Cheap labour from kids too young to realise how much they're ripped off, and how badly the company is treating them. The bizarre glamour of making games attracts enough suckers to the big production-line, conveyor-belt studios that there's no need to pay well or treat the staff well.
People with experience tend to know what their time is worth, and tend to tell the boss to shove it when he's taking the piss, and can see past the glamour.
Honestly, I think young people in the technology industry generally are paid very well and treated very respectfully as well, so I've never understood where this notion comes from.
What other career options would come close without requiring significantly more education? Finance maybe, but young people are definitely treated way better in technology than in finance. Other engineering disciplines generally can't keep up in pay with software development, with the one exception being chemical engineering.
Practicing law is out without getting a law degree, passing the bar, taking out a vast amount of debt, and then successfully getting a high-paying job (which is not easy in the current law market).
Practicing medicine is even harder. Medical school is 4 years and costs even more than law school. Then you'll have a bare minimum of 3 years of residency, during which time you will be a practicing doctor but will be paid less than a freshly minted programmer (and you'll be treated like shit too, working 80 hours a week).
So, yeah, I think programmers, even young ones, have it pretty damn good right now. As a career, it's pretty much "best in class," meaning that it's at least as good as all of its peers in terms of entry requirements.
Honestly, I think young people in the technology industry generally are paid very well and treated very respectfully as well, so I've never understood where this notion comes from.
We're not talking about the technology industry generally. We're talking about the games industry. The games industry, generally speaking, pays worse and offers worse conditions. Because they can. People with more experience know when they're being ripped off, and know when the working conditions are far worse than they could get outside the games industry. Kids blinded by the glamour of the games industry are cheap labour.
My bad, I was too quick to respond to your comment. I was thrown off a bit by the other discussions in this comment thread that seem to be discussing the technology industry in general.
I think background and circumstances feed into this, as well.
If you grew up poor, you are more likely to need to take a job right away, even if the wages are low and/or the working conditions are abusive, and you don't know any better.
Also, if your background is not the current hotness, and you have no "network" yet, you can be stuck for a while working on whatever technology it is you have been using. Most young people don't have networks at first.
People with experience tend to know what their time is worth, and tend to tell the boss to shove it when he's taking the piss, and can see past the glamour.