"What Is Wage Peak?"... Controversial 'Wage Peak System', IT and Game Industries Say It's a Different World

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] "What is wage peak system?"

Recently, the Supreme Court ruling that the wage peak system, which cuts wages solely based on age, is invalid has caused a stir in the business and labor sectors, but it is a different story in the game and portal industries. Since these industries are relatively young, there are few people who have reached retirement age, and developers, who generally have a relatively short economic lifespan, make up a large proportion of the industry. Industry workers also seem indifferent to the wage peak system issue.

According to the industry on the 12th, leading domestic portal and game companies such as Naver, Kakao, NCSoft, Nexon, and Netmarble have not introduced the wage peak system.

In these industries, the longest business history is about 20 years, so most employees have not reached retirement age. Even Naver, which is considered to have a long history among IT companies, has only 23 years of business history.

Even if someone joined Naver in 1999, the founding year, at the age of 27 and stayed with the company continuously, they would only be 50 years old now, which is far below the legal retirement age.

Last year, a retiree at the age of 60 appeared at Neople, a subsidiary of Nexon, which was a big topic not only in that company but also in the game industry as a whole because it was the first time.

Since the industry itself is young, in-house welfare is also organized mainly for young employees. While companies in these industries rarely provide support for children's college tuition, it is hard to find companies without workplace daycare centers or childcare support systems such as kindergarten tuition for employees with young children.

The fact that developers make up a large proportion of each company is also a factor that makes companies feel no need to apply the wage peak system. Most developers leave the company in their 30s or 40s after gaining experience and work as freelancers or start their own businesses.

In fact, as of last year, the average length of service at major IT companies was mostly less than 10 years, with Naver and Kakao, which boast the highest salaries, having only 5.7 years and 4.9 years respectively.

Some point out that it is now necessary to consider the retirement age of IT developers. This is because the number of developers has started to increase quantitatively as the government and companies have put a lot of effort into nurturing talent due to the shortage of developers. An industry insider said, "Currently, the shortage of developers has raised their market value, so there is little concern about retirement age or the wage peak system, but once the supply and demand issue is somewhat resolved, they will have to think about retirement age as well," adding, "Now, like in advanced IT countries such as the US and Europe, it has become necessary to remain a successful IT developer within the company and reach retirement age."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.