Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#451

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

nsoonhui wrote: post #344

tayo42 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#452

Post by majjgepolja » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

golemotron wrote: post #361

bedhead wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not just glamour. There's an argument that teacher salaries are low because people find it more rewarding than a lot of other work.

I might be downvoted to hell, but it's more likely because of same supply-demand thing. Teacher is not a high skilled job, not to mention most teachers are outright bad at their jobs thus not producing much value anyway.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#453

Post by majjgepolja » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #214

inopinatus wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t get suckered by this argument, folks. It’s the start of an abusive relationship. Whatever your sector, you should expect to be paid for your time and your skill. No-one pulled this shit at my FAANG or global ISP gigs, despite the fact I love working on high scale infrastructure. There is no special magical wonderland industry that intrinsically bathes its staff in so much joy that you can lowball their pay and…

It seems like you can’t even imagine that someone might not be interested or willing to work at FAANG? If those aren’t an option, then it might not be a lowball offer anymore. FAANG compensation is in an entirely separate category, from what I can tell.

The GP is not telling everyone to go to FAANG. They are telling fellow engineers to not get themselves exploited by low paying companies.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#454

Post by exdsq » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

comp_throw7 wrote: post #410

missedthecue wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's refreshing to see someone pushing back on this narrative a little. FAANG employ a cumulative total of about 100,000 software engineers globally (can't find US-specific numbers). There are 4.4 million software engineers in the USA. I'm sure the graduate -> $200k move happens, but it's only an extremely small number in terms of the occupation as a whole. People on this forum seem to casually mention it as if it's…

Google, Amazon, and Apple together almost certainly hit 100k by themselves. Facebook is a bit smaller than those 3 in terms of engineering headcount but not by much. Netflix is tiny, relatively speaking, I'll give you that. But, I mean, new grads at MSFT can get pretty close to 200k, even though the comp scales up poorly with career progression compared to FAANG. There are a bunch of other companies where you can hit…

Netflix don’t hire grads do they?

Also this is specific to the Bay Area - they don’t pay these rates internationally or even everywhere within the US. And finally, it’s not every grad & stocks massively inflate this number.

I’m sure some people reading this will have done it - it’s not ‘common’ and definitely isn’t the pay of the top decile of developers in the world, the West, or I bet even in the US.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#455

Post by moksly » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:37 AM UTC

jholman wrote: post #269

moksly wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differ…

If you’re working to achieve a goal you’re not really working for free are you?

I’d question the merits of your method if it means working a lot of overtime to make other people rich. Mostly because “experience” extremely rarely has any real value in corporate land where everyone, and I do mean everyone, is replaceable once you zoom out enough to a top management perspective. And any extra time you put in for free is really just you getting taken advantage of.

Now I did specify company, because I’m not against volunteering for NGOs. I still don’t think you should spend 80 hours a week doing it, but by all means volunteer to do things. Help your neighbour build a roof, go join a soup kitchen, knit little hats for newborn babies, whatever you want. That’s not really working for free though, it’s working to better your community.

Putting in overtime, that you are not getting paid for at Coca Cola is not only foolish, it’s downright undermining the foundation of our society. It’s you trading away pieces or your life, so that stock owners and corporate managers can become a little richer, and no, you should not really be free to do that. Exactly because it ruins it for every other worker. Especially in America, where you working 80 hours a week, means you’re quite literally keeping someone else from having a full time job and the access to healthcare it provides, and for what? So the billionaires can billion?

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#456

Post by blagie » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:44 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #436

onion2k wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine this is true in theory . The math checks out. But every FAANG company has been around for at least 15 years now and we don't hear many stories of their early hires retiring. Where does it break down in practise? Is it just too hard to give up the high paying role? Is it that retirees don't talk about it? Or is it that the theory is actually wrong for some reason, and working for $200k for 20 years doesn't a…

Divorces are ridiculously expensive. That was the major culprit for my generation. Only one peer of mine has actually retired before 50 (that I know of), and he stayed married. Everyone else ended up splitting up, which wiped all their savings. Or they went another path. I followed the other path - total mental breakdown, severe depression followed by "non-retirement" - working freelance, as a co-founder and in inter…

Both the divorce rates and the divorce cost are thanks to the divorce industry and the divorce lobby. We have a massive industry set up to encourage and profit from divorce.

Most countries don't have this problem, but it's a bigger problem than even the US' ballooning medical costs.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#457

Post by Nursie » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:48 AM UTC

ojhughes wrote: post #40

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.

I disagree, I get paid a lot more than anyone I know who isn’t in tech and I’m outside of London. Even Doctors in the UK get paid less than a senior engineer at a decent company

I think you're a rarity, if you're being paid rates comparable to US software folks. I know a bunch of highly paid tech folks doing pretty well for ourselves, but we're all contractors.

UK perm roles looking for the sort of experience I have tend to pay somewhere in the region of 33%-50% of what I can make as a contractor. Even in London perm, roles almost never break six figures AFAICT.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#458

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:51 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #343

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??

[deleted]

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#459

Post by Nursie » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:51 AM UTC

bluescrn wrote: post #78

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.

Londoners can make good money, it seems. But London isn't somewhere you want to be unless you're still in your 20s. And in a post-Covid world, 'being in/near London' may not be able to increase your earning potential in the way it usually has done.

Don't get me wrong, you can make good money writing software in the UK, particularly in London, but you have to go contracting.

I've basically never seen a perm software role come up that pays six figures.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#460

Post by Nursie » Tue, May 11, 2021, 9:54 AM UTC

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #266

ngngngng wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's fairly easy to be on £60k outside of London with a few years of experience.

Yeah, but that is the point isn't it - in the US and some other countries you have the potential to earn a few hundred K per annum. That sort of money just isn't available to software people here. In fact you're more likely to be offered around £50k for a 'senior' role somewhere.

IMHO it's partly because here in the UK we don't really regard software engineers as skilled professionals, most management structures seem to treat us as generic office folks, and unruly, childlike ones at that.