Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#261

Post by thewarrior » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:32 PM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #241

I left the game industry for FAANG and I'm getting paid 2-3x more. I'm happy with this situation if I consider the big picture but, at least in my case, my game job was much, MUCH better than FAANG. No matter how many fancy drinks and energy bars FAANG gives me, if the pay in the game industry was higher I'd have stayed without a doubt. What this means is that FAANG is actually paying what it needs to pay to get empl…

There’s some truth to this I’ll admit. But if most of the work is dull why do you need the “best” ?

I saw an explanation later in this thread that made more sense. FANGs do have a lot of good employees. And if they didn’t pay high salaries other companies would simply swoop in and free ride on all the hard work they do to find and groom talent. FANGs spend a lot of money scouring the entire globe and interviewing so many people in detail. It’s a juicy target for recruiter raiding. And just like you can’t get fired for hiring IBM you can’t get fired for hiring FANG. This attracts yet more talent. But yes the level of the engineers is not as great as the salaries would suggest.

But on the flip side for anyone doing hiring. If you want some wicked smart devs who don’t ask for as much then look at game devs.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#262

Post by ineptech » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

I don't know why this is limited to game developers. I'm a mgr/dir and it seems obvious to me that secrecy around salaries is consciously perpetuated because it allows corporations to get away with underpaying some people.

I can't think of any circumstance where it wouldn't be in the individual contributors' best interests to tell each other exactly what they all make. If everyone on my teams shared their salaries with each other, it would lead to two things: a) some short-term bad blood and awkwardness, and b) some underpaid people getting raises or quitting. And I think my bosses, especially the old-school ones, consciously play up a) and treat salary as a giant taboo to avoid b).

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#263

Post by BeetleB » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #240

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.

Yeah - plenty of SW jobs that pay as much and more, with 0 crunch time per year.

A month is a lot for subpar pay.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#264

Post by ska » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

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.

It's simple; most bay area, like most everywhere, is not FAANG. Treating a non-unimodal distribution as if it were unimodal leads to all sorts of silliness.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#265

Post by jedberg » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

bedhead wrote: post #258

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,…

This is fairly normal for certain "glamour" industries. Back in the day when it was relevant, MTV was infamous for paying people almost nothing, for no other reason than they could because MTV had a coolness factor associated with it that people sought. Same is generally true for a lot of the entertainment industry.

Apple still uses that line to underpay people. Their compensation is famously lower than all the other FAANG companies.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#266

Post by Philip-J-Fry » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

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.

Well, that's because you're looking at London, infamous for how expensive it is to live in.

It's fairly easy to be on £60k outside of London with a few years of experience. Moving up north towards the Midlands or even further like Manchester or Leeds and you're going to live a very comfortable life on a Software Developer salary.

Yeah, it's not the US where people are on £200k at 25. But earning £60k in your 20s puts you so far ahead of almost everyone else in their 20s in the UK.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#267

Post by paxys » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #241

I left the game industry for FAANG and I'm getting paid 2-3x more. I'm happy with this situation if I consider the big picture but, at least in my case, my game job was much, MUCH better than FAANG. No matter how many fancy drinks and energy bars FAANG gives me, if the pay in the game industry was higher I'd have stayed without a doubt. What this means is that FAANG is actually paying what it needs to pay to get empl…

You are adjusting too hard in the other direction. "Most" people at FAANG companies are absolutely not miserable. The typical engineer at Google/Facebook works 40 hours a week, gets a good salary and is content with their life.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#268

Post by koyote » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:44 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #198

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.

> Western European salary is taxed for around 40%

You'll only get that tax rate at very high salaries and it's also of course marginal. In the UK the first 12k (~$17k) is entirely tax free for example. After that it's 20% up until you have earned 50k (~$70k). Only after that does the 40% tax kick in. So on a $75k salary, only $5k will be taxed at 40%.

For a $75k salary you would be paying just over 16% tax and 9% national insurance (i.e. pension) in the UK.

When I first started working as a SWE in the UK I worked out that my average tax rate was actually slightly lower than if I earned the same in California. If I was earning 2-3x more then the higher European taxes start to kick in.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#269

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

moksly wrote: post #221

bko wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 som…

> Nobody should work overtime for free.

> Just never work for a company for free.

Screw you, buddy, I'll do what I want to!

(Okay, my aggressive tone is a joke, but I do actually mean the underlying point. I've worked for free many times, for at least two totally different reasons in different situations, and I'll do it again, and it's ridiculous to say that people should "never" do this. Different people have different goals.)

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#270

Post by majormajor » Mon, May 10, 2021, 10:49 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.

> That's a fallacy, no one goes to work at Wendy for the love of it.

I don't know, there are a lot of jobs that are worse than Wendy's out there. "Love" is a strong word, but the same forces are at play.