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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#151

Post by khazhoux »

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.

> The more unsexy a software field is, the better the pay and work conditions are.

I don't know... tell that to everyone who rebranded their statistics degree as "Data Science" starting ten years ago and got a huge career boost, or all the fresh-outs with multi-hundred-$ grant packages because they got an A in their Machine Learning class.

In fact, I can think of glamorous places that do pretty well for their software engineers (Pixar, Apple, ...) and I've seen firsthand how unglamorous companies can also be shitty and low-pay.

Apart from video games, I think there's not many examples to bolster your claim.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#152

Post by rhodozelia »

idiotsecant wrote: post #135
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.

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 ind…

I’ve done private and Public hydro and the private projects were still stressful with liquidated damages hanging over my head if i caused a delay in the project and all of the environmental considerations which dramatically complicated the machinery and the controls.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#153

Post by aidenn0 »

dahfizz wrote: post #144
dv_dt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus one carries a huge high side uncertainty in costs from healthcare in the US.

Only if you're uninsured. Any halfway decent health insurance plan has out of pocket maxes that a software engineer can easily cover. I'm general, QOL is going to be better in Europe if youre in a low income bracket because you get so much as a public service. But if you make real money, you're going to be better off in America.

I have never seen a health-care plan in the US with real out-of-pocket maxes. The fine-print is crazy on those clauses. We got burned by going to an ER while traveling, and while the ER bill was covered under out-of-pocket maxes, both doctors who saw our son in the ER were not employees of the ER, and so counted as neither in-network nor emergency room care. Basically 90% of the bill was not subject to the out-of-pocket maximum on our plan.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#154

Post by Impossible »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #115
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.

Roblox is a very different kind of game company though. I've noticed the more service oriented game companies have better wages and work life balance. The more old school, content heavy ones have lowe pay and longer hours.

Ultimately it's working on game tech and companies like Roblox also hire for other roles that don't have exact equivalent in web or mobile development (art and game design roles mostly). Limiting your definition of "game development" to content heavy games with low pay and longer hours, especially when the industry is moving away from that type of game with a few exceptions, doesn't make sense.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#155

Post by dijit »

gambiting wrote: post #65
yurishimo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking away is only powerful if you have leverage. Game devs, unlike a lot of other software, are not super in demand. You can't apply for an entry level job at EA and then pop over to Ubisoft instead when the offer from EA is crap. There are way more folks trying to break into game dev than there are jobs available.

I actually work for a AAA games company and what you said only applies at kind of junior/intermediate level. Hit senior/lead/expert and you can walk out and get another job in a week, it's super hard to hire seniors and above and those positions hold a lot of leverage. Edit: obligatory "above is true in my experience, YMMV"

I work(ed) for the same company as gambiting and can confirm this to be true.

Hit Senior (easy to do after 5y) and game companies throw money at you to come over because getting people in who have a shipping mentality is hard- most people who want to be gamedevs see the glamour, those that ship see the pain a mile away and how to avoid it.

The issue might be that most who become senior do not really move because the tool chains are largely different between companies. Frostbite and Snowdrop are incredibly different game engines and even those working on Unreal/Unity at the AAA level invariably maintain a fork due to limitations in the engine itself which makes it not compelling to sacrifice all your knowledge.

Also, I find that most companies end up turning their C++ into a custom C++-like language with fancy types like growable hash tables and vectors. Many of which have quirks which require experience otherwise there can be footguns. (Some functions may be more correct but quadratic and others are fast but less precise and knowing when to use what is part of being a senior in some companies)

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#156

Post by andrewljohnson »

ironmagma wrote: post #149
andrewljohnson wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go: https://www.levels.fyi/

Judging by levels.fyi it's exactly what I said, L4 at Google makes ~$157k a year. If you're talking about TC that has to be said; most people when they are talking about "making X amount" are talking about salary.

Total comp is what matters, and that's what people talk about. Bonus and RSUs are just cash.

L4 SE makes $266K: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

And L4 is one rung above entry level, 1-2 years at Google, right out of college.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#158

Post by HideousKojima »

Raed667 wrote: post #43
gpm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you should just be comparing pre-tax salary converted into the same currency?

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.

Average cost of healthcare in the US is ~$15,000 a year for a family of 4. When you're working full time, your employer generally covers most of your healthcare with a small amount contributed by you, and this employer contribution is counted separately from your salary. It depends on the employer, but the cost to you is generally in the range of $1,000-$6,000 a year.

So no guarantee of health care coverage after losing your job etc. but it's basically only ~$6,000 extra a year out of your salary at worst. So a $150,000 job in the U.S. is roughly equivalent to a $144,000 job in Europe (before you get into housing and food prices etc.)

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#159

Post by arthurcolle »

bluesquared wrote: post #140
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.

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.

Would you be down to give an approximate range for salary?

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#160

Post by stewx »

I looked at the salaries people are posting, and what I am seeing is people (at least the ones comfortable with posting this kind of info on the Internet) rapidly climbing from $30-50k/yr USD to $75-150k/yr USD.

These are excellent wages. They may be lower than outside the video game industry, but by any other standard they are phenomenally good wages, in the top 1% globally and at least the top 10-20% in developed countries. In terms of income, these people are unambiguously part of the upper class.

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