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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#241

Post by glimshe »

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 employees, otherwise many people would simply work elsewhere.

There is a myth that working at FAANG is amazing for everybody, but most people I know there are actually kind of miserable and doing fairly dull work for which they are massively overqualified. Nonetheless, these companies have money and they want the "best" (in their eyes) people for everything, so they pay for it... Well, it's a decent deal.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#242

Post by flakiness »

In Japan, the game and anime industries are called "aspiration industry" because of the reasons discussed here.

There is also a term "aspiration abuse". That is because it's not only about the market dynamics (supply vs demand) but also a information asymmetry involved. It is considered more like a problem of immigration brokers: They sell dreams, but many of them are fake.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#243

Post by munk-a »

labcomputer wrote: post #184
munk-a wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in their dollar amount unless something really weird is going on - the effective cost of US employees is a lot higher than employees elsewhere in the world due to the overhead of health insurance - but US salaries remain pretty much at the top of major nations world-wide even ignoring that cost.

> to the overhead of health insurance Not really. The ACA (Obamacare) caps overhead and profits at either 15% or 20% depending on market (google "medical loss ratio"). The dirty secret is that too many doctors go into medicine for the wrong reasons (making money, instead of helping people), and collude to limit the number of new doctors created each year. The AMA is by far the most effective union in the US.

The profits may be capped but US healthcare is still insanely expensive compared to other first world nations. Articles on the internet seem to say that the US was 4-5 times as expensive in 2019 - but more reliable research from 2010[1] puts that number closer to 2 times as expensive. The issue is that the US's broken healthcare system just costs a lot more per patient than anything else - and a lot of companies take cuts of every dollar that goes into that cost while, in Canada, a lot of types of organizations: PBMs, Payers, Reimbursers - are all just the government, and it doesn't do that work for free, but it's a lot more efficient.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024588/

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#244

Post by kelnos »

bityard wrote: post #230
paxys wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda that only serves to keep labor costs low. The entities on top are large multi-billion dollar corporations who are running a business, just like any other industry. And this has been more and more apparent in recent years seeing just how anti-consumer the video games industry is getting. If a Google recruiter told me "take a low salary and wo…

> The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda A bunch of people already responded to this, but I'm going to add my two cents anyway: I currently make 6 low figures in a relatively boring but non-stressful systems administration job. The company is a dinosaur in Internet Years and has its idiosyncrasies but is ultimately a very decent place to work. My manager gives me my priorities an…

Right, and that's a perfectly reasonable choice to make. But that's not what this thread is about. It's about being paid at a similar level as your pay, but being expected to work 60+ hour weeks for several months out of the year.

No thanks.

But hey, each to their own, I guess. If a game dev wants to work more and get paid less because they love building games, that's their choice.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#245

Post by xenihn »

ironmagma wrote: post #228
xenihn wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Not in tech.

So what’s the recommended way of talking about how much you make when you are at a startup which only has stock options, where the stocks may eventually be worth hundreds of thousands but are currently worth 0?

go ahead and count them if you work at robinhood or stripe

you could also just lie if it's that important to you

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#246

Post by vsareto »

gambiting wrote: post #65
yurishimo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking away is only powerful if you have leverage. Game devs, unlike a lot of other software, are not super in demand. You can't apply for an entry level job at EA and then pop over to Ubisoft instead when the offer from EA is crap. There are way more folks trying to break into game dev than there are jobs available.

I actually work for a AAA games company and what you said only applies at kind of junior/intermediate level. Hit senior/lead/expert and you can walk out and get another job in a week, it's super hard to hire seniors and above and those positions hold a lot of leverage. Edit: obligatory "above is true in my experience, YMMV"

If there are so many at the junior/intermediate level, shouldn't they be advancing and the senior devs be a larger population? Plus if folks are really sticking to the industry out of passion, they have more of a chance to make it over time.

I've heard about game dev's surplus of workers for at least 10 years for almost identical reasons in most of this thread, and that would make nearly anyone a senior for sure, so that problem should have been "fixed" by now.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#247

Post by gpm »

_delirium wrote: post #183
gpm wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, completing my argument with those numbers 62k€ = 75k usd, 150 - 75 = 75. so assuming both numbers are before tax (and neglecting things like bonuses, benefits, equity, etc that you probably need to add into both numbers), there's your comparison. Now the question to you is "is Lyon worth 75k/year over California". That's not a question of compensation, that's just a question of how much you value the differen…

> I.e. your share of healthcare for everyone instead of what you purchase in the US, which is approximately just healthcare for you This is getting off-topic, but maybe surprisingly, Americans pay more to subsidize other people's healthcare than the average French taxpayer does, despite the American system not being universal. Some back-of-envelope numbers, France: Total French healthcare spending in 2017 was $337 bi…

Maybe off topic, but I appreciate the information, that's pretty surprising to me. The numbers do seem to check out, and once you actually say it makes sense.

Thanks :)

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#248

Post by bilbo0s »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #202
q_andrew wrote: post #14

Unfortunately this probably won't be changing any time soon. Similar to the movie industry in CA, execs see game developers as totally replaceable, because they kind of are. There are so many people who are extremely passionate about making games, that they will jump after any opportunity, even when they know it isn't paying what it should. The only thing that might bring about some kind of reform is a union or a cha…

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.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#249

Post by n42 »

jaaron wrote: post #234
julienb_sea wrote: post #179

This is ultimately a supply and demand issue. Google pays high salaries because they have to in order to hire the talent they want. Game devs apparently do not have to, because they are able to fill their roles for lower salaries. Don't pretend like all tech companies wouldn't love to lower dev salaries, they just can't because they wouldn't be able to hire. Game companies apparently have a meaningful differentiator,…

It's not just that. Google (and a few others) dealt with retention issues from startups and other companies in SV who's sole recruiting strategy was poach from Google, ie- use Google as a filter and let them do all the work finding great talent and then we'll just hire Googlers (or one of the other major SV tech companies). So retention is a significant factor for Google and other FAANG companies. They can simply pay…

you just described supply and demand. supply is limited, recruiters poach, demand increases, salaries increase.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#250

Post by a_t48 »

I left the gaming industry for robotics. I'm lucky in a number of ways (no college degree, no robotics background), but the salary and WLB is so much better here. My last job was FAANG level salary/bonuses, my current company is a bit smaller but maybe we'll get there at some point. Don't get me wrong - I _miss_ it. So much. I know it's Stockholm Syndrome, but the people in the industry are my people and I miss shipping games. The work is very interesting (not that my current job isn't). But my life outside of work has improved so much after leaving - I likely won't ever go back.

I remember being told "why would you want to do that?" when I told a gamedev friend I wanted to join the industry. I didn't get what he meant then, but now I do. If some young programmer wanted to get in now...well - I wouldn't dissuade them - it's a great way to get a lot of experience and work on cool stuff - but go in eyes wide open. Maybe have an exit plan. Off the top of my head I know a dozen excellent developers I worked with in the past who have left games for greener pastures (most of them robotics - the 3D math experience and ability to work with large codebases carry over well).

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