Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#221

Post by moksly » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

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

I think your advice is only solid as far as pay goes. Nobody should work overtime for free. If you want to throw 80 hours a week on game development, at least make sure you own part of the company.

But for anyone working normal hours with normal benefits in a decent environment you are absolutely right. Money can be an excellent goal, but so can working on something you like, or working less to spend more time on something else.

Just never work for a company for free.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#222

Post by xenihn » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

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.

>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.

Not in tech.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#223

Post by StreamBright » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

julienb_sea wrote: post #179

This is ultimately a supply and demand issue. Google pays high salaries because they have to in order to hire the talent they want. Game devs apparently do not have to, because they are able to fill their roles for lower salaries. Don't pretend like all tech companies wouldn't love to lower dev salaries, they just can't because they wouldn't be able to hire. Game companies apparently have a meaningful differentiator,…

And the locations FAANGs are operate also tend to be the most expensive parts of US.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#224

Post by benhurmarcel » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:43 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…

> The health check is paid for out of taxes though

In Europe most of those taxes are paid by your employer, on top of your "before taxes" salary.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#225

Post by smus » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:43 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.

If you aren't at least living in a comfortable 1 bedroom apartment in a desirable location while contributing 30-40k in savings every year off 150k, you are seriously mismanaging your finances. I guess 150k is scraping by if you blow 50k on gacha games a year or something? I can't envision another scenario where you aren't incredibly comfortable off that much

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#226

Post by xtqctz » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #223

julienb_sea wrote: post #179

This is ultimately a supply and demand issue. Google pays high salaries because they have to in order to hire the talent they want. Game devs apparently do not have to, because they are able to fill their roles for lower salaries. Don't pretend like all tech companies wouldn't love to lower dev salaries, they just can't because they wouldn't be able to hire. Game companies apparently have a meaningful differentiator,…

And the locations FAANGs are operate also tend to be the most expensive parts of US.

This is fact which feels related, but doesn't have much to do with labor market wage equilibrium.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#227

Post by xenihn » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

wikibob wrote: post #89

daniel-thompson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my network:

- early retirement

- founding their own companies

- landlording

- teaching for fun/enjoyment/fulfillment, not because they need money

Some have done all 4 of these.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#228

Post by ironmagma » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

xenihn wrote: post #222

ironmagma wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. Not in tech.

So what’s the recommended way of talking about how much you make when you are at a startup which only has stock options, where the stocks may eventually be worth hundreds of thousands but are currently worth 0?

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#229

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

julienb_sea wrote: post #179

This is ultimately a supply and demand issue. Google pays high salaries because they have to in order to hire the talent they want. Game devs apparently do not have to, because they are able to fill their roles for lower salaries. Don't pretend like all tech companies wouldn't love to lower dev salaries, they just can't because they wouldn't be able to hire. Game companies apparently have a meaningful differentiator,…

[deleted]

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#230

Post by bityard » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

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

A bunch of people already responded to this, but I'm going to add my two cents anyway:

I currently make 6 low figures in a relatively boring but non-stressful systems administration job. The company is a dinosaur in Internet Years and has its idiosyncrasies but is ultimately a very decent place to work. My manager gives me my priorities and then gets out of my way to let me do my work. I work 40 hours a week, sometimes less. The company is mostly software devs and QA, so there's no such thing as on-call because nothing we manage needs 24x7 uptime. In 10 years, there have been about 3 times I've gotten a call on the weekend to help bring something back online.

I could very easily double my salary in under a year if I really buckled down and tried to pivot to DevOps role in some rapidly growing biotech or fintech (read: crypto) company instead. The tradeoffs being: 1) sacrificing basically all my free time and time with my family in order to adequately grok the ever-changing world of DevOps 2) that feeling of being out of my depth for 6 months to a year that comes with moving to a new company 3) almost certainly being part of an on-call rotation 4) taking a risk on a new company that may go bankrupt or get bought out a few years down the road, and so on.

I'm making an active choice to keep my stability and work/life balance while making what I consider to be a reasonable wage.