Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#231

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:51 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…

[deleted]

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#232

Post by munk-a » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #194

munk-a wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't believe there's any country in the first world where your take home matches the employer's out of pocket - in the US you've got healthcare, retirement matching, payroll taxes, other employment fees and a few other employer-side taxes. Most other countries follow a similar logic, relying on offloading some of the income tax burden onto the employer to prevent a total loss of tax income from judgement proof folks - it's always why withholding and tax refunds are so encouraged. If you've got proper or overaggressive withholding setup with your employer than it isn't possible for you to find yourself with a 10k bill in April that you can't pay - instead the government will return any wrongfully withheld income and you get a "bonus check".

In terms of the proportion 31% is relatively small honestly - employee charges in the US generally range somewhere in 40-60% but senior developers with families often have payroll overhead that can run upwards of 80k and can represent a much higher proportion of the employer's out of pocket employment expenses. These costs can be extreme at relatively hip progressive companies that employ some unskilled folks. Your 5k/month healthplan might be proportionally little on your 150k salary but if someone working in the mail room and earning 20k annual has the same benefits it'll work out to 300% their take home cost - this is why employers often segregate benefit packages to different pay ranges.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#233

Post by darkhorse13 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:51 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…

You seemed to have missed the entire point of the comment you're replying to, which is that this is not about money.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#234

Post by jaaron » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:52 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,…

It's not just that.

Google (and a few others) dealt with retention issues from startups and other companies in SV who's sole recruiting strategy was poach from Google, ie- use Google as a filter and let them do all the work finding great talent and then we'll just hire Googlers (or one of the other major SV tech companies).

So retention is a significant factor for Google and other FAANG companies. They can simply pay enough to make sure other companies can't come in and take their talent.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#235

Post by hn8788 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #166

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…

> Just to have a bit of a counter argument from me You didn't supply any kind of argument. Your comment can be reduced to "If you want a good salary, you are not one of us." As a person who loved gaming and wanted to work in that industry, you are the reason I didn't go for it.

You should take some personal responsibility and stop blaming your life choices on other people. There's also a world of difference between saying that a FAANG salary isn't the most important part of a job for some people, and saying people in game dev shouldn't have a good salary.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#236

Post by wernercd » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:56 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…

> If a Google recruiter told me

But it's not google telling you... it's literally the rank'n'file staff telling you that there's more important things than "money".

I'll not argue that many of the big players are garbage and are "anti-consumer"... but to dismiss how workers feel because you don't like some companies seems like you're missing the trees for the forest...

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#237

Post by bigbob2 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

sailingparrot wrote: post #213

paxys wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well getting minimum wage at Wendy's is also a supply and demand issue, but that job isn't sold as "do it for the love of the fast food industry". Ultimately a large chunk of game developers do have the skillset to be able to get better pay and working conditions elsewhere. They like making games, sure, but the tiniest amount of collective action among workers in the industry could ensure that you get to do what you…

> minimum wage at Wendy's is also a supply and demand issue, but that job isn't sold as "do it for the love of the fast food industry" That's a fallacy, no one goes to work at Wendy for the love of it. Some people do really want to work in video game for the love of it, they know that their salary will be lower, and they still do it.

The whole thing is apples to oranges because Wendy's is a specific business whereas the game industry is an entire industry. Many people enjoy working in restaurants, maybe just not so many at Wendy's. I'm sure many people who work at abusive companies such as EA love the industry they're in, but maybe not as many love working at EA. Probably explains the high turnover rate.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#238

Post by jjeaff » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:57 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

It's not nice to shame people, but it is helpful for the greater good of software developers if people would change their mind about being willing to work gruelling hours for lower pay. Because if there aren't enough developers willing to do it for low pay, the multi-billion dollar companies would have to pay more for game developers.

This is why groups like actors needed a union. There is an endless supply of wide eyed actors out there willing to work for nothing just for the chance of maybe becoming famous one day. The union keeps the big players from taking advantage of this endless supply.

Even with their union, actors make a median salary of around $40k. The top 25% best paid make closer to $60k median.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#239

Post by comp_throw7 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

ironmagma wrote: post #228

xenihn wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

If it's an early-stage startup, "base salary (+ bonus if applicable) + paper money". If it's a late-stage startup where you're getting RSUs and the company is likely to go public soon, people usually give a TC number that assumes equity pricing at FMV with the understanding that much of it is illiquid (I'd personally put a 30-40% discount on that kind of equity offered by late-stage startups to compensate for the illiquidity, uncertainty, and risk, but different people will have different numbers, and obviously the specific details of each situation are also important).

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#240

Post by kelnos » Mon, May 10, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

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…

> Crunch time is like 1 or 2 times a year, for maybe 1-2 months each time.

So, at worst, one-third of the time is crunch time. That's... a lot. Even a full month of crunch time per year isn't nothing.