by Lana Polansky
UPDATE 3/23/20: Since the publication of this piece, RankandFile.ca has learned that Keywords has suspended penalties for permanent QA testers. We have also learned that after our piece was widely circulated, Keywords has responded by speeding up “social distancing” measures in their offices, which has resulted in project cancellation for a number of vulnerable workers. We are working on a followup piece to track Keywords’ response to both public pressure and the province’s recent provincial shutdown of all non-essential services, which they have already stated in previous announcements would likely result in temporary layoffs.
Game workers employed at Keywords Studio, the largest Quality Assurance studio in Montreal, say they are pressured to work on-site through the COVID-19 pandemic while senior staff and management are allowed to work from home.
As public health officials recommend self-isolation and social distancing to limit the spread of COVID-19, digital video game sales are seeing a sizeable boost.
That means game workers keep putting in hours to churn out entertainment products without interruption.. While many are telecommuting, others have no choice but to cram into offices and share equipment alongside others who may be sick, while shouldering the responsibility for “social distancing” practices without adequate health equipment and supplies.
Recently, I wrote about tax credits in Quebec subsidizing a revolving door of precarious minimum wage quality assurance (or “QA”) jobs. Now the conditions already faced by these workers are turning a bad job into a public health risk.
I worked at a studio later bought by Keywords where many of my friends work Quality Assurance (QA) jobs now. This includes my roommate, who is a newly-minted tester at another studio. Right now, he has no real choice but to keep going into work, putting himself, my partner and me at additional risk of contracting the virus despite the measures we have all taken to adhere to social distancing protocols.
So when I heard what was happening at Keywords, I reached out to workers to find out more.
Company memos indicate paltry sick leave
A functionality tester named Anne* provided me with a “Health and Safety Precautions” document from March 13 detailing the company’s official policy for workers affected by COVID-19. The document states that any worker who has traveled outside of Canada to certain “affected areas” is required to stay home for 14 days following the date of their return as per provincial regulations, and may work from home or be paid for those days if “your job doesn’t allow you to do so.”
The following bullet points get complicated: for workers who had already made travel plans and their departure date is latest the Monday after the release of the memo, they will still receive 14 paid days. If it’s the Tuesday or after, however, they will not—save if they happen to have paid personal days or days saved in their “Holiday Bank.”
Anne says “permanent” QA workers are granted five paid personal days compared to “non-permanent” workers, who only receive the provincially-mandated two, but are also on the hook for a weekly work quota of 40 hours, and so are generally less likely to use them for fear of being penalized for taking too much time off.
“If, for example, you got infected in Montreal, because there are confirmed cases in Montreal, and you take a couple of days off and you’re on a permanent contract, you can actually potentially be penalized for taking too much time off. It’s very unlikely, but it is something that is within the scope of what they can do based on how their contract is worded,” Anne explains.
“The office culture around taking days off is very restrictive and I’ve been working there for a year and a half or so, and my days off, plus my five guaranteed days from being permanent, still would only give me just barely two weeks off and then I’d have no time off for months.”
The vast majority of QA workers, who are non-permanent, have no extra sick days beyond the quarantine period outlined in the company memo, which they may only receive if they have visited certain affected countries and reported their travel and health status to the company before the cutoff date.
“If someone doesn’t have the sick days and can’t afford to not work for two weeks, they’re going to go in,” says Anne bluntly. “I can guarantee that there are going to be people who, simply because there’s a lack of compensation, cannot afford not to work for two weeks. I can’t afford not to work for two weeks. If I get sick I am pretty much screwed.”
Crunch time continues despite COVID-19
“Yesterday when I was in, it was a full floor of QA staff,” says John*, a level two functionality tester who also confirmed that the vast majority of workers are either coming in to work or telecommuting at their own expense. Bosses, project leads, managers and their clients get to work from home.
John has been compiling a record of all the official memos and statements put out by management justifying their policies. He shared this memo with me, as well as other memos reinforcing the responsibility placed on the workers for their own hygiene and health.
