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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#131

Post by granshaw »

BurningFrog wrote: post #116
ashtonkem wrote: post #42

My standard advice to every graduate CS student is to stay the hell away from professional video game development. If you want to make games, turn it into a hobby instead.

The more unsexy a software field is, the better the pay and work conditions are. Sewage treatment plant software is probably an awesome field to have a career, aside from when you want to explain what you do at cocktail parties. Video game development is the most glamorous showbiz part of the industry, so working there is, on average, really awful.

Really? I think FAANG, which is generally the highest paying in software, is percepted as sexy, at least to the layperson and to recruiters.

If there are really sewage industry jobs that pay better than FAANG, please tell me more cause I'm interested

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#132

Post by twodave »

The skill required to perform a job isn't the only consideration when determining its cost.

I grew up with the dream of working for Blizzard or the like. The truth is, gaming is a major gateway into the programming world. Kids grow up playing these games and dream about what it would be like to be able to create something so spectacular. Many of us who went through with learning to build software took a different path, either due to location restraints or economics or just lack of ability.

These wage discrepancies are not caused by companies paying crap wages. It's caused by game developers who are willing to accept living in a high-cost area alongside earning crap wages. If you're in game development and want to be paid more, step out of game development and optionally move to a more affordable area. If you're competent you'll end up with a pay raise and better working/life balance.

If you're hell-bent on working your dream job in a high-cost location, you should be cognizant that it's lots of other people's dream job, too (many of whom have put it aside, but would return in a heartbeat if the compensation were comparable). You've chosen to put money in the back seat.

TL;DR - until more people start making the economical choice, game development salaries will continue to be low.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#133

Post by fennecfoxen »

ryandrake wrote: post #80
SamuelAdams wrote: post #18

This isn't unique to game dev. This is true in education as well - most white collar positions pay between 40 - 100k while vice presidents and presidents get 250k + packages. I think more developers need to get better at negotiating. One 10 minute conversation can beat years of 2-4% raises. It's all about setting expectations and being willing to walk away.

You see this advice a lot, but it's never very specific. "Just negotiate better!" OK, great... how? Most of us have no leverage besides our willingness to walk away, and when the market is saturated with talent, it's usually fine for a company to just let you walk away. I bet for someone who happens to be the world's foremost expert in some niche skill the company needs, negotiating a higher comp is straightforward.…

1. The company you describe was never going to pay you much more than $100k. If you wanted more than that, you should have picked a different company. Setting your salary is more about efficiently finding that other company, and less about negotiation.

2. Your willingness to walk away is, indeed, your primary leverage. Ongoing employment is a great way to have lots of leverage there — you can start filtering out offers at the "recruiter is emailing me" stage — otherwise, develop leverage by collecting multiple offers at once (lining up a variety of interviews so that they come in around the same time).

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#134

Post by ashtonkem »

granshaw wrote: post #131
BurningFrog wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more unsexy a software field is, the better the pay and work conditions are. Sewage treatment plant software is probably an awesome field to have a career, aside from when you want to explain what you do at cocktail parties. Video game development is the most glamorous showbiz part of the industry, so working there is, on average, really awful.

Really? I think FAANG, which is generally the highest paying in software, is percepted as sexy, at least to the layperson and to recruiters. If there are really sewage industry jobs that pay better than FAANG, please tell me more cause I'm interested

Seems like FAANG is seen as less sexy by industry insiders nowadays. Amazon in particular seems to be a “see you in a year!” Kind of situation.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#135

Post by idiotsecant »

BurningFrog wrote: post #116
ashtonkem wrote: post #42

My standard advice to every graduate CS student is to stay the hell away from professional video game development. If you want to make games, turn it into a hobby instead.

The more unsexy a software field is, the better the pay and work conditions are. Sewage treatment plant software is probably an awesome field to have a career, aside from when you want to explain what you do at cocktail parties. Video game development is the most glamorous showbiz part of the industry, so working there is, on average, really awful.

