Staffing Up in Action

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Dusty and Alex's pitches to former Defunct employees , which had gone well to begin with, got significantly more traction when they told their former staffers that they could be getting paid quite a bit sooner. Everyone wanted Double D up and running. Revenue from the port would enable them to put an office and a network together, lease a bunch of machines and the soft ware they'd need, and have some leftover cushioning to pay people for work on the prototype. Defunct's office administrator had found another job already, but she gave Dana lots of advice on what it took to run the HR side of a game company, including the name of the lawyer Defunct had used for all of its HR work: Robin Canigget. Even though Robin was more expen sive by the hour than Michael, Dana figured that the work would be done more quickly and with greater expertise about the issues peculiar to a game company.

Despite the excitement and the prospect of solvency without fundraising, Dana insisted that the founders sit down to work out a budget and staffing plan before any further discussions with prospective employees. After they figured out what resources they'd need for the port and what would be needed to have a pitch build ready in four months, they came up with salary allocations . At first, they'd wanted to bring everyone in as an independent contractor for the duration of the port, but Dana knew from her talk with Robin that most of their workers would probably fail a legal test of whether they were independent contractors or employees. "Except QA, since they'll be short term . We can get QA in as contractors."

She suggested that they hire everyone else as employees and adjust the salaries downward to reflect the additional expenses and taxes of employment. Given the precarious position of the company, they agreed that Double D couldn't afford benefits until they got a long-term con tract . Again it was decided that Dana would handle the details: employment agreements, set ting up rudimentary policies and an employee handbook, and making sure that every employ ee understood Double D's position and had an accurate understanding of the company's insecu rity. As Dana put it: "I don't want anybody coming here who couldn't handle being unemployed in six months."

Robin came up with a basic template for Double D's employment and independent contractor agreements (see end of this chapter).

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Game Development Business and Legal Guide
Game Development Business and Legal Guide (Premier Press Game Development)
ISBN: 1592000428
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 63

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