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Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#301

Post by PragmaticPulp »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #200
ryandrake wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Well this is bad negotiation for a lot of reasons. I've coached 1000's of folks on getting better offers. You are right that you have to have some leverage. But walking away is only one of many possible leverage points. You could also have other offers, have done well in the interview process, be walking away from an existing role that offers xyz that isnt offered at this company... What data points or pieces of leve…

> I've had exactly one person I coached ever have their offer pulled

I've never seen an offer pulled, but it's common for companies to move on to other candidates when someone wants to draw out the negotiation process too long.

This comes as a shock to some candidates who forget that companies can't wait around forever while they decide who to work for. The position must be filled someone quickly.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#302

Post by taternuts »

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…

60 hour work weeks as the norm is still crazy to me, though I am in my mid thirties as well and might have been able to pull that off in my 20's as you said. Maybe that's why start-ups usually end up burning me out because I've never really cared that much about the product like I imagine game devs care about theirs, and 50-60+ hours a week is kind of normal for a small start up.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#303

Post by egypturnash »

ineptech wrote: post #262

I don't know why this is limited to game developers. I'm a mgr/dir and it seems obvious to me that secrecy around salaries is consciously perpetuated because it allows corporations to get away with underpaying some people. I can't think of any circumstance where it wouldn't be in the individual contributors' best interests to tell each other exactly what they all make. If everyone on my teams shared their salaries wi…

Because that's who decided to start doing this to try and create more openness in their particular industry.

Talk to a few people in your industry, see who you can get to share their salaries, try and get the ball rolling on #MyIndustryPaidMe.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#304

Post by egypturnash »

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…

This instantly raises a question for me: what companies did you work for that did not leave you feeling like you were being abused? Do they still exist, do you have any impression of how their work environment has changed since then? I know my friend who worked at Popcap sure did like it a lot less once EA bought them, for instance.

60h + 1-4mo of crunch sure sounds like more than I'd wanna do for anything. Maybe if I got a piece of the IP/profits - as someone with 'socialist' in your username I'd assume you'd be interested in companies that let the workers own more of what they produce; were any of your workplaces unusual in that regard?

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#305

Post by vvanders »

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…

> 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.

Sorry but I'm going to call bullshit on your bullshit. Spent ~5 years in the industry and every place I worked crunched like hell and every place that my coworkers came from crunched like hell. There are companies that limit crunch but they are few and far between.

My experience was that those who survived crunch perpetuated a culture of needing to "pay your dues" and you weren't a "team player" if you didn't put in the extra hours on salary.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#306

Post by NamTaf »

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…

> 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.

Just to be clear, you're saying that crunch time can be up to 1/3 of the year, and you get maximum 4 weeks of additional leave off as a result. Compare that to anywhere overseas, where 4-6 weeks leave per year is the minimum. Moreover, if you're working 50 hours a week on average during that crunch time, and you get 1 week off per month of crunch, you're already marginally behind on equivalent compensation since there's more than 4 weeks per average month.

That sounds like an awful agreement and I don't understand why you're trying to hold it up as a great opportunity. I'd instead describe it as an abusive working relationship that further shifts the benefit to the corporation at the employee's expense.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#307

Post by _qwfv »

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,…

> 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 what it is rather than calling fair compensation at FAANG companies "ridiculous".

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#308

Post by _qwfv »

ineptech wrote: post #262

I don't know why this is limited to game developers. I'm a mgr/dir and it seems obvious to me that secrecy around salaries is consciously perpetuated because it allows corporations to get away with underpaying some people. I can't think of any circumstance where it wouldn't be in the individual contributors' best interests to tell each other exactly what they all make. If everyone on my teams shared their salaries wi…

Levels.fyi exists. There are internal spreadsheets at various tech companies that share their comp.

Agreed though, I'd love to see this elsewhere in tech.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#309

Post by _qwfv »

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…

I've worked in games, I've worked out of games. The workers in games are absolutely being exploited because they think the work environment is unique.

And yes, there's something cool to see people at PAX or elsewhere praising a project you worked on. But saying people are making a tradeoff, or giving up salary to work on games is a defeatist attitude -- big game devs should be paying what big tech companies pay.

You should not have to give up pay to work in games, and it absolutely kills me every time I see an engineer claim that it's somehow noble to do so.

In the indie space, sure, pay is going to be weaker. But there are thousands working for Blizzard, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, CDPR, etc. etc. etc. who are all being grossly underpaid for the value they bring to their company.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#310

Post by joshuamorton »

ironmagma wrote: post #260
xenihn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

go ahead and count them if you work at robinhood or stripe you could also just lie if it's that important to you

Well the question was more around what to count them as since there’s a wide range. In my experience people typically just mention salary and count stock options as 0 but everyone in this thread seems to disagree.

The answer is that it differs between public and private companies. It's exceedingly difficult to value the equity in a startup that may not IPO for years. Its exceedingly easy to value RSUs that vest each month and then are immediately sold for cash.
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