While Keywords has taken some steps to allow workers to stay home, workers believe they fall far short of what’s needed in order for all workers to be safe and to limit spread of the illness. They feel management has dragged their feet to implement these changes.
A number of documents spanning March 15 to March 19 describe the company’s “slowdown phases”—a consecutive series of policies regarding telecommuting and “social distancing” within the office. The first document lists the employees permitted to work from home, excluding functionality testers and linguistic testing employees, the largest pool of testers.
Another document, from March 17, justifies its refusal to shut down as a matter of the company’s sustainability, reading, “By shutting down, the Studio would simply not have any revenue stream coming, making paying salaries almost impossible.”
The same document notes that in the event of a forced shutdown, QA staff would be subject to “temporary layoffs” and eligible for Employment Insurance. The same document insists that it’s not taking on any new projects, while documents from March 18 and March 19 proudly celebrate the company meeting its own standards for social distancing protocols within the office.
John told me that as of Thursday, March 18, the office was still full of workers. He has also been working overtime because everyone on the main floor is working to meet the benchmarks for their biggest client.
“It’s money, I know it’s money. It has to be. It’s the only reason,” he says.” And the project is on crunch time because it’s going to release in a couple weeks.”
Then why not allow testers to work from home? Chat logs show that a major part of the rationale for the policy is because workers are under strict Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), and management simply doesn’t trust them not to “leak” potentially compromising information about their clients’ projects.
“That’s why a lot of us can’t work from home, it’s because we’re a liability to the company.”
He also provided me with a screenshot of a chat between a lead and several workers, in which the lead writes, “Right now you are liable. That liability needs to be waived for you to work from home.”
In another chat window, a worker laments, “The company only cares about the bottom line and not their workers.”
Anne says it is ridiculous that the company NDA and “info-security” are being used as excuses to preclude testers from working from home, despite there being an established history of telecommuting at Keywords.
“There’s really no reason why anything needs to be confined to a physical location other than like, them maybe being afraid that we would steal a phone,” she says, “Which, I mean, sure, but it’s pretty obvious if someone is like, ‘Hey, I don’t know what happened to the phone that you gave me.’ You know what it’s on them.”
“Almost everyone I’ve talked to has pretty much said unanimously, we should be working from home or we should be compensated for the quarantine,” she adds.
Sanitation materials not supplied
John also explains that testers are not being given adequate cleaning supplies. They’re being made to work dangerously close to one another, and are sharing equipment with one another out of necessity.
“We still share devices. By devices I mean like, phones. A lot of us work in mobile. The only thing we have is wipes and they’re telling us to be diligent with them. The VR headsets are definitely being shared. The only thing they’re saying is to wipe them down before they use them, but that’s it,” he tells me. In a screenshot of a chat log, one worker asks if anyone has “an IOS they [sic] arent using.”
The Health and Safety Precautions memo outlines the specific personal hygiene expectations that Keywords places on its workers, including “Wash your hands frequently” and “Clean all your devices at the beginning and end of your shift”.
Nowhere in the document does Keywords actually commit to providing anything like masks, gloves, additional wipes or even hand sanitizer. In multiple screenshots of chat logs on the topic of hand sanitizer, frustrated workers argue with a lead about the lack of supplies provided by the company despite their demands for personal cleanliness.
“So there’s lie number one – adding more hand sanitizers.” says one worker, to which the lead responds, “It’s being installed.”
Another worker recalls that sanitizer dispensers were “physically removed” with the exception of two on the floor, which were empty. The lead, who appears to be an intermediary between management and the workers, reveals later that part of the issue with the lack of sanitizer and wipes is that despite placing orders weeks in advance, medical facilities have priority.
“If they can’t do what they’ve set out to do, why are they talking like they’ve done it?” responds one worker.
Anne separately confirmed all of the concerns brought up in these logs, saying hand sanitizer pumps are often empty and sanitation wipes are running low. Despite the lack of resources, the company says it is the employees’ responsibility to make sure equipment is clean.
