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It's something I've seen time and time again, yet I have to get the full picture of what's going on.

See, big companies like Disney, Comcast, Viacom, etc. seem to receive a lot of hate from a decent amount of Internet users across various sites.

I'm actually curious as to why that is the case. Is it because the Internet is biased towards independent creators? Or is it some other reason that I never thought of?

Speaking on the three examples, I hate Viacom because they're copyright trolls, Comcast because their service is shit, and Disney because the kind of power they could end up amassing makes me nervous.

More generally, massive corporations, in addition to stifling competition and having too much public power, tend to be corrupt and lobbyist, and don't care about their employees. It's rare that a corporation does anything out of the kindness of its collective heart, and they tend to be focused solely on making more money than they could possibly spend (and then transferring it to offshore accounts by the billions).

Aside of the fact that pretty much every media mogul are power-hungry dickwads who doesn't care one bit about their consumers by shafting them with copyright strikes and appeasing to political spectrums whenever it's the least appropriate?

I long for the old days of the Wild West Internet before mass commercialization took over.

Now there are too many fingers in the pie, corporation and political entities control the main confluent of thought on the internet to push their own interests. These corporations, political entities, media empires, etc, already own so much in the real world and now they are pass the point on encroaching on the space of the independent user when they really don't need it. You look towards any major site nowadays and you better believe some corporation has worked their way into it somehow.

Commies, internet users are a bunch of commies. All jokes aside, I feel like the reason a lot of internet users take issues with this is that anything a big company touches basically turns into a bland safe version of itself in the name of profit. Risk is a bad and such must be excised out until there’s nothing left. There’s a reason many websites are making it a mission rid the internet of all nsfw content cause big companies don’t want their “poor brand” to be affiliated with that filth these independent minds make. There’s also the fear these independents may prove you don’t need to work in a big company to make your dreams come true.

Big business wishes to remove thought until the World Wide Web is nothing more than a massive megaphone full of corporate advertisement and merch. No one cares about creativity if anything creative thinking is consider defying against the status quo. S big company wants nothing more than to get stifled by the people. I would say this whole ecosystem that manage to arise is the result of captailism and how easy it can get out of hand. Now that isn’t say any of the other economic systems are any better…if anything they keep failing because human nature, but we can;t deny this is a glaring flaw that needs to be fixed.

Like they other guys said, the corporations are hated because they're evil greedy fuckheads. They have far more power that the people and generally solely make the rich even more money.

it creates too much centralized wealth, increasing wealth inequality and giving more power and wealth to fewer people. Capitalism works better for the people when there are more smaller to mid sized businesses and less large corporations.

And with capitalism, all companies trend towards becoming one monopoly

unregulated capitalism, sure.

I'm a commie. What the hell you expect?

Problems arise when companies are owned by people more interested of money rather than people wanting to be the best at their job.

The thing is, in order to maximize the profit, a company often needs to sacrifice their functionality to be much effective at providing goods and services than optimal. E.g. big pharma doesn't get paid for people being healthy.

In extreme cases, that means that company causes exactly the opposite effect to what it is supposed to get paid for. For an example, video game etc. industry creating a demand for games or their variations but then not making them or allowing others to make them.

It's typical to see the negatives of the system you're living in while taking the positives for granted.

Problems arise when companies are owned by people more interested of money rather than people wanting to be the best at their job.

You could probably find some small business owners who are motivated primarily by passion for their work, but do you think your average owner of a convenience store or independent gas station enjoys selling milk or pumping gas for its own sake?

What makes them more admirable than the shareholders of a public corporation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Well, if that store owners start using underhanded and shady tactics, then nothing more admirable. If the store owners don't like the job but still tries to make sure its customers are satisfied, then it's a step up from them.

Although the cutoff point isn't very sharp. There are various scales between "company, in order to please end-users, goes bankrupt in a way that it ends up hurting the said end-users" and "company, in a goal to make as much money as possible, ends up hurting end-users".

I owe a lot of it to the ignorance most people have about how large businesses operate. And it's not a diss, big business is a complex subject to tackle, and it doesn't help that our public education system does an incredibly bad job in educating about the fundamentals of our financial world. Especially as how taxes, financial laws, and things work. Someone above linked corporate personhood as a culprit but that sums up my point. The idea that corporate personhood is inherently bad is ridiculous. It underlines the fundamental thing that people miss about corporation: they are largely a legal entity composed of people working together to conduct business towards a specific goal. Be it financial, political, philanthropic etc. As such even cities are corporations.