As someone who does industrial controls wastewater treatment is one of the worst industries because it's so low-margin. It's a 'barely pay for it the first time and run it until it breaks down' type of industry because municipalities and rate payers are usually quite cost sensitive, but pedantry aside your point is largely accurate.

As a side note - In my experience the best paid but most mind-meltingly dangerous industrial controls work is in oil refining. The most low-stress (and somewhat less well paid) work i've experienced is in designing control systems for hydroelectric facilities for private utilities. I wouldn't consider either glamorous but the hydro work does have a more environmentally friendly image and does have a correlating lower pay!

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#136

Post by drdec »

Context_free wrote: post #46
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…

> bizarrely then talks about unions, which are known to depress wages for top performers I guess that's why top performing movie stars, NBA basketball players etc. have their wages depressed? Maybe companies lowballing salaries, or being in secret, illegal cartels to drive down salaries of high earners like that lawsuit showing Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs did, can depress wages too? > Negotiation is an extremely impo…

> I guess that's why top performing movie stars, NBA basketball players etc. have their wages depressed?

I can't speak to movie stars, but as for the NBA, there is absolutely the concept of a maximum salary (depends on years of service plus other things besides the point) in the collective bargaining agreement. This limits the compensation a player may receive from a team for a particular year. The top players like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, would no question receive higher salaries if this limit did not exist.

As to whether or not the top players or even the players as a whole are better off or worse off for having a union, that's a horse of a different color. My gut feeling is that both classes are better off.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#137

Post by aidenn0 »

ironmagma wrote: post #92
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…

Citation? Even in the Bay Area the median is considered somewhere around $150k.

I looked into bay area jobs and FAANG was worth a minimum of $40k premium over working at other companies.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#138

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

pasquinelli wrote: post #88
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, b…

The one thing that has pissed me off the most about job markets is that companies have outsourced the training on you... the most common remark when interviewing is "we want someone be able to hit the ground right away"

I remember hearing about companies actually training their people.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#139

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

emtel wrote: post #30
f430 wrote: post #2

What is it about game development field that makes it so labor intensive with consistent overtimes? I tried to make a simple FPS game and it was astounding how much work was involved. Took 6 month of learning Unreal and Unity and gave up with a functioning prototype. Took 4 months of back and forth with Steam to list my game. Even harder trying to make money off it. I'm just in awe of Roblox, Minecraft, Fall Guy and…

> What is it about game development field that makes it so labor intensive with consistent overtimes? I helped lead a team that built and shipped a 3D multiplayer game from scratch with a custom engine. I went into it expecting it to be harder than I thought it would be, and it was harder still. I think the thing that makes game dev fundamentally harder than other types of software is that most software products solv…

I think this hits the nail on the head.

There is a low barrier to solving someone's pain in creating a typical CRUD app. Its easy to pick an industry, find an application that could use some newer features and create something. Copying feature parity involves little creative work.

There is no ceiling on making a game fun to play. Creative, fun ways to do crafting, leveling, fighting, puzzles, etc. can engage players to come back and replay content infinitely if that is the goal.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#140

Post by bluesquared »

BurningFrog wrote: post #116
ashtonkem wrote: post #42

My standard advice to every graduate CS student is to stay the hell away from professional video game development. If you want to make games, turn it into a hobby instead.

The more unsexy a software field is, the better the pay and work conditions are. Sewage treatment plant software is probably an awesome field to have a career, aside from when you want to explain what you do at cocktail parties. Video game development is the most glamorous showbiz part of the industry, so working there is, on average, really awful.

I work for a medical device company in the midwest. So definitely meets the "unsexy" criterial - slow-paced embedded development in an "unsexy" location. Definitely low on the pay side even when factoring in cost of living. Work conditions are pretty ok, especially if you are not ambitious. I doubt this kind of work gets much more than a CoL bump on the coasts.
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