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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#191

Post by ska »

paxys wrote: post #163
socialist_coder wrote: post #150

Just to have a bit of a counter argument from me, a game developer who loves games and has worked in the US games industry for the majority of my 20 years career: If your argument is "You can make more at a FAANG company" - well yeah, you can. You don't work in gaming because you want to make the top salary. You work in gaming because you love games and you enjoy having all your coworkers also love games and being ab…

The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda that only serves to keep labor costs low. The entities on top are large multi-billion dollar corporations who are running a business, just like any other industry. And this has been more and more apparent in recent years seeing just how anti-consumer the video games industry is getting. If a Google recruiter told me "take a low salary and wo…

Sure, but "most of the industry can't pay FAANG salaries" is also true.

There is a lot of room between that your characterization.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#192

Post by bko »

paxys wrote: post #163
socialist_coder wrote: post #150

Just to have a bit of a counter argument from me, a game developer who loves games and has worked in the US games industry for the majority of my 20 years career: If your argument is "You can make more at a FAANG company" - well yeah, you can. You don't work in gaming because you want to make the top salary. You work in gaming because you love games and you enjoy having all your coworkers also love games and being ab…

The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda that only serves to keep labor costs low. The entities on top are large multi-billion dollar corporations who are running a business, just like any other industry. And this has been more and more apparent in recent years seeing just how anti-consumer the video games industry is getting. If a Google recruiter told me "take a low salary and wo…

> The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda

Or you could just value things about work apart from salary. No need to shame people for going for not doing for the absolute highest paying job. You can try to do the best you can comp wise, but if you're only chasing money your whole life, it won't lead to much satisfaction and is generally bad advice

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#193

Post by PragmaticPulp »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #141
ryandrake wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

None of us have leverage besides our willingness to walk away. That's not the difference. I see some people act like negotiating is an antagonistic game of chicken or something. In reality, it's just an amicable case of you finding your best options, communicating them clearly to everyone involved, then taking the best option. Think of it as more like an auction than some slick game of poker. What's wrong with this s…

The problem with most online salary negotiation advice is that it revolves around this idea that hiring is a 1-on-1 game between the candidate and the company. It assumes that the company has no other choices, so they must cave to the demands of the candidate.

In practice, companies keep multiple candidates in the hiring pipeline and candidates usually interview with multiple companies at once. It's not a 1-on-1 game, it's an N-on-M game. Unless the specific candidate has something ultra-specific to offer, companies are fine with declining increased salary demands.

I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't negotiate, but you have to keep in mind that neither side holds all of the cards.

> Candidate: I'll walk if you give me less than $140K.

> Hiring manager: Ok... Bye?

As a hiring manager, I might have multiple candidates with different levels of seniority in my hiring pipeline. I might be willing to pay $300K for a senior, $200K for a mid-level, and $100K for a junior employee (example numbers). If my mid-level candidate threatens to walk unless I pay them $300K, I'm going to let them walk and give the $300K offer to the more senior candidate. I have no desire to overpay for a mid-level when I can get a senior-level for the same price.

This is what most people forget in negotiations: You're not just negotiating against the company, you're negotiating against everyone else who wants the job.

In practice, reaching equilibrium requires being willing to push the demands until your demands or offers are being rejected more than they're being accepted. That requires more sample points, so always apply to as many jobs as possible.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#194

Post by dijit »

munk-a wrote: post #108
AS_of wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US salaries also have to include cost of healthcare.

Not in their dollar amount unless something really weird is going on - the effective cost of US employees is a lot higher than employees elsewhere in the world due to the overhead of health insurance - but US salaries remain pretty much at the top of major nations world-wide even ignoring that cost.

I think a lot of people seem to forget that employers pay more than the base salary in Europe. For instance your “salary” in Sweden is 31.42% higher than what you’re told your base salary is, due to pension contributions, and social services.

As an employer I would have to pay 78.852 if an employee had a base salary of 60.000.

This is before personal income taxes, which are also very high.

https://www.verksamt.se/web/international/running/employing-...

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#195

Post by Raed667 »

gpm wrote: post #186
Keats wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French always use before taxes numbers ("brut"). €62k is about 41k after taxes.

