Written by Otaku Apologist
This article is a warning to everyone working for a company in the hentai industry.
I learned today the story of one of my freelancers, who worked for a prominent hentai company. They were laid off and replaced without severance pay, or a letter of recommendation.
As this person was only a freelancer, they have no legal protections. The company is under no legal responsibility to provide financial support while an ex-worker seeks out other employment. This was the treatment they received despite working for the company for several years, making them buckets of money on finished products.
As the western hentai scene is now filling up with startup companies, more youngsters are dipping their dicks into this meat grinder. I want to share my views and experiences, so you guys can avoid the pitfalls you’ll be walking into. I too started as a freelancer in this industry years ago.
While a small number of workers in hentai have an office job, most workers are online freelancers. As a freelancer, your long-term employment at any company is uncertain. There are no laws or other systems stopping companies from abusing the fuck out of you. You can be replaced by a more productive worker at any given moment in time. You can be denied name credit for work you’ve done. Promises of continued employment can be blatant lies. You have no avenues of pressuring your employer into treating you right.
Because your finances are uncertain, you cannot be a stable provider. You will have trouble establishing long-term romantic relationships. Many women are going to look at your line of work, and judge you for it. No smart woman is going to make babies with an online freelancer. You may not care about that in your early twenties, but you are naive to think that your priorities won’t change in your thirties.
The hentai industry has chronic infrastructural problems. This field is extremely competitive, with illegal pirate sites stealing content and hogging most of the customers. If you’re a content creator for a company, you need to be financially prepared for future paycuts, as the business models of the more legit companies are dysfunctional at best. In the long run, the cracks will begin to show.
Focusing your time into building up a company is more than likely not going to increase your salary. A lot of companies hide their revenues, and you have no reliable source to verify their finances. The only reliable way to increase your salary is by freelancing for multiple companies, and then leveraging that in your pay negotiations. You have to make companies bid for your time like it’s an auction. If you can build your own business on the side, only then do you possess the leverage to establish your market value.
Many hentai companies do not provide letters of recommendation after your employment has been terminated. They can suddenly block your email and Skype – this happens all the time. Once your boss is pissed at you, it’s game over. I advise you to seek out a template for a letter of recommendation while you’re still in good terms with your employer, and ask them to sign it.
Getting gigs is difficult without marks on your resume. Most companies here don’t care about your resume, because the CEOs are so egotistical, their self-esteem is dependent on high-quality workers sucking their dicks. Employers consider it a personal insult if you lose motivation for a project, or seek other employment. They can even look at your request for a letter of recommendation as a sign that you’re looking to switch companies. Hence many companies don’t have a policy in place to provide those vital recommendations.
Many hentai companies are massively unprofessional behind their public image. Employers have no reason to care for you, because most of you are silent behind-the-scenes operators without legal protections. The company’s customers will never stage a boycott to protest your abuse; They don’t even know who you are!
Many companies also maximize their ability to easily dispose of you by not letting you communicate with other workers. You may notice the lack of company chat groups. You are compartmentalized, easy to remove without drama which could hinder your employer’s relationships with their other workers.
You may be looking at our growing industry as a means of making a living. For very few people, it becomes that way. Most people are chewed up and spat out, never to be heard from again.
If you are serious about making a living here, you have to think strategically.
Once you’ve secured your employment at a company, you are smart to immediately start planning your exit strategy. It won’t take you more than some months before you’re either fired, or fed up with the bullshit. Steal as much money, information, and connections you can while still employed, and funnel the resources into your own projects. Start a website. Get close to the owner of the company, and ask them questions. A lot of businessmen are eager to boast about their strategies. They may even recognize the hustling game, and openly give you tips. Any such revelations should not be mistaken as indicators that your relationship is secure; Rather, they are telling you these things because they expect you to play your own game.
What makes things confusing is that even the cutthroat companies assure you of their commitment to long-term partnerships. The company CEO can assure you endlessly about his intentions to help your career, only to pull the rug on you. You should expect to be back-stabbed and not be surprised of the blade cutting into your bone. Your boss was lying to you, to maximize the value he’s extracting from you. While you are making sacrifices to build the company up, they are on the look out for better workers. When the company grows, better people will seek employment at the company. “Long-term commitment” translates to “until circumstances change”.
These problems do not stem from the companies alone. Many employees use their employers as stepping stones; They can steal your money, ideas and business connections to start something of their own. If your worker’s ambitions do not align with your self-interest, they will eventually execute an exit strategy. You can easily become an abusive company after dealing with shitty employees who fucked with you.
The owner of the website, service, or intellectual property, can legally do anything they want. If you’re making personal sacrifices to build up someone else’s property which you have zero legal ownership to, you need a backup plan. You cannot make yourself completely financially dependent on one company, because the owner of the company can easily betray their promises without penalty.
Your salary is unlikely to increase once the company grows from their humble beginnings. This is because of the competition for your position increases when a company gains popularity. The management can keep you locked to your meager salary until you quit, because there’s more than enough people wanting your spot. This isn’t universally true for all professions; Artists develop a unique art style which also brings them a solid fanbase. Fame solidifies an artist’s market value. Writers have it tougher.
I’m tired of watching human dysfunction turn even cartoon porn into a real-life re-enactment of Game of Thrones. I wish you sick motherfuckers cut the crap so we could finally do good clean business.
4 comments
Yikes! This has a lot of thought put into it, I hope its not a message to writers on this site, that’d be scary! :O
You can use the post as a check list to assess companies for risk factors.
>I wish you sick motherfuckers cut the crap so we could finally do good clean business.
Lol @ you thinking a business dealing in vice could ever be equitable and fair. Hentai is drawn pornography, which falls under the category of vice, and most if not all of the established players in this sector come from organized crime or intelligence agencies engaged in psychological warfare. Do you honestly think psychopaths like these people who engage in violence to protect their trade will care about some loser nobody who wants to turn his cooming obsession into a job? Consider yourself lucky that they don’t put you out on the track to suck AIDS dicks. These people have no qualms about hurting or killing you for interference into their business.
Nothing is fair about a business that depends on artificially inducing a want or a need, especially one that could adequately be solved if a person could get off their ass and want to be somebody that does something meaningfully help society. Vice is the opposite of that; it’s nothing more than making money at the expense of everyone else, including your own staff and employees.
Anyone who thinks an unregulated business is clean, especially any sort of business involved with vice, deserves all the financial loss and headaches it entails.
For a long time I didn’t think hentai could be a positive industry, because there are a lot of problems here. But with persistence and study, I have been able to resolve many problems in my own business and the lives of my freelancers and the more receptive customers. Honesty is the key, when combined with tact and basic social intuition. Too many companies here think we’re bottom-feeding and they don’t think further. But it’s not so black-and-white, as there is plenty of variance in how one interacts with their customers, workers, partners. You just can’t get too fanatical about maximizing your earnings. The balance isn’t difficult to find when you just open yourself up to the possibility that it can be achieved.