Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 566 posts

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#311

Post by titanomachy »

sanxiyn wrote: post #299
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…

My theory is that while work is dull, people are not overqualified. They need smart people not because logic they write is complex, but because navigating total chaos of internal system complexity needs smartness. If they could refactor and get internal systems in order they could lower qualification bar, but that refactoring requires super duper overqualified people, etc.

I think this might be about right. Google's internal tools were built by very smart engineers for use by other very smart engineers. (I'm thinking especially of the Producers Framework as I write this, but there are other examples.)

I've seen plenty of intelligent people struggle to get their heads around Google's abstractions. The tools are powerful enough, though, that once you get it you can pretty easily build stuff that scales to ridiculous levels.

It could be that better design will make these kinds of tools more accessible in the future.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#312

Post by daniellarusso »

rxhernandez wrote: post #300
Aliabid94 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that also plays a big factor in the general over qualification of FAANG employees is that mistakes can be very very costly. It’s worth paying one engineer that gets things right 99.99% of the time twice the salary of engineer that gets things right only 99.9% of the time.

From what I recall of the training I received from a somewhat well-known Chief Quality Officer, you don't get things right more often by getting better people, you get things right more often by making better processes for people to follow (the latter of which isn't as directly tied to better people as you may think). Frankly, I don't get the hype. I've interviewed FAANG engineers and have given a thumbs down almost…

Yes, the McDonald’s philosophy.

Having clearly articulated processes certainly help consistency.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#313

Post by Pfhreak »

ska wrote: post #191
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…

Sure, but "most of the industry can't pay FAANG salaries" is also true. There is a lot of room between that your characterization.

There are plenty of games companies that are billion dollar businesses. They absolutely can afford to pay FAANG salaries.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#314

Post by hintymad »

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…

It's all about finding a company that's small enough so revenue per employee is north of a million and your work is visible to your entire organization and the quantity of work far exceeds the number of people. With these three conditions, you will get both meaningful work and high pay without even trying (except trying to get into the company).

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#315

Post by cmrdporcupine »

rxhernandez wrote: post #300
Aliabid94 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that also plays a big factor in the general over qualification of FAANG employees is that mistakes can be very very costly. It’s worth paying one engineer that gets things right 99.99% of the time twice the salary of engineer that gets things right only 99.9% of the time.

From what I recall of the training I received from a somewhat well-known Chief Quality Officer, you don't get things right more often by getting better people, you get things right more often by making better processes for people to follow (the latter of which isn't as directly tied to better people as you may think). Frankly, I don't get the hype. I've interviewed FAANG engineers and have given a thumbs down almost…

Agree on the process points.

Re: the hype .. what I would say is, as an employee of a FAANG, is that I work with really smart people. Some of the smartest and most competent people I've ever worked with. Most much smarter than myself.

But after 9 years, I'm not convinced that their intelligence always yields results that exceed that of other companies I've worked at. In some ways, yes, but in other ways no. So, I dunno.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#316

Post by Pfhreak »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #175
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…

Outside of HN, most senior engineers understand that they can relocate to an area with a FAANG office and earn more money. It's not a secret. Many choose not to pursue this option, despite knowing it exists. And that's okay. The incessant drive to obtain FAANG employment and FAANG salaries at any cost is not common outside of internet forums like HN or Blind. For many people, there is more to life than chasing the hi…

I think you misunderstand the parent's post. It's not about critiquing someone's choices, it's about recognizing when you are being exploited.

And yeah, maybe the game devs being exploited think the situation is fine. The long hours for low pay is paid back by the intangibles of working on a game.

The point isn't that the dev made the choice, it's that it was ever framed as a choice in the first place. Many games studios are making billions in profits and absolutely could pay FAANG salaries and still turn profits.

So it's less about individual choices, and more about ensuring the workers are getting compensated fairly for the work they love doing.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#317

Post by Pfhreak »

vvanders wrote: post #305
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…

> Also the argument that it's "grueling 80+ hour weeks day in and day out is" is bullshit! The only time I ever worked 80 hours in a single week was when I was starting out in Quality Assurance and I was getting paid hourly so I was happy to make the extra overtime. Sorry but I'm going to call bullshit on your bullshit. Spent ~5 years in the industry and every place I worked crunched like hell and every place that my…

I also worked in the industry and would agree with your assessment. Many of the senior folks I talked to even agreed that crunch was a 'mandatory, necessary' part of game development.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#318

Post by Pfhreak »

Impossible wrote: post #161
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…

It's also possible to work on games or game like software at FAANG, not crunch (although FAANG companies have plenty of other toxic qualities that can make them worse than a game job in subtle ways) and get paid a FAANG salary.

Hope you aren't talking about Amazon Games Studios, because that place is incredibly toxic from what I understand.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#319

Post by _qwfv »

ctvo wrote: post #169
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…

It isn't about how the salary compares globally. It's about how does this compare to their peers. The asymmetrical nature of information available to employees vs. information available to the company generally leads to employees undervaluing themselves. By sharing what others in the company or in the region make for the same job, we help people ask for more.

And furthermore, it's how it compares to the profits of the company. If an engineer is returning $500,000k annually in profit to a company from their work, and getting paid $75k of that, they are being exploited. (Or at the very least are undervaluing their labor.)

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#320

Post by notJim »

sanxiyn wrote: post #299
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…

My theory is that while work is dull, people are not overqualified. They need smart people not because logic they write is complex, but because navigating total chaos of internal system complexity needs smartness. If they could refactor and get internal systems in order they could lower qualification bar, but that refactoring requires super duper overqualified people, etc.

I think that's about right, and the "mess" isn't just code, but organizational. You might be hired to maintain some simple widget, and then 1–2 years later be writing a large scale job processing service, or designing a new front-end rendering system, or any other number of high-impact, challenging projects. Theoretically, these could be different sets of people (like techs vs engineers or something), but since companies are constantly re-orging and don't know what they need, it's the same people doing both.

I have to say however, that for engineers this is a massively good thing, both in terms of being able to work on lots of different stuff, and the compensation implications.

Post reply on HN