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Entry Level Game Industry Salaries
An anonymous reader writes "Game Tycoon has posted some informal information about entry-level salaries for students entering the video game industry." From the article: "Students who applied for engineering jobs seem to be getting offers in the 70s -- in some cases, the high 70s. The same students got offers approximately 10K higher from companies in other industries; i.e. Oracle, Microsoft, etc. So the gap between game company offers and non-game company offers appears to be narrowing for engineers. In general, I was amazed at how high the offers were!"
The article mentions engineers and producers, with the latter getting offers about half as much as the former. Can someone explain the difference between these two jobs?
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
The fellow who wrote the original blog entry has a serious lack of contact with reality. Let me try to inject some:
I am speaking as someone with over 30 years experience on top of a MSCS degree who has worked in many industries including the game industry as a programmer and technical director.
Someone with a degree in computer science or a closely related discipline has about a 50% chance of ever being able to write production level code in a commercial environment. My experience is that math majors have nearly as good a chance to become production programmers. English major (especially poets) and archeologists have about a 30% chance of reaching the same level of skill.
(People with degrees from expensive private schools usually figure out that they are never going to earn enough as a programmer to pay for their kids to go to the same expensive private schools and bail into higher paying areas after only a few years. They rarely stay around long enough to become really good programmers. There are, of course, many exceptions to that observation.)
OTOH, someone with a degree in any technical field has less than a 1% chance of becoming a successful entrepreneur. And only about a 10% chance of becoming a successful manager in any environment. A producer is an entrepreneur and a manager. The skills needed to be a producer are very different from the skills needed to be a programmer.
So, if I hire a fresh computer grad to be a programmer there is an even chance that that person will produce revenue for my company. If I hire the same person to be an associate producer there is very little chance that they will ever be good for anything but fetching lattes to meetings.
No wonder the pay for entry level producer is so low. In fact, I was surprised it was so high.
Stonewolf
I work at EA, specifically at the studio that the "spouse" blog was about, and while it contained a fair amount of fact (but was not entirely factual) at the time it was posted, if you read that blog today and thought it was still true, you'd be mistaken. The work conditions are far better than they used to be.
In fact, compared to other big name independent studios in the area (I won't name names, but they're well known "independent" studios owned by the other big publishers), and places I have worked in the past, EA at that studio is a dream job. There is no mandatory overtime here, work hours are sane now. We do crunch, like every company in this industry, but for us that means going from 40-45 hours a week to 50-60. The crunches are well managed and brief. We are never required to work Sundays. We aren't required to come in "just to be there". And if we are showing up for work, our managers are there too.
The pay and benefits are better, too. In fact, the health and dental benefits are the best I've ever seen.
On the job, conditions are great. Nerf dart office/cubical wars are a blast. We get beer at team and studio meetings. We have art shows. Our cubicles are actually hexagons, and can reconfigure (take out walls/move shelves/desks around, etc) and decorate to our hearts content. It's definitely not a sterile-feeling environment like some places I've seen.
I've been here over 2 years now. If conditions hadn't changed at the time the blog was posted, I would have left soon. As they are now, I'm looking forward to my 5 year mark, 10 year mark, and beyond, at EA.
And yes, I'm posting anonymously, because I don't want to be pestered by the anti-EA crusaders who think it's their job to enforce their views and opinions on others. I'm sure I'll also be called a shill because someone doesn't want to believe it, and has to hold to their faith... fine for them, I don't care.