“One guy in our team publicly said that he had a throat infection. Wasn’t sent home. He’s working all week,” John says. “Management has put out a notice saying they’re not going to do anything until there’s a case in our building, on our staff. That’s not really something they should be waiting for, there’s so many of us.”
“A lot of people have been talking about like, if anyone gets sick, the whole floor is going to get sick,” Anne adds.
“The testers are seated in such close proximity that, as much as they tell us to wipe down our devices, the doorknobs are not being sanitized, the chairs, desks, phones, controllers—it’s nice to tell people it’s being sanitized. People will forget. And at this point it’s essentially set up so that if you forget and you get sick, well it’s your fault for forgetting.”
John goes into further detail, saying that the cleaning staff—who are themselves contracted out from a third party company—are themselves not being given adequate safety supplies, many of whom are coughing.
“I just see them wearing t-shirts, so I don’t see much being done to keep them safe which is probably why a lot of them are sick. Not a lot of them are wearing gloves either. They don’t wear masks. I kind of feel bad for them, I know they’re not getting paid enough.”
What has Keywords management given workers during this difficult time?
“They did fix the urinals that have been broken for a month or so now. So that’s it.” says John.
That and free coffee for the next two weeks, according to a memo dated March 17.
Building worker solidarity across sectors
The story of labour during the outbreak has focused primarily on essential front-line workers such as food service employees, delivery drivers, healthcare workers, sanitation workers, and grocery store staff. Without question, this crisis has revealed how vital so-called “unskilled” labour actually is, despite being consistently underpaid and undervalued. There has also been much discussion about the cruelty of mass layoffs of “non-essential” workers, as more and more businesses shut down and no longer want to incur the cost of retaining staff.
All of this is worthy of our attention, but so are the thousands of invisible, “non-essential” and also purportedly “unskilled” workers whose labour continues at their own personal risk while the companies they work for capitalize on a sudden, massive surge in sales.
This is true for QA workers as well as other minimum wage workers in the games industry, like GameStop employees angered to learn that the company has opted to keep stores open (excluding those in California) because it has deemed them “essential.”
It’s true for the cleaning staff on contract at Keywords, for McDonald’s employees whose bosses are lobbying to prevent a bill requiring sick leave, and for the servers at Tim Hortons who up until recently, according to a PressProgress report, were required to provide a doctor’s note in order to obtain unpaid sick leave.
When asked if there was possible solidarity to be built with other workers being put in similar situations—whether essential or not—they both agreed emphatically and without hesitation.
“This is definitely going to create an opportunity for solidarity and mutual aid in kind of the same way as the ’98 ice storm where a lot of people kind of just came together because they realized that there was nothing else to lean on but the community,” says Anne.
“I’m sure if we all got together and we got to have this conversation with them, we’d be able to have some kind of agreement and maybe fight back a little bit, and maybe have something done, I hope,” says John.
John also reports that he has communicated with fellow testers at the facility in Japan and says the company is providing them with far more safety measures than he and his coworkers Montreal.
“It just feels like they care more about them than us,” he says.
Used to work with this company as a lead last year, and I’m not surprised to hear this happening. Their management are just children roleplaying as adults, and have no real experience with handling a legitimate emergency when faced with one. I feel for the non-permanent employees, it’s going to be hell for them.
The previous comment is accurate. To have worked there for a while, they are very stingy and micro-manage their employees like crazy. The Montreal offices have multiple open-space offices containing 100+ people who share work stations and equipment, so this behaviour is highly irresponsible and dangerous. Shame.
I worked here for a couple of years. I am not surprised at all.
As a former worker for various departments. Was, cqa, ps, this really doesn’t surprise me, and only sickens me.
The amount of times I was forced to work through serious throat infections, throwing up, and etc… You wouldn’t believe.
