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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#341

Post by dragonwriter »

darth_avocado wrote: post #298
the_only_law wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do people who aren’t a software developer, doctor, or in a high paying financial sector get buy in CA metros. From what I’ve seen, even other highly technical engineering fields rarely make it to $150k

The short answer is, it's tough to do it on a single income that's 150k as a family. The lower you are the tougher it gets. There is a reason why even the lowest of the city employees get paid six figure salaries, a plumber charges you $250 and driving lessons are $60/hour. For example, in the city of San Fracisco, to qualify as "low income household", the limit is almost $120k for a family of 4 or $82k for a single…

> There is a reason why even the lowest of the city employees get paid six figure salaries

Er, they don't. The median, not lowest, pay for employees of the City and County of San Francisco is barely into six figures. [0]

The lowest pay categories (calculated by annualizing the biweekly max,so this is probably a slight overestimate) pay $36,114/yr, which is far short of 6 figures. [1]

[0] https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2019/san-francisc...

[1] https://sfdhr.org/sites/default/files/documents/Classificati...

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#342

Post by ivalm »

mLuby wrote: post #327
BeetleB wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I currently make 6 low figures in a relatively boring but non-stressful systems administration job. For context, I was contacted by a game dev company recently. The max they could pay me was 5 figures. Doing a gaming job for 40 hours a week for low 6 figures is fine. However, it's not the reality for many, if not most, game devs.

The phrase "six-figure salary" is so strange. We're almost always referring to slightly above $100K. Does anyone ever say "I make six figures" and mean $900K, or even half a million?

I’ve heard people say mid six figure (400-600) and high six figure (700+). If people just say six figure I expect 100-300k.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#343

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #87

My early salary history as a midwest gamedev: 17yo: unpaid intern, 1 year (2005) 18yo: $20k/yr (2006) 19yo: $35/yr (2007) 22yo: $70k/yr (2010) I don't regret it; I learned most of my skills during those formative years. But I was also "part of the problem" in the sense that I was happy as a clam being paid $20k/yr living at my parents' house, putting every dollar into the bank. Saved up $15k and felt like I was rich;…

What happened after 2010??

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#344

Post by nsoonhui »

tayo42 wrote: post #297
thewarrior wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Theres no reason to not pay for the best. Engineer's provide so much value compared to an individuals cost. I can give an a example of what I'm working on. I'm doing maybe 2-3months of work, the project cut a one time cost in half saving 10million dollars. I make about quarter million in a year. A tiny fraction of the value I provided this year alone. Why penny pinch on pay and risk having employees that might not be…

>Why penny pinch on pay and risk having employees that might not be as good?

Because they can afford to not pay you as well, and your value ( or rather, the "damage" caused by the not-so-good employee) is hard to prove.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#345

Post by sokoloff »

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…

I left games 24 years ago in large part over pay. The work itself I loved doing, but it was never going to let me buy a house nearby or retire. I’m glad I did as I don’t think the was enough extra enjoyment over being able to enjoy other work (albeit less) but have some amount of financial security.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#346

Post by sokoloff »

balls187 wrote: post #293
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…

I would take a pay-cut to work in games.

Well, I have some great news for you...

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#347

Post by _delirium »

gpm wrote: post #247
_delirium wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I.e. your share of healthcare for everyone instead of what you purchase in the US, which is approximately just healthcare for you This is getting off-topic, but maybe surprisingly, Americans pay more to subsidize other people's healthcare than the average French taxpayer does, despite the American system not being universal. Some back-of-envelope numbers, France: Total French healthcare spending in 2017 was $337 bi…

Maybe off topic, but I appreciate the information, that's pretty surprising to me. The numbers do seem to check out, and once you actually say it makes sense. Thanks :)

Yeah, I was surprised by it when I first looked it up also. I think partly because most people who are demographically similar to me are on private health insurance, so I think of the US as having mostly a private system. But a little over 40% of the U.S. population has public coverage: 20% are on Medicaid or CHIP (lower-income), 18% Medicare (age 65+), and 5% military/veteran.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#348

Post by offtop5 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #248
Bukhmanizer wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I haven’t really seen mentioned is that the barrier for entry is high in a lot of video game development. Meaning, I can’t really take 3 of my friends and make the next GTA in my garage. Those type of games need developers, but also artists, writers, actors, etc. They’re expensive, risky operations of which development is only a part of. This is probably why it makes the most sense to treat developers…

Underrated comment. It's even worse when you consider that the engines are generally already made, you only need developers to do what you could almost call glorified scripting compared to engine development. I think Unity and Unreal probably have to pay their devs a reasonable salary. But having devs work in Unity or Unreal to produce a game is not really all that hard. That's kind of the point of Unity and Unreal.

Have you actually worked with a game engine. I'll say any day of the week game programming is harder than front end web dev

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#349

Post by Dracophoenix »

inopinatus wrote: post #212
markus_zhang wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH a lot of people don't have that many choices. I mean if a dream company gives me an offer with a reasonable salary, I'd jump for it without hesitation. A lot of people are OK with median salary.

Putting my hiring manager’s hat on, I recommend asking for more, without hesitation. There is practically no downside. Especially if it’s your dream company, because you are likely to be extra motivated, and this is a case you can genuinely make. Once an offer’s already on the table, the worst possible outcome from asking will be “sorry, that’s as high as we can go right now” without any rancour. If instead the respo…

In your previous experience with FAANGs, were your requests for a higher offer taken as an affront?

Also, what was your role with regards to ISP infrastructure?

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#350

Post by ByteJockey »

daniellarusso wrote: post #312
rxhernandez wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem with consistency is that if you're not already doing the right thing, you'll never do the right thing. Not even by accident.
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