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Companies want people to work for peanuts. Don't take the bait and pitch them your real rates and say no thanks when they inevitably offer you half.
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Jun 25, 2019 17:19
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I think you are underestimating the number of people who will take a paycut because they think 9 months of 'sacrifice' on a AAA title will benefit their career in the long run. Software contracting is different because the contracts are usually for more stressful & difficult work that you're never allowed to tell anybody you worked on.
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Jun 26, 2019 18:10
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you are getting paid in exposure, duh
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Jun 26, 2019 19:08
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If you’re a company like rockstar I can see working for less to be able to put Rockstar on your resume. Actually that’s a question I have, ARE there any developers where if you work there you’re basically guaranteed a job anywheres else for life?
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Jun 26, 2019 19:12
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Empress Brosephine posted:If you’re a company like rockstar I can see working for less to be able to put Rockstar on your resume. Actually that’s a question I have, ARE there any developers where if you work there you’re basically guaranteed a job anywheres else for life? I can't speak for other companies, but, as a former Rockstar employee, I can say that having the name on your resume doesn't guarantee you jobs at other places. Most places are still trying to make sure they're hiring people with the right skills for the positions they're trying to fill. It does usually lead to getting an additional look at the resume, and it's a pretty good conversation piece, but you still need to get through code / portfolio reviews like most candidates.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:19
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cubicle gangster posted:I think you are underestimating the number of people who will take a paycut because they think 9 months of 'sacrifice' on a AAA title will benefit their career in the long run. Oh, I'm not I assure you, which is why I'll shout the above advice from the rooftops forever and ever. Even looking at it selfishly, it's in my best interest that everyone else demands a fair wage too. 
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Jun 26, 2019 19:27
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Having EA on your resume makes me avoid you, I'll tell you that much. TBH when I was interviewing/hiring for my position at my last (dozen-years-long) job, company experience never mattered to me. What mattered was that you answered my questions well. I had zero interview training, though, and I'm 1 for 6 in "bad" hires.
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Jun 26, 2019 23:18
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Take your programming skills to a company that actually pays for them without overworking you, then go make video games professionally when you're closer to retirement and decide you're ok with a huge paycut and terrible conditions.
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Jun 27, 2019 06:31
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A really good alternative is to find a video-game-adjacent company that needs your expertise but isn't actually selling video games. Those typically pay well while keeping you connected to your favorite hobby.DaveKap posted:Having EA on your resume makes me avoid you, I'll tell you that much. DaveKap fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Jun 29, 2019 |
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Jun 27, 2019 07:50
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Whistling rear end in a top hat posted:but if I ask for even x1.5 or x2 what I'd make as a full time employee, it's an immediate "no thanks, have a great day!" FYI Non-game programmer in many different situations as both contractor and employee. Usually, contractors get about 1-.25x-1.6x full-time salary, but even then it's usually better (from a financial sense) to be a full time since you get benefits like time off and health insurance. Also as a full time you usually get severance if there is a layoff and some minor benefits like gym memberships/bonus/401k matches. The place where it's better to be a contractor than an employee is any shop where they ask for > 40 hours, in that case as a contractor you make great money (your hourly rate * hours, there is no multiplier after about $20 / hour) while the employees just have to do the work for no extra benefit. Most contractors work for a 3rd party firm (TekSystems/Manpower/...) and they are w-2 to that firm, so you don't have to pay any self-employment taxes/unemployment insurance/worker comp/I don't even know what else + get an accountant. If you are a 1099 contractor then yes you need a BIG rate since you'll need to cover way more taxes/expenses than employees/w-2 contractors are used to, also there is no contracting company overhead. I would think 2x-2.5x FTE would probably be a starting point for 1099 rates.