Completely agree. They should just temporary close. They are NOT required to work. Keywords is not ”essential” and this epidemy is life threating. Their health is more important than working. This is just ridiculious. It honestly stupid to wait until someone catch the COVID-19 to close the building. Oh yeah, sure there’s new protocols/rules to follow, but what the fuck, there’s idiots who doesn’t even follow the simple rules, wait, it not even a rule, it just the fucking hygiene, wash your fucking hand before leaving the bathroom. Feels like they only care about their money and the health about the employe. Worked at a studio later which was brought by Keywords and testers can’t even work at home. Well, actually , it not even an option.
As a former member of leadership with 5 years experience at Keywords and the company the bought, I can confirm that the upper management do not care at all about their testers. Managers rarely interact with their teams yet are responsible for making decisions that affect the testers they ignore. Several of my past testers have confirmed that they are showing up to work so they can make a living while 0 members of leadership are present. Leads and Managers are safe at home, while these testers, who make almost minimun wage, are now responsible for the project and forced to do things way outside their pay grade.
Keywords is a bunch of criminals.
The only people with health insurance are the permanents which requires you to be a level3 employee. When they bought out one of the their latest acquisition, they promised the employees that were there that they would keep their health insurance. That was gone as soon as they decided not to renew the contract with the insurance. If you’re just a temp, you’re basically screwed because if you take too much sick leave they place you “on call” which is basically you getting fired without termination so you don’t get much in terms of EI. That said, they will pressure employees that are also at risk to come in, even if someone on the 8th floor was diagnosed with the virus.
The unfortunate reality is that work for home is a very difficult thing to do, and in several cases too dangerous to allow as a 3rd party company. Clients are concerned of possible leaks and the company don’t want to risk losing contracts (money) over those possibilities. Management over there is a sad joke where only the CEO is laughing on the way to the bank.
I worked at Keywords Studios around 7 months ago and left since I got a much better opportunity in a different company and have no strings attached to the company.
I’d like to be the devil’s advocate here since I find your article is very one sided which is fair since you want to highlight that QA testers need to be in a better work environment atm but is lacking a bit of analysis of how a business works as a whole and understanding of how companies are big machines that have many moving parts that affect outcomes.
From what you are describing in this article, Keywords seem to be following Quebec’s government guidelines which are weak right now and in my personal opinion should be more drastic at this point. Your article shouldn’t be against how that company is managing it but rather how our Quebec government is handling it.
You also described Keywords isnt doing enough to keep employees safe because some of them may forget to wash their hands. You are talking about grown up people forgetting to wash their hands and asking employers to do more because they forget to wash their hands. Honestly, this sounds a bit pity. As a grown up if I think I need to wear gloves while I work, I can get them myself or simply make sure I wash my hands. I don’t need my employer to remind me to do so for my own health. You cannot control others actions, all you can control is yourself.
Let’s dive a bit more into how management is handling work stability for testers.
Seems to be fair that the management has moved into working from home first as is much easier than coordinating, moving equipment and getting legal approval from clients from confidential projects to have testers working from home. To me this is just a normal part of this type of processes while they find a good balance in this time of crisis.
Furthermore, my guess is that they are now planning on how to keep as many employees around as possible to give them financial stability rather than shutting everything down and lay people off as many other companies have had to do in Quebec. So I wouldn’t complain that there is work and instead I would find ways to keep myself protected and bring my own gear if the company can’t do it. Though I do agree the company should ensure there’s hand sanitizer and wipes at a minimum. Furthermore, I would prepare that all companies in Quebec will need to shut down as this is the next step the government will most likely need to take to contain the virus.
The company I’m working at the moment is much smaller and yet we are facing very similar challenges as Keywords. Some employees do not have work at the moment due to the limitations we have. Please stop complaining that there’s work when some other people wish they had work. I totally get that people are scared, want to feel safe and looking at how things can be done better and criticizing makes people feel better. However, let’s stay objective and look at both sides of the coin.
Regarding the below comment from Anne; she is clearly lacking more information on how NDAs work.
“Anne says it is ridiculous that the company NDA and “info-security” are being used as excuses to preclude testers from working from home, despite there being an established history of telecommuting at Keywords.