Big businesses also have the ability to navigate the ever increasing complex legal world the US has built. It gives them massive advantages that smaller businesses and individuals cannot hope to attain. This makes it difficult to really feel sympathetic to the big corporate world.

Unfortunately people don't understand the depth of that reality and often support legislation that they think will shackle big business to be better when instead all it does is make it harder for their smaller competitors to succeed. Which is why there is a certain train of thought that views much regulatory policy is actually designed to favor big business over little ones. And there is a ton of Truth in that I find

They colonized our land during the mid 90s. Eternal September was the worst of them.

These corporations can get away with so much; the pro-monopoly decisions of the slaughter-houses cases, which argued that monopolies violated their privileges and communities of the then recently passed 14th amendment, are still in effect.
Disney earned thirty-six percent of Hollywood's revenue in 2018 (?), showing just how many people to to the theater just for Disney. This allows Disney to effectively determine the price of movie tickets, which is a key component of monopolies.
It's not just Disney; the telecom company has shown to engage in immoral activity as well. Few districts in the United States have access to more than three wireless service providers, which is the legal requirement for competition.
Media companies besides Disney have also done much to deserve hate; Viacom is infamous for copyright striking videos, Timewarner was recently bought by charter communications, further reducing competition, and Comcast has been known for using its power to squash competitors.
Not every company receives the hate, for some are also part of most Americans' everyday lives. Google has a history of poor treatment for it's service workers, choosing instead to focus on liberal rhetoric to appeal to the middle and upper-middle classes. Amazon keeps its warehouse workers in conditions almost comparable to Victorian England; the warehouses have an incredibly high injury rate, and requirements for packaging are high. Despite this, Amazon reported record-high sales this holiday season.
Finally, the government is in the pockets of billionaires. Look at how closely SpaceX, a private company owned by one of the richest men on the planet, works with NASA. I'll admit that is a very small issue, but the issues become larger when you look at our political parties. Hedge funds are legal again, which means that politician can temporarily gain as much money as they can through them. Look at how the establishment is trying to silence nontraditional candidates such as Sanders or Yang. Those who oppose the corporate lobbyists have an uphill battle.
I won't mention my more left-wing economic views, but it is clear that the capitalist system we have now needs more regulations at the very least.

Another reason is that in art/media products, the people making the most money from it, are not the people who have actually worked on the product.

The easy example is video games. People tend not to hate the dev teams or individual developers, as much as they do the publishers and CEOs. Not only do they make more money for not actually doing a job that often forces "crunch times" and such, they also make decisions or requirements that actively go against what players and developers want for more profit.

And with the CEOs and top dogs of a company, very few have really ever risen from the top and its a trend that class mobility is going down. Its pretty easy to see why people feel hurt and angered when they know someone else gets more opportunities than them simply because they were born into wealth.

As a rule I don't trust anyone who makes more than I do, which includes most corporate leaders.

It's easy to swing upwards, so blaming someone or someoneS raking in a higher revenue with no knowledge of operating costs is an easy target. Most internet denizens are late 20-somethings, likely with high debts, so it's easy to associate a company with the money it makes rather than the people that make it up.

Spider-byte said:

The easy example is video games. People tend not to hate the dev teams or individual developers, as much as they do the publishers and CEOs. Not only do they make more money for not actually doing a job that often forces "crunch times" and such, they also make decisions or requirements that actively go against what players and developers want for more profit.

That perspective seems slightly divorced from the reality I see. Crunch is the lesser evil compared to layoffs and "restructuring".

The problem many people have is with the lack of transparency of companies collecting user data, and potentially manipulating opinions with their algorithms.

wisehowl said:

Crunch is the lesser evil compared to layoffs and "restructuring".

I think it all stems from a failure of management.

Because they are large and often horrific.
you never hear about how Disney owns all things you draw while you work for them?
Comcast and Viacom is obvious the dudes are a cartel together aren't they? literally dividing up American and price fixing

a lot of them are immoral, multinationals.
EA is wretched
apple has suicide nets around their factories or use cheap labor

It's easy to swing upwards, so blaming someone or someoneS raking in a higher revenue with no knowledge of operating costs is an easy target. Most internet denizens are late 20-somethings, likely with high debts, so it's easy to associate a company with the money it makes rather than the people that make it up.

