Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#81

Post by Raed667 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #71

Raed667 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, for example in France I can go and do a full-spectrum healthcare check (eyes, dental, physical, mental, name it...) and it would cost me -in total- less than 100€ nothing is deduced from my salary. One year of prestigious university is less than 600€ in fees... Cost of living, education, transportation, etc... also are a factor.

The health check is paid for out of taxes though, in the end money/goods/services aren't free. I mean sure, France's government and health care system is probably a bit more efficient than America's, but I doubt it's order of magnitude different. Maybe more importantly, but in the other direction, as a developer in France you're probably paying more for healthcare than you use (subsidizing the average person who pays…

Hence my inability to compare a 150k$ offer in California to a 62k€ offer in Lyon.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#82

Post by daniel-thompson » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #64

ttul wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. My friend is making $250K working for Roblox. He’s 15yrs into his career - all game dev. Doesn’t seem too bad.

That's great, but most FAANG eng make more than that by their 2nd or 3rd year. With 15 years of experience, they could be making at least 500k+. edit: for the skeptical, this is what an L4 makes at Google[1], L4 is easily attainable within 3 years, pretty likely in 2 years, that's assuming you start at L3 (straight out of college or very little experience). 1: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-E…

Most FAANG eng in their 2nd or 3rd year are not FAANG anymore by their 15th year.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#83

Post by colinmhayes » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #27

bluescrn wrote: post #10

The massive gap between UK and US gamedev salaries seems to keep getting larger :(

US cost of living is ridiculous. You shouldn't just compare two numbers one to one. 150k in California is basically just scraping by.

Most game dev seems to be in LA which is quite a bit cheaper than the bay. 150k is solidly upper middle class in most of LA. I think only Roblox is in the bay.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#84

Post by gambiting » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

ojhughes wrote: post #68

gambiting wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. I've had this discussion here with someone saying if you don't make at least $150k/year(or equivalent in local currency) as a dev, leave immediately. I was like.....in UK, that would mean 90% of the programming workforce would leave tomorrow :-P to get that much as a programmer you need to either be in contracting, or few of the companies paying that much in London(but then you're paying London rent so I'm n…

I earned very close to that this year outside of London. It’s definitely possible to live up north and earn that (working remotely)

I don't doubt that, but it's pretty rare. I know several devs in lead/expert positions(not in games, in finance, in consulting companies, in DWP and NHS) and no one breaks £100k/year. It happens, but it's very rare(in my experience).

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#85

Post by munk-a » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #28

0xy wrote: post #4

It's really weird how this article starts by showing how through negotiation and job searching you can increase your salary, but bizarrely then talks about unions, which are known to depress wages for top performers (just look at teachers unions, where pay is totally disconnected from competence and performance). If you're a really good game developer, artist or animator then you should learn the skill of negotiation…

Teacher performance is difficult if not impossible to quantify, especially given how much student performance depends on factors external to the classroom. But more to the point, most teaching jobs are government jobs, and government jobs have salary bands set by legislation. You can't individually negotiate with legislators. That has nothing to do with having a union. Most government jobs are not unionized, but stil…

On this point in particular, most of the routes we've tried to use to quantify teacher worth have resulted in bizarre scenarios where teachers actively want to avoid certain classes of students. Early metrics usually punished teachers that were assigned underperformaners - while no child left behind had an expected grade growth formula that could result in a teacher needing to get a student a score above 100 to avoid being weighted towards getting a pay cut.

It's honestly a lot like development - it's hard to distinguish someone being lazy or bad from someone who's gotten stuck with difficult problems - or, more likely, problems that looked easier on the surface than they were in actuality. But, unlike development where these measures could potentially be discovered by reducing efficiency and forcing multiple devs to solve problems in parallel - that's impossible to do when every student is different at a basic level.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#86

Post by pavlov » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

the_only_law wrote: post #61

ttul wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. My friend is making $250K working for Roblox. He’s 15yrs into his career - all game dev. Doesn’t seem too bad.

I was shocked at the pay at Roblox. I was on levels.fyi the other day and came across a list of companies with the highest pay for new grads and it was in the top five I believe.

It's a recent IPO, and a social gaming platform company rather than a game studio.

Roblox's competition is TikTok and Snap rather than traditional game companies.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#87

Post by sillysaurusx » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

My early salary history as a midwest gamedev:

17yo: unpaid intern, 1 year (2005)

18yo: $20k/yr (2006)

19yo: $35/yr (2007)

22yo: $70k/yr (2010)

I don't regret it; I learned most of my skills during those formative years. But I was also "part of the problem" in the sense that I was happy as a clam being paid $20k/yr living at my parents' house, putting every dollar into the bank. Saved up $15k and felt like I was rich; it was great.

I'm not sure there's anything to learn from my experience, since I was an outlier, but there y'go. I was also so completely dedicated to the idea of becoming a gamedev that I'm not sure anyone could have talked me out of it.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#88

Post by pasquinelli » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #19

Spoiler: Without reading it, it's shit. People go into it thinking they're in love with video games and get chewed out of the machine after a few years.

what i learned as a gamedev: the saying, "do what you love for a living and you never work a day in your life", is false. it's actually, "do what you love for a living and what you love becomes a job."

what you need is a job you don't mind doing, which is the scam of higher education, because you plunk down all that money or debt or both, and years of time, and you get no guarantee that there'll be any job for you, but worse, you have no idea if you want to do that job. meanwhile, corporations have plenty of people to pick from who need to get a job in their field, either for financial reasons or psychological ones, who trained themselves at their own expense. the idea that such a large block of people are cornered into acting against their own interests and in the interests of such a small block of people almost makes one question the idea of liberal democracy.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#89

Post by wikibob » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

daniel-thompson wrote: post #82

rawtxapp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but most FAANG eng make more than that by their 2nd or 3rd year. With 15 years of experience, they could be making at least 500k+. edit: for the skeptical, this is what an L4 makes at Google[1], L4 is easily attainable within 3 years, pretty likely in 2 years, that's assuming you start at L3 (straight out of college or very little experience). 1: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-E…

Most FAANG eng in their 2nd or 3rd year are not FAANG anymore by their 15th year.

Interesting hypothesis. Where do you think they go?

I’d say it might seem this way because of the hyper growth. Most people at FAANG haven’t been there long, because they haven’t been big that long.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#90

Post by ashtonkem » Mon, May 10, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

xvector wrote: post #69

Thaxll wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most dev in the US don't make 250k after 15years.

Most devs in the US don’t care about maximizing their career.

Pay isn’t even the main reason I’d avoid gaming, it’s the tendency of game companies to grossly abuse their workers via crunch time and sudden studio closures that worries me. The same dynamics that suppress game dev salaries also lead companies to treating their workers as replaceable, which is a pretty bad situation to end up in.