“There’s really no reason why anything needs to be confined to a physical location other than like, them maybe being afraid that we would steal a phone,” she says, “Which, I mean, sure, but it’s pretty obvious if someone is like, ‘Hey, I don’t know what happened to the phone that you gave me.’ You know what it’s on them.”
An NDA means Non Disclosure Agreement which is a contract that cannot be broken. If you break your NDA you are legally liable for any content that may have leaked. Testers are working with Unpublished Content and there have been leaks in the past so this is not about testers stealing a phone this is much greater than that and Anne should know better since she should have read the NDA which is very clear.
I am not surprised that Keywords is slowly moving low risk staff to work from home as clients give their green light for more teams to work from home and are allowed to break NDAs/Contracts in a legal way.
Regarding the employee that had a throat infection, employees should bring this up with HR because believe me, there’s a lot of stuff that testers assume management knows and they don’t since nobody communicates this information. So all I can suggest here is for you to communicate, communicate, communicate. If HR or management were aware, I’d definitely agree that this should have been addressed asap.
Where I am working at right now, all employees that have cold like symptoms are asked to stay home or are sent home. Financially speaking not all companies can afford paying sick leave to employees. This is a reality which we live in.
During this time, employees and employers should work together to keep the workplace safe as much as possible while Quebec’s government provide more instructions on how to proceed. Let’s not dismay or turn against our employers who may have the best intentions in the world and you may be trashing them with little background on the bigger picture.
Counterpoint, video games aren’t worth letting people die for, stop making excuses for this, or foisting it onto anyone else.
The province may need to act for them to avoid liability for paying people to stay home, but that all kinda falls down when people *die*.
And none of these ‘temporary’ workers would be paid anyway, they’d just be fired and told to go get EI.
If they didn’t adequately prepare for this, then they need to change their policies to account for it. That, or cut their CEOs’ pay and pay the workers to not accidentally kill each other and take the company down too.
well said
Are you seriously bootlicking this megacoroporation that pays their workers minimum wage for work that can easily be shifted to work from home as their entire fucking infrastrucute is built on VPN/remote desktop even AT THEIR OFFICE?
Shame on you.
You all need a good dose of reality check. You are asking a company to shut down and leave people without jobs or income just because you lack business/people management common sense.
You may end up getting what you are asking for sooner rather than later and will most likely see you all complaining that people are without jobs and don’t have money to eat or pay rent.
Nobody can make everyone happy or content with that they have so I didn’t expect you guys to be a little open minded and maybe think that you lack more information to properly judge this kind of situation.
There’s no need to verbally attack people for providing their opinion.
Cheers!
What a lack of understanding of productive relationships between the company and workers you show Lyli. The policies by Kewords showed they prefer to send people to home or to work before losing money. Ones will not have income to pay rents or buy food (like on-call people) others will have to risk their lives going to the office to pay the rent or buy food. And all of this to minimize economical loses. A company that makes milions at year asks people with over minimun wages to make an effort.
Youre suposed to lick the boot not to swallow it entre.
I’d like to add that what the article leaves out is the matter of Keywords having to negotiate with the client to implement work from home arrangements, which is complex and takes time.
While I don’t think this publication changes that, it is important to understand the nature of the situation fully and report correctly about all aspects of it, and that is difficult since you don’t have access to the studio management and plannings perspective on the matter
Also it is likely this situation is going to go on for a while, so we’re looking at a number of possibilities. The best we can hope for is that everyone comes out better from it going forward
That said, yes the way games are developed is a problem since it can easily collapse in the face of a crisis and there really needs to be some change on that level which this situation is likely leading to.
Actually, many developers are working from home and encourage testers to be also. It is solely the responsibility of Keywords to either shut down or have testers work from home.
I see someone arguing letting testers work from home is difficult because it requires client authorization and complex IT setups.
Here’s the thing: management and leads at keywords have been able to work from home and access sensitive project information from home FOR YEARS. It’s true, they don’t need to access consoles to do their job, but management had years to figure out a solution for testers. They didn’t do anything because they never cared that sick testers would constantly show up to work. But then suddenly a pandemic threatens their profits and solutions are magically starting to emerge? Bullshit.
