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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#441

Post by Mauricebranagh »

tptacek wrote: post #333
_qwfv wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should NOT be treated as an indicator for what "reasonable" pay looks like across the entire industry. Hard disagree. The comparatively low salaries in other sectors are just that, below what workers should be earning. Things are fuzzier in the indie space, but companies like Blizzard, Activision, EA, Epic, Ubisoft, Rockstar, CDPR, etc. all pay low and absolutely rake in profits. We should call worker exploitation…

When we talk about FAANG companies in this context, we do so with the subtext that there are so few companies that pay this way that they'd fit into a short acronym. The idea that the top of the market rate is the moral floor for compensation is hard to take seriously. Besides, people trade compensation for all sorts of things: working at a nonprofit, working in their rural hometown. Why shouldn't problem domain be o…

"moral floor for compensation" sorry there is no old man on a white cloud that's sets "moral" rates.

And you might not know this but "charities" & "ngos" are notorious for bad pay and working conditions

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#442

Post by summerlight »

oreally wrote: post #386
sanxiyn wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They need smart people not because logic they write is complex, but because navigating total chaos of internal system complexity needs smartness. Careful, that's the FANG SWE ego speaking. What you describe isn't smartness but a willingness and patience to put up with lots of bloat.

Many people (including this comment) severely underestimate the sheer volume of information processed everyday by those staff level engineers in big techs.

Imagine that each day you need to review 1~2 design docs, read and reply tens of mails, attend at least 3 meetings and make non-negligible engineering decisions each, keep the lights on, manage and mentor some junior engineers. And write some code and design docs for your own projects upon all the crazy stacks of technical and procedural complexity.

Time is limited resource, so you cannot really have enough time to understand everything needed as scopes expand. You will eventually need to embrace ambiguities and uncertainties stemming from the complexity. And this needs more than just willingness and patience. Perhaps having some level of smartness can help, but this alone might not be sufficient though.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#443

Post by Ekaros »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #288
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 FAANG pays for "the best" not because they necessarily need them. But because it's better for them if nobody else has them.

And also at this point where else would they be spending money? They make so much that waste isn't too big of an issue. So in the end some money ends up with employees.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#444

Post by nly »

koyote wrote: post #268
tgv wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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% nat…

There are artifacts. Your marginal tax rate in the UK is 62% between $140K and $170K.

    £100K ($142K) take home => £66,689.16 ($94K)
    £120K ($170K) take home => £74,289.16 ($105K)

    (£74,289.16 - £66,689.16) / £20,000 = 38% for keeps

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#445

Post by TrackerFF »

Aliabid94 wrote: post #294
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is FAANG pays for "the best" not because they necessarily need them. But because it's better for them if nobody else has them.

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.

This is something that gets parroted A LOT, and has been for at least 20 years now.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but I'd really, really like to see some actual numbers on this.

My biggest gripe with this theory, is that it assumed all responsibility and decision-making on a single worker. In every other industry I've worked, where employees have the access to some extremely costly "kill switch", where you can basically bring down the whole system, it's always - ALWAYS something that needs to go through multiple people.

That also goes for more fundamental roles, like design and implementation. These things go through multiple people, reviews, and later audits.

I'd be amazed if internal guidelines and regulations at FAANG behemoths allow potential multi-million decisions to rest on single employees.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#446

Post by Agentlien »

hnick wrote: post #379
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.

A decade is a huge portion of your life and I certainly wouldn't want to spend what little time I have doing something I'm less fond of in the hope that I'll be sitting on a pile of money one day and maybe then I can go do what I actually want.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#447

Post by ecmascript »

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.

If it is 2 times per year and extends for a period of 2 months, that is almost half of the entire year.

That sounds crazy to me, I would never ever work 60 hours a week without getting paid for it. Many game companies make ridicolous amounts of money, there is no reason why they shouldn't pay a reasonable salary for it.

60 hour work weeks are insane and you should never accept that.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#448

Post by wanttobethatkid »

When making games are hard and make huge profit why are the salaries low?

I doubt the argument that there are vast number of game developers who are passionate and are willing to take low salary. The reason is if that is the case why don't they make their own games?

My hypothesis is to make game only few people in the team need high skill and the majority need low skill hence the compensation is low as the entry is easy and supply is high.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#449

Post by TrackerFF »

1cvmask wrote: post #287
jedberg wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apple also famously hires from non-prestigious schools compared to the “elitism” at FB and Google. I have been in meetings at Apple with multiple people and not one of them was from an elite school (remember schools from Iowa and other parochial places). In contrast at FB and Google there were all the elite schools like Caltech, Stanford, MIT amply represented. I am not sure if Apple deliberately targeted such “lesse…

A lot of previously elitist companies have discovered that top %1 candidates from most schools are pretty similar. And since hiring is much easier today, they're more open to looking around.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#450

Post by omega3 »

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…

Maybe that was true 20, 30 years ago. Right now outside of a handful of studios that release quality games the rest aren't that good or innovative. I find it hard to believe people are happy to work on games with heavy elements of microtransactions or reheated elements (e.g. Ubisoft games are basically the same)
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