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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#371

Post by Impossible »

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…

This was my experience at FAANG as well. I had some terrible game industry jobs, but I've been at a few studios where I had a much better experience than FAANG even if pay was lower

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#372

Post by _dps »

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.

Unity famously hired Mike Acton (a minor hero in parts of the C++ world, and a major hero if you restrict to games). I am quite certain they pay people like him, doing infrastructure engine work that scales across all users of Unity, something in the ballpark of what he could make at a tech company. But most game programmers are not doing anything with that kind of leverage, and I think that's largely contributing to the business' ability to pay them substantially less than they could at a FAANG.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#373

Post by jquery »

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.

Disagree. There’s a lot to love about a job at Wendy’s relative to the alternatives (alternatives that don’t realistically include a programming job at Google).

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#374

Post by ptmcc »

zmalski wrote: post #366
dreyfan wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. How is a startup supposed to compete when today's economy has resulted in fresh grads commanding $200k total-comp? Of course the answer is "you raise money!" so you can pay them "market-rates" at which point you may as well say fuck it and just get a job too because now you've given up so much equity and have such an aggressive burn-rate you're pretty well screwed from day one.

Not sure where you are that fresh grads get compensated with $200k but please, as a fresh grad who spent 6 months job searching and just accepted a software engineering job for $50k, let me know.

That'd be about expected TC at any FAANG or FAANG-adjacent company, once your RSUs start vesting.

Obviously that's top of the market, but it exists.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#375

Post by mettamage »

zmalski wrote: post #366
dreyfan wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. How is a startup supposed to compete when today's economy has resulted in fresh grads commanding $200k total-comp? Of course the answer is "you raise money!" so you can pay them "market-rates" at which point you may as well say fuck it and just get a job too because now you've given up so much equity and have such an aggressive burn-rate you're pretty well screwed from day one.

Not sure where you are that fresh grads get compensated with $200k but please, as a fresh grad who spent 6 months job searching and just accepted a software engineering job for $50k, let me know.

Seconding this. Open for any faang referral as well.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#376

Post by dreyfan »

zmalski wrote: post #366
dreyfan wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. How is a startup supposed to compete when today's economy has resulted in fresh grads commanding $200k total-comp? Of course the answer is "you raise money!" so you can pay them "market-rates" at which point you may as well say fuck it and just get a job too because now you've given up so much equity and have such an aggressive burn-rate you're pretty well screwed from day one.

Not sure where you are that fresh grads get compensated with $200k but please, as a fresh grad who spent 6 months job searching and just accepted a software engineering job for $50k, let me know.

https://www.levels.fyi/2020/ -- Many of these firms are fully remote since the pandemic and the extremely high cost of living no longer applies.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#377

Post by jquery »

majormajor wrote: post #270
sailingparrot wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I daresay I enjoyed my job at Wendy’s a great deal. Mostly I left because I found better paying jobs elsewhere, but Wendy’s was a lot more enjoyable than those jobs (cart wrangling at Costco, car detailing at a Ford dealership)… until I finally broke through into office work.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#378

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#379

Post by hnick »

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…

As an outsider looking at this it seems like you can just work a decade in that job and earn what you'd earn in 2-3 decades in the game job. Even more if you can invest.

Unless you're truly miserable, it seems like the obvious choice. You can always go indie or head back after that first decade and at that point it's all gravy.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#380

Post by Agentlien »

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…

The picture seems to be different here in Sweden. It's possibly related to the difference in wages being less extreme overall.

The best salary I ever had was as a software engineer at a AAA studio, and I used to work outside the game industry and had offers from a consulting firm which I know offer competitive salaries.

I did end up leaving for a smaller studio who couldn't offer quite the same level of compensation, but the difference is still less than 20%.

I've thought about it a lot and even if the pay difference was much bigger I couldn't imagine leaving the game industry. Being surrounded by people who love games, getting to spend my days on serious technical challenges in the service of making something which brings joy to millions. It is an amazing feeling. I make enough that money isn't something I need to worry about and I love what I do in a deep and intense way. No regular frontend/web/dev ops/ whatever development job will ever be able to compete with that.

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