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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#501

Post by [deleted] »

nly wrote: post #438
_delirium wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty complicated in general. For example, if you have kids, the European advantage tends to be bigger than if you don't (depending on which country, this may include subsidized daycare, cheaper or free college tuition, cheaper or free healthcare, etc.). In my particular case, when moving from the UK to the US, my estimate is that the "headline" salary number for the US offer I got overstated my pay by about 30…

I don't see how taxes were lower in the UK to be honest.

[deleted]

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#502

Post by [deleted] »

nly wrote: post #438
_delirium wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty complicated in general. For example, if you have kids, the European advantage tends to be bigger than if you don't (depending on which country, this may include subsidized daycare, cheaper or free college tuition, cheaper or free healthcare, etc.). In my particular case, when moving from the UK to the US, my estimate is that the "headline" salary number for the US offer I got overstated my pay by about 30…

I don't see how taxes were lower in the UK to be honest.

[deleted]

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#503

Post by oblio »

Kranar wrote: post #335
mtrpcic wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until 2017, FANG was limited to Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet. Another variant of this acronym is "FANGAM," which includes Microsoft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech#FAANG I think Microsoft is up there and competitive in the same landscape, and calling out their lack of inclusion in the original acronym is just pedantic. Everything discussed in this thread applies just as much to MSFT as it does to…

It's not pedantic, MSFT does not pay as much as other FAANG companies. MSFT isn't by any means a bad company to work for, but it's not in the same league. F: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En... A: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/salaries/Software-Engi... A: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Apple/salaries/Software-Engin... N: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Eng.…

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Microsoft,Netflix,A...

Easier to use.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#504

Post by throwaway_eu123 »

Anyone feeling like sharing insights about what it's like in the EU? It will probably highly depend on the country/region (wild guessing that salaries in eastern EU are lower) but these salaries are beyond my wildest dreams.

I live in Belgium, work for an international company, I have a master's degree in computer science, speak three languages fluently (French, English, Spanish) and have been working for 10 years as a software engineer, I currently get paid 2500 EUR net per month (+ a company car, fuel card and some other minor benefits [lunch ticket and such]).

Quick back-of-the-envelope calculation:

    2500,0 EUR (net, started at 1750 EUR)
  ×    1,7     (various taxes)
  x   13       (everybody has a "13th month" in this field)
  --------
   55250   EUR (gross)
Yes, anything related to health is cheaper here but even if you factor that in...

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#505

Post by pcthrowaway »

saagarjha wrote: post #419
comp_throw7 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Google, Amazon, and Apple together almost certainly hit 100k by themselves. No way. Amazon might be coming close (I don't have a very good idea of their size, but my guess is they have like ~75k software engineers); Google probably has about 50k, Apple has like 10k.

I think you missed the key word of the parent "together"

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#506

Post by oblio »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #414
_qwfv wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG companies also underpay their workers. It can simultaneously be the case that they pay their workers best in class wages AND those wages are less than the workers deserve. Apple has immense cash reserves built from the labor of their employees. That is essentially the difference between what value those employees generated for Apple and what they were paid. More of it should go out to the employees, and we shou…

What does it mean that they underpay their workers, except that they pay them a smaller percentage of the economic value produced by their labor than you think they should? Is that just a deontological claim? Because I imagine "my moral system says software engineers should be paid more, no, don't worry how much more, I'll tell you when to stop" is not very convincing as an argument.

> What does it mean that they underpay their workers, except that they pay them a smaller percentage of the economic value produced by their labor than you think they should?

That's easy to measure. These companies have a per-employee revenue which is easily a 5-10x multiple of average total compensation paid per employee, and in some cases it's also much less than the per-employee profit.

So they could pay a ton more while also making a healthy profit. Apple is the worst example of this.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#507

Post by akomtu »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #478
akomtu wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why you care about the company. Most of the time the sole purpose of existence of that company is making its owners and investors rich. That 100hr probably let them get an important contract, so they got a bit richer, but in return you were given food scraps (some time off). If it was me, I'd approach the owners and said "look, if this shit is so critical for your business, I can spend some extra time and…

This is a pretty cynical take. Often, companies provide value in some way to some people in the world. Imagining who those people are and how you are helping them can help provide context to what you are doing.

Any value they provide is incidental, an annoying necessity they have to put up with. If owners and investors cared about that value, they'd hire more personnel. Instead, they pocket salaries of that unhired personnel and take a free ride on a couple dudes who work 100hr overtime. I'm sure after they signed the contract, they had a nice party where the owner cracked a joke about two losers who did all the work for free.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#508

Post by JabavuAdams »

gentleman11 wrote: post #435
JabavuAdams wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot of fun, and conditions across the industry vary a lot. I burnt out in the games industry (twice), but it was the most fun I've had at work. Intense. All-expense-paid trips to GDC / San-Francisco from Toronto, Canada were nice. Having people recognize my T-shirt and come up to me to tell me they loved our game ... superficial, but enjoyable. In your '20s you're basically doing what you'd be doing anyway (as…

As an intern at a startup I got an all expense trip to California and a higher salary than some of the mid level game dev positions I saw today. Game dev is a ripoff

Did you miss the part where I said I enjoyed the kind of work? It's like you're talking to a pianist, and you say "Piano is a ripoff, I made more money playing oboe -- you should play oboe." But I don't like oboe. People can like different things. I have artistic skills and interests that don't get used on some rando CRUD or SaaS app, and I like being around creative, artistic people.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#509

Post by Viliam1234 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #470
blagie wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not American :) The UK and Australia both have this problem. I think it's less to do with the actual costs of the divorce, and more about converting one household into two. All the equity in the house gets split up, which usually gives a decent deposit for another house for each partner, but nowhere near enough to pay off the whole mortgage. Each partner needs enough rooms to host the kids during their shared cus…

Luckily I observe this from the perspective of having a happy marriage, which happens to be incredibly frugal compared to two single people living alone. A house for two people who enjoy being together does not need to be larger than a house for one person; although you need a larger house when you have kids. Of many objects you only need one piece, because you are not using them all the time. Cooking is cheap; it requires time, but if you spend that time talking, you don't really mind. Minus those expenses you had in the past simply because you felt alone or bored.

The expenses of two people living together are almost the same as of one person living alone. The extra expenses are mostly for the kids (including the mortgage for the larger house). Which means that if one person has a good salary, the other can "early retire" immediately. Or if both have good salaries, they can save half of the income, and perhaps retire as soon as the kids become independent.

A divorce throws all of this out of the window.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#510

Post by elzbardico »

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…

Not all new grads are the same.
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