If management actually gave a shit about their employees, all of them would have a living pay rather than barely above minimum wage, all of them would have health insurance instead of the few who can stomach the job enough to stay more than 3 years and they would have had figured out a way to accommodate sick and disabled testers years ago. They did none of those things because they don’t give a shit about the people who do the work and they just want to maximize profits.
Unionize QA testers!!!
Now you have shown your true colors. You just care about trashing a company to try to get people to believe in unionization without even caring about other people’s jobs security even if it means defaming a company. No wonder why you were reluctant to be objective.
Having testers working from home is way more complicated than for management, who only need remote access to their PC.
For testers, there would basically be 2 options:
– Giving the devices for testers to bring home, which is risky (for the hardware itself but also in terms of potential leaks) and would require some infrastructure to deploy builds remotely as well. Also consoles test kits are worth hundreds of dollars and require the manufacturer’s approval (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) to have them brought out of the office, which is not very likely.
– Remotely accessing devices, which would be the most secure option but also requires some infrastructure to be put in place, as the tools for this don’t necessarily exist yet and need the manufacturers’ intervention.
All this is also on the basis that testers have a PC or laptop at home, which they don’t necessarily have, and lending a laptop to every tester might not be within the company’s capacity.
Finally, considering the testers’ very low salary, a lot of them are they living place and have roommates, which adds another layer of risk, and would require Keywords to make their clients agree to the responsibility of the risks entailed.
On another point, I agree that Keywords salaries are low and hardly allow financial stability – one of Keywords major flaws, combined with the unstable “flexible” contracts for newcomers – but in the end it’s for the testers to decide if they’d rather work or be safe at home. I would be surprised for Keywords not to be understanding of testers asking not to be called (or for permanent, to be on unpaid leave). Unfortunately, not a lot of countries have within their law for companies to compensate temporary lay-off like France has.
A lot of people are complaining about how keywords is handling all of this but I think they are doing the best job they can do. You can’t expect them to solve an issue like this in such a short time. Just like when keywords didn’t have working fire alarms for several months, they couldn’t just fix it. They needed to spend a lot of time getting to the fix while we worked in a building that couldn’t hear the alarms. Same deal when we had to work in rooms that were under construction. Sure people were getting nauseous from the paint fumes 5 feet away from them and coughing from inhaling all the metal shards from the cutting but we needed the work. Keywords was doing their best with providing us work even if they couldn’t guarantee our health.
I do think this article is one sided but you’re expecting quite a lot from a company who doesn’t have to care about replaceable resources. If you do see a change with them you can bet it’s going to be from the government saying all companies need to take action.
Keywords is putting their Clients before their testers, in their latest Slowdown memo they said: “Finally, we would like to remind you that all internal communications are only for Keywords employees and should not be shared externally. When sharing internal communications in a public space, you are making all ongoing discussions with our clients much more difficult, while we are trying to work towards reassuring them to
allow us to have as many of you working from home as possible.”
So, we should stay quiet and continue working just so Keywords can keep their big important Clients…??? Shouldn’t the health of your testers be your priority? The testers who do more work than anyone else and are the reason you have those Clients in the first place. Without testers you have no company.
This also shows how little these Clients care about the testers, we have to “convince” them to let us work from home, while there is a pandemic???
Also, I would like to point out that even with all their safety precautions, the offices are still extremely high risk. One of the main offices is a large room with only one door in and out, leading to a long hallway where you cannot be more than 1 foot away from someone else.
Keywords needs to shut down ASAP, they are keeping employees from getting unemployment and risking their health.
It is *irresponsible and shameful* to keep a non-essential business open during these times. I don’t see how it is necessary or humane to play the devil’s advocate during an ongoing global crisis either.