I'm the first to admit I have no clue about the French tax system, but a quick search finds this [1] that suggests there are both employer and employee paid taxes. Would I be right in assuming that the reported numbers are after the employer paid taxes and before the employee paid ones? [1] https://www.cabinet-roche.com/en/payroll-taxes-in-france/

TBH for the average employee it doesn't matter if the company or you are paying, it gets deducted automatically anyway.

There are websites [0] that will help you do the conversion Brut/Net easily

[0] https://www.salaire-brut-en-net.fr/

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#196

Post by aidenn0 »

dahfizz wrote: post #172
aidenn0 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-poc…

I have always had an option for a plan that has an explicit out of pocket max for out of network costs. Maybe that's not very common.

We have that option to, and I looked at switching to it, but the list of exceptions to the out-of-network costs was still fairly long and contained words that I wasn't sure what they meant in the context of a legal document. Considering we'd be paying about $20k more out-of-pocket with that plan in a typical year, I wasn't sure if "getting a smaller list of exceptions" was worth it.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#197

Post by bidirectional »

ngngngng wrote: post #37
Nursie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s just games! UK software dev money is terrible, outside of contracting.

Why in the world is software money so terrible in the UK? I always look up salaries and cost of living when traveling and the UK was one of the more surprising instances of that. It seems like the only way to live comfortably in London is in finance.

Lawyers too, though there is a similar bimodal salary distribution, so it only applies to the top lawyers. Outside of those two fields nothing in the UK compares to US wages.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#198

Post by tgv »

stewx wrote: post #160

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 c…

$75k is considerably higher than the top 10% for almost the entire world. Even in most of Western Europe, $75k would be in the top 5%. It of course depends on what that salary actually contains: a Western European salary is taxed for around 40%, but health care is cheap.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#199

Post by r00fus »

bko wrote: post #192
paxys wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda that only serves to keep labor costs low. The entities on top are large multi-billion dollar corporations who are running a business, just like any other industry. And this has been more and more apparent in recent years seeing just how anti-consumer the video games industry is getting. If a Google recruiter told me "take a low salary and wo…

> The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda Or you could just value things about work apart from salary. No need to shame people for going for not doing for the absolute highest paying job. You can try to do the best you can comp wise, but if you're only chasing money your whole life, it won't lead to much satisfaction and is generally bad advice

The kind of insight into the gaming industry tells me my job in tech outside of gaming is far more sane, and rewarding than the absolutely grueling schedules gaming companies foist on their devs week in and week out.

80+h weeks will absolutely kill any love or value you can get unless you're also a masochist.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#200

Post by AlwaysRock »

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.…

Well this is bad negotiation for a lot of reasons. I've coached 1000's of folks on getting better offers. You are right that you have to have some leverage. But walking away is only one of many possible leverage points. You could also have other offers, have done well in the interview process, be walking away from an existing role that offers xyz that isnt offered at this company... What data points or pieces of leverage do you have other than I will walk? Because that is and should be the last piece used.

If you are putting the first number out you're already working from behind.

Company: We'll offer you 100K.

Candidate: I'm really excited about the role for xyz reasons and I liked meeting with (insert persons name here) because it allowed me to learn about (insert reason you actually like the company here).

I had a question about the offer. The base salary was a bit lower than I was expecting. Do you think we could get it adjusted? (If you have a point of leverage insert that here like, "My current comp is actually pretty close to this offer and I am expecting an promotion sometime in the next 6 months based on conversations with my manager").

I hope we can work this out over the next few days because I think this opportunity is the right next step in my career.

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

Company: "Okay we can do 115K"

Candidate: Thanks so much for getting those adjustments. I was targeting closer to a 150K base salary. I am very invested in the role and the company though. I'm specifically excited about working with XYZ.

Do you think we can move the base salary closer to that 150K mark? If not could we get a sign on bonus for the difference?

If you could get to 150K base salary or something like 130K with a 20K sign on bonus I'd be ready to sign today and could start 2 weeks from Friday.

Company: probably comes back with something less than 150K but something a whole lot better than 100K.

I've had exactly one person I coached ever have their offer pulled. He basically said here are all the reasons your company sucks and I need XXXk to come work there.

That's not negotiating. Negotiating is finding a point where you and the company both feel like you are both fairly valued.

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