerman just started this thread - GW employee bonus. Key point:

Warhammer retailer Games Workshop is handing its shop workers, model makers, designers and support staff a £5,000 bonus after sales and profits surged during the pandemic.

The Nottingham-based company behind the popular fantasygame and Lord of the Rings figurines said its 2,600 ordinary workers would split a £10.6m special bonus on top of a £2.6m profit share.

Senior managers will share an extra £1.1m bonus pot, up from £300,000 the year before, after sales rose by just over a third to £361m and pretax profits soared almost 70% to £151m.

The company has also cancelled business rates relief and other pandemic financial support from the government.

Which is obviously a conspiration from GW to shut the terrible testimonies from James and Sophie. Open your eyes ! Hate GW !

The thing is that the bonus was a good thing to do but at the same time isn't something anyone should be basing their opinions on applying for GW jobs on, much like getting 50% of GW products sounds cool but it isn't if you're only getting 20k a year and can't actually use that discount in a meaningful way.

MaxT wrote:
Relevant to this discussion:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/27/warhammer-maker-games-workshop-hands-staff-5000-bonus-after-lockdown-sales-surge

They must have read our thread!

Good on GW, that's a bit more like how a good employer should behave

ITT- 20k a year is apparently peanuts.

I'm in the wrong fething job...

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- 20k a year is apparently peanuts.

I'm in the wrong fething job...

20k GBP is a lot of money in my country but I guess in UK, and as a pay for a game designer that brought so much sales to GW with his games, it is not that much.

 Shadow Walker wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- 20k a year is apparently peanuts.

I'm in the wrong fething job...

20k GBP is a lot of money in my country but I guess in UK, and as a pay for a game designer that brought so much sales to GW with his games, it is not that much.

Here in the Northeast US, thats about what McDonald's and other entry level jobs are paid, when converted to hourly.

Not to offend the game designer in question, but I suspect far more copies were sold on the strength of its miniatures than on people excited to play the game. It's not like those novels where the author's name is on the front cover, and in a bigger font than the title.

I have voted with my wallet in the past, Konami being top of that list and I still refuse to buy anything from them since Metal Gear 5...

If we hadn't have had today's news then GW would have been added to that list...

20k less tax, less household shopping for 3, less running a car, less utilities.... it soon whittles down. Before you consider raising a child, which seems to be the case here...

A quick look at a mortgage calculator site seems to recommend a 48K deposit and a salary of £68k plus for a £240k property (average house price in Nottingham). Clearly, GW games designers are in the lap of luxury.

 Nurglitch wrote:

Lammia wrote:
What is our plan as consumers to make GW value their writers enough to pay them a quality wage? (And get quality rules written)

I'm sure GW consumers would be willing to pay more for the product if it meant that the people producing it could lead comfortable, middle-class lives.

I mean, GW consumers are willing to pay more to ensure executives get another boat.

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- 20k a year is apparently peanuts.

I'm in the wrong @#$%ing job...

Hey I don't know what your job is, or where you live, or what your situation is but...

Yes.

Yes you are.

GBP20k~US$30k, or $15/hour. I made more than that as a temp twenty years ago.

Ninja'd on the Bonus article in the Gruaniad - this is a good thing! More of this, GW!

 Shadow Walker wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- 20k a year is apparently peanuts.

I'm in the wrong fething job...

20k GBP is a lot of money in my country but I guess in UK, and as a pay for a game designer that brought so much sales to GW with his games, it is not that much.

It's not dissimilar to the average Tesco (UK supermarket) cashier pay - average is apparently £9 per hour, and if you assume an average 40 hour week that works out to £18,720 per annum. I'd say he could do way better!

 Pacific wrote:

MaxT wrote:
Relevant to this discussion:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/27/warhammer-maker-games-workshop-hands-staff-5000-bonus-after-lockdown-sales-surge

They must have read our thread!

Good on GW, that's a bit more like how a good employer should behave

20k a year +6k bonus because of sykrocket sales = 26k a year with the mean wage is 30k a year

so you need a Covid19 year worth of sales to get a 1000 GBP Bonus on top of your just above minimum wage, how generous

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Do GW still offer large scale staff discounts on product?

I understand they fire folks who resell stuff on ebay, if that's your question.

Not really - For some it would be a incentive and part of the package - especially if you are likely to buy the product anyway? Whilst some drug dealers donlt touch the stuff - some do or so I have read.

I am very surprised that the company staff don't get more perks and free stuff. Someone I know works for Lego and gets ridiculously good discount (think that's their family's go-to for children's Xmas presents every year) and there has to be some recompense for having such a poor salary, and especially if you are the person that helped design the stuff!

I saw a post from Graham McNeil a while ago on Twitter where he had screenshot something in the GW checkout and said "so tempted to buy". Someone had somewhat insensitively replied "lol feth off do you pay full retail"
But, perhaps that person was incorrect and he actually does !!
If being a best selling author for BL, no doubt making the company very large sums of money, doesn't get you discounts then how far do you have to go?!

 kodos wrote:

 Pacific wrote:

MaxT wrote:
Relevant to this discussion:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/27/warhammer-maker-games-workshop-hands-staff-5000-bonus-after-lockdown-sales-surge

They must have read our thread!