I believe in maintaining healthy communication but as an FQA tester, most of our feedback are often dismissed or we’re given empty promises. This is why an article about the situation was needed to be written to raise awareness as well…
Based on some comments I read here, from what I can imagine are from people who had or currently hold senior staff or management hiring positions, I personally think it’s great that there’s talk to break the NDA contract in order to allow us to finally work from home. That’s the outcome that many of us are hoping to have. However, I would have strongly preferred that we were given the option to stay home for at least a temporary PAID quarantine period, while the higher ups work out a new plan, also from home, to keep us all safe.
So, the company can’t afford that protective measure, then logically all necessary sanitary supplies should be provided by the company without delay and at all times. As simple as that… This article lists all the reasons why many are stressed out at work. The video game industry has its many flaws, yes and I had hoped that this situation would have inspired them to improve their ways. In order to maintain a company, you also need to take the safety of your workers into great consideration. You need to worry about your brand and reputation. This is NOT the time to keep doing things the same way over protecting people in new and dire circumstances from disease and death. I am so disappointed by this company and the position I now find myself in, as a contract worker with no access to employee insurance and benefits.
As of today, Quebec now has 628 confirmed cases! It’s not enough to ask employees who have symptoms to stay home since a lot of people who have tested positive were asymptomatic. Based on a report by the CDC, it affects about 30% of adults between the ages of 20-44 which is an age group that many testers fall into. The world thought that this illness only seriously affects the elderly which isn’t the case any more. Obviously, a company can’t be responsible for someone not wise enough to wash their hands often. It only takes 1 single mistake for this contagion to spread fast and it can last days on surfaces. Why take that chance? A single cough can produce up to 3,000 droplets. These particles can land on other people, clothing and surfaces around them, but some of the smaller particles can remain in the air….
If an employee falls sick and spreads it around, then who’s going to do the video game testing anyway? This is not complaining because it’s not a trivial subject. This is about people’s lives… Not only are you risking the health of your employees, you’re putting those around them at risk as well all for money. And word spreads around about which businesses to avoid, fast.
Montreal just declared state emergency, banning gathering of 2 ppl or more. And Keywords still has 100+ in an office lmao
I was told by someone in HR that testers were being sent home despite having no symptoms.
Nothing is cleaned and I’ve never seen the cleaning crew wipe down doors or door knobs.
Not long ago, 5 buckets of cleaning wipes were stolen.
I’m a senior and I didn’t have the option from working from home. It’s project dependent because only the PM got to work from home.
We all cram on into a bus, then walk to work, cram into a elevator, locker room, then go sit down next to someone who sites less than a foot away from you for 8 hours. Not to mention the cafeteria always has lots of people in it, the vending machines are never cleaned, the cleaning crew are not protected, the place is just dirty and the air quality in general is just garbage.
The company just cares about money and it likes to brag every year how much profit they made and what they spent on acquiring other companies in the billions then they have the nerve to say they can’t pay us in these times of need. Yeah.. they can F right off
As a client of Keywords, I would really feel much better about them adopting a safer approach. Every main video game company in Montreal has closed or adopted a work from home approach, is it really that out of realm of possibility for Keywords?
Yes and no.
It’s not a possibility because of the NDA and the security of information concerning the game/software. As a client, you don’t want any information leaked out to the public.
A roommate takes a picture/selfie and snaps a picture of the game being tested by accident and posts their picture online as they normally do. Though it’s an accidental “leak,” that tester gets fire, possibly sued, the company can get sued for breaking NDA, and then lose the client. The reputation of the company gets tarnished and they stand the possibility of losing current and future clients.
It’s a possibility because we can remotely connect to the work servers and access the necessary files/trackers needed. But if server(s) go down, IT needs to physically be at the office to fix it. Which puts them in harms way.
Not to mention, depending on the client and what’s needed, the company would have to deliver the necessary computers/hardware in order to work. Not everyone has a home computer powerful enough to run what’s needed, and not to mention it’s not up to the tester to supply their personal hardware. If they did, this would break the NDA as well for security reasons.
Other clients, due to the nature of the project, just can’t work from home such as mobile and VR games.
Managers and higher up can work from home because they only do paper work and meetings, where as those of us who do the grunt work don’t have that luxury.
