Toy company Hasbro is hiring a designer to head up its board game division. This high level board game job requires a minimum of 10 years experience in the industry, with five of those years leading a team of at least five people. And yet, at a glance we can see the job advert seems to be missing crucial information about prospective salary.
Indeed this senior director role for one of the biggest and best board game companies around doesn’t even allude to pay, not so much as a useless ‘competitive’ in sight. There’s the “What you’ll do” section with key responsibilities, including managing budgets and “building a robust pipeline of game concepts”. We have “What you’ll bring”, which lists needed qualifications, including a decade’s experience (as mentioned), and five published board games to your name. But where is “What you’ll earn”?
Presumably this role is paid, because it must be, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that from reading the job description.
There’s lots of reasons why companies prefer not to provide salaries in job listings, from being able to hire at lower than market value to avoiding resentment from existing employees. But it’s a controversial practice, because it’s essentially all upside for the employer, and all downside for current workers and those seeking jobs.
Now some parts of the US including New York, Colorado, California, and Washington have introduced pay transparency laws, some of which require employers to be upfront about salary ranges in job adverts. Rhode Island, where this Hasbro role is based, also had new wage transparency laws passed in 2023, but these only state that the salary or wage range has to be provided “upon request”.
Hasbro’s new role is Senior Director for its board games division, though as the job listing is found under ‘Wizards and Hasbro Gaming’ we’d guess the successful candidate may have at least some involvement in Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. The Wizards of the Coast division has made a ton of money for Hasbro over recent years, despite the rest of the company struggling.
The job is based at Hasbro HQ in Pawtucket, Rhode Island however, and not Renton Washington, home of Wizards of the Coast – so perhaps you wouldn’t be working on those games after all. As the listing does not mention opportunities for remote working, we assume you’d be based on site. Hasbro publishes plenty of classic board games, from Monopoly to Mouse Trap, so perhaps this is the area the job is focused.
Hasbro recently laid off a sizeable contingent of its workers, including many in its most successful Wizards of the Coast division.