Good on GW, that's a bit more like how a good employer should behave

20k a year +6k bonus because of sykrocket sales = 26k a year with the mean wage is 30k a year

so you need a Covid19 year worth of sales to get a 1000 GBP Bonus on top of your just above minimum wage, how generous

I agree with you, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

Now - an acknowledgement of the key role developers/designers play in the company, and to increase base salary.

I don't know if this is a step in the right direction, as a bonus based on sales for everyone is way too low to make of for a low wage

and the extra bonus for Covid just means that one was not there in the years before

this is something that should be there in addition to a good wage, not instead of it
because to make up for it it would need to be 10k on an average year, not 6k in the best year they ever had.

Companies love bonuses because it allows them to control payroll and only pay out decent wages when they're doing gangbusters, while also making their employees feel like they got some special gift, instead of the reality, which is that they are chronically underpaid.

FWIW this isn't the first time they've paid bonuses, it's a fairly regular thing (though this large a bonus is unusual). But that arguably makes it even less worker friendly, because it shows it's part of their general compensation strategy to underpay people at base salary.

Thing about bonuses is, and this is from someone whose salary for over a decade was more than 50% PRP, they don't make it any easier to get a mortgage, they don't make it any easier to get a car loan, they don't help if you need to extend the limit on your credit card or overdraft.

That's what salaries are for.

Yep, a bonus is fine if your base salary is high enough to live on at some basic level of comfort, so it's an actual bonus, not a "bonus." GW's "bonuses" for line workers are very much "bonuses," not actual bonuses.

When a salary is calibrated to rely on bonuses to make it into a living wage, that's not a bonus, it's exploitation dressed up as beneficence.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Yep, a bonus is fine if your base salary is high enough to live on at some basic level of comfort, so it's an actual bonus, not a "bonus." GW's "bonuses" for line workers are very much "bonuses," not actual bonuses.

When a salary is calibrated to rely on bonuses to make it into a living wage, that's not a bonus, it's exploitation dressed up as beneficence.

Agreed 100%.

 Pacific wrote:
I saw a post from Graham McNeil a while ago on Twitter where he had screenshot something in the GW checkout and said "so tempted to buy". Someone had somewhat insensitively replied "lol feth off do you pay full retail"
But, perhaps that person was incorrect and he actually does !!
If being a best selling author for BL, no doubt making the company very large sums of money, doesn't get you discounts then how far do you have to go?!

It would hardly be surprising to learn that McNeil works for GW on a freelance basis, and therefore doesn't get employee benefits because he's not an employee; which seems entirely reasonable.

I would love to say I was surprised by any of this.

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- 20k a year is apparently peanuts.

I'm in the wrong fething job...

As others have said, you probably are assuming you aren't a teenager working a minimum wage job or don't have a college/university education to qualify you for a higher paying one. Even then, there are *lots* of job and career paths you can pursue without a college education that will pay substantially better than that.

 Slowroll wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- 20k a year is apparently peanuts.

I'm in the wrong fething job...

20k GBP is a lot of money in my country but I guess in UK, and as a pay for a game designer that brought so much sales to GW with his games, it is not that much.

Here in the Northeast US, thats about what McDonald's and other entry level jobs are paid, when converted to hourly.

20k gbp is substantially less than my first job out of college with zero experience (living in NJ/NY metro area). I struggled to pay for my commute and pay my student loans on that level of income, and I was making about 30-40% more than James was.




With regard to the bonus, GW announced it previously in May as part of their preliminary annual financial statement thing, its not new news. The fact that it suddenly popped up on the guardian strikes me as interesting timing. I can only imagine that GWs PR team worked overtime to get that article out so quickly to try to defuse the situation that has resulted from James posts, recycling old news to make a point, etc.

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- 20k a year is apparently peanuts.

I'm in the wrong fething job...

I made about 20k more than him in USD my first year out of college and could barely afford to eat, and definitely couldn't afford new clothes. Some places in the US could swing a salary that low, some can't. But it's definitely on the lower end of things. Walmart cashiers get paid more than that where I'm from.

 Pacific wrote:
Now - an acknowledgement of the key role developers/designers play in the company, and to increase base salary.

With all respect to James and the other games devs, but from a GW business perspective they’re not top 5 critical, and probably not even top 10. They’re certainly not key to be called out above several other roles.

Edit: agree tho they and most other creative roles should be better paid, but I get the business reality why they aren’t.

You say that, what do you think would happen to model sales if they abandoned the idea of games altogether, pulled all the codexes and made the dev team redundant?

The idea of fielding an army on the tabletop is crucial to the GW sales process. It isn't critical that the rules are good but they're a critical part of what GW sells its customers, which isn't models.

Does anyone know if sculptors are well paid or is that considered a labor of love as well?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Does anyone know if sculptors are well paid or is that considered a labor of love as well?

I remember reading ages ago (late 90s or early 00s) that they were paid okay (but not exceptionally good, the company relying on that "passion industry" perk) and did get some sort of bonuses based on sales, meaning if you were Jes "Mr Space Marine" Goodwin then your bonus was probably higher than whoever might have theoretically tried to revitalise Squats at ForgeWorld. I also read that they got a bunch of first run casts or sprues of everything they design (but that might have been a joke or a thing when most of their products were still metal).