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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#141

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

ryandrake wrote: post #80
SamuelAdams wrote: post #18

This isn't unique to game dev. This is true in education as well - most white collar positions pay between 40 - 100k while vice presidents and presidents get 250k + packages. I think more developers need to get better at negotiating. One 10 minute conversation can beat years of 2-4% raises. It's all about setting expectations and being willing to walk away.

You see this advice a lot, but it's never very specific. "Just negotiate better!" OK, great... how? Most of us have no leverage besides our willingness to walk away, and when the market is saturated with talent, it's usually fine for a company to just let you walk away. I bet for someone who happens to be the world's foremost expert in some niche skill the company needs, negotiating a higher comp is straightforward.…

None of us have leverage besides our willingness to walk away. That's not the difference.

I see some people act like negotiating is an antagonistic game of chicken or something. In reality, it's just an amicable case of you finding your best options, communicating them clearly to everyone involved, then taking the best option. Think of it as more like an auction than some slick game of poker. What's wrong with this script?

Candidate: I'd like $150K. Comparable companies offer people with my experience $150K.

Hiring manager: We'll offer you $100K.

Candidate: I'll walk if you give me less than $140K.

Hiring manager: Ok... Bye?

Candidate: Okay, bye. [Takes a job earning $150k at one of those other companies]

In general, I think the benefits of negotiating don't go to the individual. They go to next individual/the market. You repeat that script a few times and the hiring manager goes to HR and says nobody's taking the job unless they pay more.

(If instead, you say "okay, fine I'll take $100k, I was bluffing" then that's what the next person is offered too.)

> "Just negotiate better!" OK, great... how?

My mental model is to approach it cooperatively. You're not trying to beat them. Talk about other data points if they say you're not being realistic, and talk about the reasons you're a better fit than they accounted for when you ask for more. They say they're better than the next company and you say you're better than the next candidate.

But most of all, just make sure you actually have that alternative you're willing to walk away for. Interview while you have a job. Time your interviews so that you have options while this conversation takes place.

YMMV. I've gotten like +10% from negotiating and +30% from walking away to take other offers, which should tell you the relative importance of each.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#143

Post by NDizzle »

xvector wrote: post #96
the_only_law wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was shocked at the pay at Roblox. I was on levels.fyi the other day and came across a list of companies with the highest pay for new grads and it was in the top five I believe.

This is because of recent IPO inflating TC

It was near the top / at the top even a year ago.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#144

Post by dahfizz »

dv_dt wrote: post #34
darth_avocado wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US cost of living is ridiculous. You shouldn't just compare two numbers one to one. 150k in California is basically just scraping by.

Plus one carries a huge high side uncertainty in costs from healthcare in the US.

Only if you're uninsured. Any halfway decent health insurance plan has out of pocket maxes that a software engineer can easily cover.

I'm general, QOL is going to be better in Europe if youre in a low income bracket because you get so much as a public service. But if you make real money, you're going to be better off in America.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#145

Post by caenorst »

0xy wrote: post #4

It's really weird how this article starts by showing how through negotiation and job searching you can increase your salary, but bizarrely then talks about unions, which are known to depress wages for top performers (just look at teachers unions, where pay is totally disconnected from competence and performance). If you're a really good game developer, artist or animator then you should learn the skill of negotiation…

You're probably downvoted by people that don't quite understand a notion that is more than 200 years old, which is called "Suppy and demand". The article is literally saying that "speaking up" helped their salary and HN comments are all about unionization (which is letting union speak for you) and claiming that if you negotiate you get fired, that's absurd.

Nobody forced them to work, they can leave, negotiate, refuse an offer, and there are still a lot of video game companies, so this is a market that doesn't need any regulation or unionization. They made a choice to get this job at a low salary.

The only complication is for young student idealizing the environment without knowing that the salary is bad. Well that's what this twitter trend is helping at. It will inform the high performer and keep them out of the field and companies will have to either raise salaries to re-attract them or accept lower performer.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#146

Post by andrewljohnson »

ironmagma wrote: post #92
rawtxapp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but most FAANG eng make more than that by their 2nd or 3rd year. With 15 years of experience, they could be making at least 500k+. edit: for the skeptical, this is what an L4 makes at Google[1], L4 is easily attainable within 3 years, pretty likely in 2 years, that's assuming you start at L3 (straight out of college or very little experience). 1: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-E…

Citation? Even in the Bay Area the median is considered somewhere around $150k.

Here you go: https://www.levels.fyi/

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#147

Post by stale2002 »

ttul wrote: post #53
ashtonkem wrote: post #42

My standard advice to every graduate CS student is to stay the hell away from professional video game development. If you want to make games, turn it into a hobby instead.

I dunno. My friend is making $250K working for Roblox. He’s 15yrs into his career - all game dev. Doesn’t seem too bad.

Roblox is an exception. I am in a similar situation, at twitch, where I work, but these companies are the exception and not the rule, for game dev stuff.

Epic games probably pays highly, as well as riot, and value. But I can count on maybe 1 hand, the number of actual good "video game" companies that I would want to work for.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#148

Post by aidenn0 »

darth_avocado wrote: post #27
bluescrn wrote: post #10

The massive gap between UK and US gamedev salaries seems to keep getting larger :(

US cost of living is ridiculous. You shouldn't just compare two numbers one to one. 150k in California is basically just scraping by.

I live in CA, and raise 4 kids while the total pay, including my wife's, just recently surpassed 150k (she works very low hours part-time). Not in the bay area though.

We would probably need about $20k more for the same lifestyle had we not gotten lucky with timing buying a house (we bought in 2011, right before a big increase in prices). Alternatively we could have kids sharing a bedroom and live otherwise the same.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#149

Post by ironmagma »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #146
ironmagma wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation? Even in the Bay Area the median is considered somewhere around $150k.

Here you go: https://www.levels.fyi/

Judging by levels.fyi it's exactly what I said, L4 at Google makes ~$157k a year. If you're talking about TC that has to be said; most people when they are talking about "making X amount" are talking about salary.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#150

Post by socialist_coder »

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 able to talk to all of them about games and having your company culture revolve around games and gaming. It's games all the way down! It's a completely different work environment. As someone who loves games, the best years of my working career were when I was working on game teams, not at tech companies.

Also, developer salaries in games is still plenty good. It's still great money. I never felt like I was losing out.

Also the argument that it's "grueling 80+ hour weeks day in and day out is" is bullshit! The only time I ever worked 80 hours in a single week was when I was starting out in Quality Assurance and I was getting paid hourly so I was happy to make the extra overtime. As a salaried developer I don't think I was ever expected to work more than 60 hours a week, and then after the crunch was over we always got 1 or 2 weeks of extra vacation ("comp time"). To be clear, the normal working schedule was 40 hours per week. Crunch time is like 1 or 2 times a year, for maybe 1-2 months each time. And like I said, depending on how much you crunch, you would get extra paid time off afterwards. So for me, that was a pretty good trade. I'd much rather work my ass off for a couple months and then get an extra 2 week vacation at the end of it.

Maybe some game companies treat their employees like dirt and work them into the ground, but the ones I've worked for, I never felt that way. Don't work at those terrible companies! There are plenty of "good" game companies out there who pay good salaries and have good working conditions.

As someone who is older now with kids, my priorities are definitely different than when I worked in games during my 20s and early 30s. I would no longer be happy working those 60 hour weeks. I want a better work life balance. So I don't know if I could work on a game team like that anymore. But do I regret working there before I had a family? Absolutely not. #gamedev4life

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