This sounds kinda divorced from reality. Considering that 20 somethings in high debt is partly because they live in an economic system that tremendously benefits big companies and allows them to get away with immoral practices.

That perspective seems slightly divorced from the reality I see. Crunch is the lesser evil compared to layoffs and "restructuring".

The problem with that is you're saying that crunch is just an alternative to being laid off, but companies do that during crunch anyway. Also, a lot of companies hire some employees purely for a project and let them go anyway.

The problem with that is you're saying that crunch is just an alternative to being laid off, but companies do that during crunch anyway.

You misread my words. When I say lesser evil I mean it's the thing you shouldn't focus on over the larger problems, yet it very much can be a problem. When crunch is done unskillfully it damages productivity and morale of an entire workforce but in more cases than not it can be used without harm if the studio knows what they're doing. To do that, you need an evaluation of what your employees can do.

What is problematic is that shallow analysis can ruin a company. When management/HR/leads think they can push people "just a bit further" by making demands slightly outside the bounds of reality and saying "I'm sure you'll figure it out :)" that's where you get the unhealthy crunch. That mentality works on an individual level when integrating a new employee, pushing them to learn new skills and techniques to boost their productivity, but it ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT work on a larger scale. I've seen that mentality destroy projects entirely.

That's also more importantly where you get the layoffs, where shallow analysis fails to understand the necessity of the roles in a company and the duties of an individual employee. You fire an individual for underperforming then suddenly have to deal with 4 different individual's workloads suffering from dealing with the loss. This can have a tremendous cascading effect and lead to large swathes of people leaving or getting too much shit piled on them, and is a drain on HR to replace the roles.

To sum up, crunch is neutral and can be good or bad. Layoffs/restructuring is extremely volatile. Brent pointed out that both are basically just a failure in management, but I've also seen that problem exacerbated by leads, HR, and the production team. To point at one individual or team as the problem is to neglect missing crucial faults elsewhere.

Also, a lot of companies hire some employees purely for a project and let them go anyway.

Contractual/seasonal work is ultimately temporary in most cases. This is a non-issue if you keep yourself aware to the expiry date of your contract.

You misread my words. When I say lesser evil I mean it's the thing you shouldn't focus on over the larger problems, yet it very much can be a problem. When crunch is done unskillfully it damages productivity and morale of an entire workforce but in more cases than not it can be used without harm if the studio knows what they're doing. To do that, you need an evaluation of what your employees can do.

When done unskillfully it has a massive detrimental effect on the people who are working there. It's more than unfortunate if your someone who is way more stressed and depressed, spends all day in an office and cant see family or friends and it dominates your life. Also this weird idea that there is somehow a "healthy" crunch just isn't true.

To me it comes across that you have this idea that if crunch negatively impacts a company its bad, but if it benefits them, it's a good thing, but the point is the actual peoples wellbeing. Whether it works out good doesn't matter, because you shouldn't be able to coerce or force people to do such unhealthy behaviour.

Contractual/seasonal work is ultimately temporary in most cases. This is a non-issue if you keep yourself aware to the expiry date of your contract.

The point was that you presented a false dichotomy. It was either crunch, or get performs layoffs, you don't need either of thoses things to make a product.

The point was that you presented a false dichotomy. It was either crunch, or get performs layoffs, you don't need either of thoses things to make a product.

That is what I've repeatedly told you I'm not saying. I'm saying that crunch is a non-issue while layoffs are an issue. In no way have I said you NEED crunch to avoid layoffs, only that it is much less important of an issue. The employee conditions in nearly every studio I've heard of is super cush, most unhealthy part are the snacks tbh. Only reason crunch gets so demonized is that devs like to use it for advertising, even when they still clearly put in the long overtime when needed.

It's the volatile restructuring that more dangerously impacts peoples' lives, leaving them high and dry with rarely any severance pay or holding their benefits hostage behind PIPs. The stick of the "carrot-and-stick", sacking employees who underperform when no goals were clearly outlined in the first place. THAT'S what I've witnessed the unhealthy dark side of the industry, not the time and a half pay, meals-provided crunch.

You absolutely do not need to crunch to avoid layoffs, if anything it just makes those layoffs more inevitable, but it is clearly layoffs that are the bigger issue.