The de s are all remote & could be based anywhere so the salary costs could be anything.
The company I work for has a bunch of devs in Florida at/above the $100k mark.
TBF, 1.2 was a big season with lots of stuff & they did change their minds as to what they wanted mid way through the season development cycle which isn’t going to help. I’m hoping that 1.3 is a lot closer to the 3-4 month mark.
Because salary seems to be one of the sticking points I wanted to elaborate. It sounds like you’ve got some good data but mine is closer to the metal.
Very true, but in this case we’re speculating all over the place. So let’s have fun!
Speaking specifically about salaries in the game industry:
When remote was first becoming a thing people started moving to cheaper locations and still collecting their big city salaries. Companies couldn’t have that; it was almost like stealing right from the profits! So, suddenly Cost of Living adjustments because a thing in salary documents, HR, and accounting teams.
This is worse in foreign countries, even before the pandemic. Only very special people in the game industry make a US sized salary if remote in, say, Central or South America, or SE Asia. Regardless of the company size or profits.
Most get a local sized wage which can very greatly but will rarely brush up to the $100k USD/yr. That said, it is at least a living wage locally, but even a pro with minimal US debt (say the ONLY thing they are paying on an old student loan) can’t afford to relocate to take advantage of the booming eastern game industry scene in SE Asia, make the payments on that level of debt, and live a comfortable life.
Every particular role has a salary based on company data and then they’ll apply the geographic adjustment when looking at remote candidates.
From janitor, to admin, to building maintenance, to receptionist, to interns and, eventually the Devs, who usually command the highest salary among their peers among all game creation disciplines.
Heck, there might even be some fairly high game developer salaries. Maybe you can live cheaper but for every 90% CoL Plant City there’s a 160% The Villages.
If the candidate starts way too high, the recruiter will realize there’s no winning and end the call. Assuming the computer doesn’t boot them out before they even talk to a recruiter. If it is a really promising candidate they might try to bring them to the cap, but if they fail they will end the call. Lie and try to negotiate later and you’ll not only likely get the offer rescinded but also be an example for future candidate interactions and maybe ruin it for someone else.
Beating around the bush on this topic will get you a “Well, thanks for your time,” because there are several thousand other resumes behind yours and one of them will be qualified, more agreeable, and accept the salary, why waste time? Yes, even dev roles. Most roles that open are flooded instantly with so many submissions the team has to pull the job listing within a day or two.
Jobs that do stay open longer tend to be due to the company experiencing some event that has paused hiring, industrial sized recruiting teams, and teams that hired but never pulled the position. My three favorite reasons jobs postings never close in games are AI Application Tracking Systems with an error in the acceptance criteria so it is tossing every resume as not being a good candidate, companies fishing to build an potential hiring database to dip into when they really do need to fill that role, and scams.
The chance to get a job these days in the game industry averages ~5%. Remote work is disappearing, with new remote game jobs dropping drastically. Some say the number of new game jobs that are remote friendly is now under 15%
Finally, there is a salary tax for game makers since game jobs aren’t “real jobs” and are “fun.”
You don’t get the same prevailing wage as you might when making enterprise software. $200k - $250k in the US is a Senior Director or even CEO level salary in gaming but pretty average, or even low, for a principle dev working on financial software. Very few people are making close to what they could in the real world, because they can’t imagine doing anything else… or maybe sunk cost fallacy.
Or at least close the gap. If they can get the window shorter they’ll be in good shape. And of course we need them tested. You can’t beat the “Time/Money/Quality” triangle but you can make the most of one to influence one of the others.
Also, if you want to know more about how desperate things have gotten in gaming, go check out some of the data at amirsatvat.com. He was the guy who won the very first “Game Changer” award at The Videogame Awards this year. It has gotten so bad they’ve started an initiative to teach people how to LEAVE games since no one is getting jobs and some people have gone for 3 years of unemployment since the first rounds of big layoffs started hitting.
Can someone explain to me why I can’t get my stinkin’ badges to show?
Yes, though we have quite a few (ie, not just the senior leadership team) in IT in the UK on >£100k, which is substantially above $100k. The devs in Romania, not so much. And I dread to think how much they’d earn if they were in Switzerland!!
Yup, it’s called salary banding in the UK. Large companies tend to have it, small ones generally not, likely because of the overhead on working it out & the reduced flexibility in hiring.
Fair enough, I have no idea on US CoL.
There’s also said tax for working for “fun”/sexy companies like Unilever…