Um the setup you mention is being followed by the client right now for its employees.
They have staff at their offices, a skeleton crew managing servers, though this might change because of the general shutdown.
Keywords could certainly have put a contigency in place sooner.
And that NDA is bs given the circumstances, the only issue here is that the client doesn’t trust keywords employees with working from home and keywords needs to negotiate with them to allow that which it is doing.
Though it is likely that some projects will be temporarily cancelled in the light of this.
Not sure why people here are complaining that Keywords is staying open. They followed government rules and regulations and testers could stay home without penalty if they felt unsafe or not healthy. This allowed testers who needed the money to have income flowing in. As a tester there who lives paycheck to paycheck I appreciated that. If I found their conditions unsafe I would have just stayed home.
Its a challenging situation considering they could have shutdown and not payed anyone and that would be well within their rights since they don’t have to.
Which is what is happening now.
And that is fine, I mean there are restaurants and airlines that have done much the same thing with their layoffs, having their employees depend on EI.
But here we have a situation where all our clients have moved their employees into work from home arrangements but are happy to let keywords keep us working.
Its good you get paid at the end of your shift, but is it really worth risking your life for it?
As a tester you don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck. You can certain have better.
Internal QA at our clients offices don’t work like this and while I can’t say their pay is anything to write home about , why does keywords need to be a sweatshop?
Can confirm testers are working Tuesday the 24th, and will work a regular shift until the clock strikes 12. If only there was some sort of sign several months ago that this might happen to allow us the chance to prepare for this…
There’s teams that still work till midnight? That sucks.
What others said is basically true and it’s really demotivating to work in Keywords. Never know that a company can be so disgusting. Already quitted and I wish I don’t have to go to Keywords immediately.
I keep thinking on how to comment… I had a really bad experience at keywords towards the end of my career there.
People keep saying that “it’s not that bad” and that this article is full of lies and inaccuracies.
The one thing I will mention, and will keep it sweet and simple – take a look at all the comments of former employees. The fact that none of them are surprised by any of this speaks volumes about the way the company is run and the importance it places on their employees.
Hi!
So as far i understand, under the government’s official instructions, on site work is to resume on the 13, and Keywords is moving forward with these instructions.
Now;
Given the level of risk of the working conditions described in the comments above (large congregations of people, sharing equipment, crowded elevators, hallways), wouldn’t the best policy at this point be to extend the the temporary layoff period to ensure that Testers become 100% eligible to the Emergency Response Benefits while continuing to work towards integrating as many of them as possible into work-from-home situations as they are already doing?
Which raises another question, related to the concerns expressed above about the barely-above minimum-wage salaries;
If the Emergency Response Benefits plan proves to be more generous than what Keywords is willing to offer its employees, is a salary increase across the board called for? Is continuing to regard their workforce as expendable low skill workers yet another bad move for the company’s reputation?
Anyone with some experience in the videogame industry will tell you how indispensable testers are to manage the complexity of the pipeline, and anyone who’s worked in QA can attest to the challenges of interacting day to day with a system of interactions as complicated as a videogame that is just not working.
A tester has to zero in on issues within diversly organized levels of context (game states) from an end user perspective, report on those issues promptly, back to back, 8 hours a day every time adapting their analisis to the variables involved in those issues. A tester needs to be adept at the classification of information on multiple levels, keeping concordance of facts across a database, and noticing meaningful patterns within the features of a game.
It takes a special kind of person to keep up with the pace of production at this level of the pipeline.
Keywords has been very good at providing entry level positions to inexperienced testers who are just starting out, and providing them with the opportunity to grow their skills and careers.
I’d like to see them protect their existing workforce and acknowledge their value, they need to get their “social structure”, so to speak, on solid ground to ensure that everyone comes out of the other side of this crisis stronger and eager to get back to the grind as it becomes possible from home or safe at the office.
I worked as a tester with Nintendo of Europe, and it sounds like one and the same place. There as well testers and coordinators are the only ones who have to come to the office while all the important people can work from from the safety of their homes.
Great article!