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Jul 4, 2019 20:23
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Stick100 posted:FYI Non-game programmer in many different situations as both contractor and employee. Usually, contractors get about 1-.25x-1.6x full-time salary, but even then it's usually better (from a financial sense) to be a full time since you get benefits like time off and health insurance. Also as a full time you usually get severance if there is a layoff and some minor benefits like gym memberships/bonus/401k matches. The place where it's better to be a contractor than an employee is any shop where they ask for > 40 hours, in that case as a contractor you make great money (your hourly rate * hours, there is no multiplier after about $20 / hour) while the employees just have to do the work for no extra benefit. No offense intended, but asking for anything above 110% is unrealistic if you are an individual freelancer and not with an agency that is placing you at some major companies whom are in dire need. I frequently have to accept far below my expected value (x0.75 or lower sometimes) to land clients despite having gleaming references, AAA experience, years of work history with major studios and publishers, simply because it’s about the bottom line with clients when freelancing. If I were to go into a conversation asking for those kind of rates, I wouldn’t have any work at all. The point being, seek fair compensation, but be prepared to adjust your asking price depending on the situation and/or client. Slayerjerman fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Jul 5, 2019 |
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Jul 5, 2019 04:48
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I have gotten paid my full rate plenty of times. Always ask for your full rate. Do what you have to do, but you can also say no to clients. You can even laugh a little when they offer you their ridiculous, offensively low rates.
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Jul 5, 2019 04:57
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Speaking about 110% and a .75 rate doesn't make much sense out of context. Are you talking $50/hr, $100? One person's full rate could be 2x someone else's. We had an employee recently ask if he could switch to being a 1099. Went through all the paperwork, shifted him over, then he kicked up a fuss that his rate matched his salary and told us it was actually $80/hr, double what he was on before. Fortunately he'd recently made himself no longer an employee. Weird experience.
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Jul 5, 2019 16:34
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That's fair, but salary or rates also depend on context. Junior or senior roles, my software/hardware or the client's, on site or remote, geographical location and cost of living, for example, all contribute to pricing a rate. GENERALLY speaking, though, a contractor (in the US, at least) should charge twice what they would make in an equivalent position as a salaried employer since they're on the hook for self-employment taxes, overhead, health insurance, etc. As a contractor/freelancer you're running a business so you need to be acting like a business and factoring for overhead and expenses, etc. NOW, yeah, this probably means companies will laugh at you and they're wrong. You'll also lose cool clients. You'll also have to work outside of the games industry. You're also free to negotiate downward from time to time, but hopefully you can do that in exchange for something else like a high profile client or a cool project. You may also live in an area or situation that is so expensive that you can't afford to be a freelancer full time. But you should always ask for your full rate. Here's a rate calculator that takes some of those things into effect. (Save a copy to your own Google Drive to edit the values): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XrsFYPUCNDa1ykUyHCzW2EkjDQiigKyGAl_JPb5RVEs/edit#gid=0
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Jul 5, 2019 17:02
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cubicle gangster posted:Speaking about 110% and a .75 rate doesn't make much sense out of context. Are you talking $50/hr, $100? Very fair point. I believe it’s implied we are referring to a rate based on the position in which the person is qualified and experienced for. Naturally if I was applying for QA roles, it would not make sense asking for 2x Sr. Programmer rates as a contractor. Also the acceptable rates will vary company to company. So it’s good to do some digging around for info before you waltz in asking for something crazy high or ridiculously low as a potential employee or contractor. Glassdoor is helpful for that.
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Jul 5, 2019 19:13
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Slayerjerman posted:Very fair point. I believe it’s implied we are referring to a rate based on the position in which the person is qualified and experienced for. Naturally if I was applying for QA roles, it would not make sense asking for 2x Sr. Programmer rates as a contractor. hm it seems like companies that underpay shouldn't get employees
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Jul 6, 2019 02:46
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Captain Foo posted:hm it seems like companies that underpay shouldn't get employees You would think that but 
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Jul 6, 2019 05:25
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Another thing to consider is whether you're doing a long term contract, where you have a multiple month long stretch of guaranteed income, or short term work where you generally have to deal with more downtime. Short term work pays better per hour. I live in the Netherlands so the math is different, but the concept is the same, you have to cover a bunch of additional costs/insurance yourself so you need to charge a higher rate as a contractor to pay for those things. Also, since I live in a socialist hellhole, we have pretty strong worker rights and a company can't just end our employment at will, so there's additional security in being an employee, the absence of which in a contractor job should be reflected in a contractor rate (that's what I feel at least). But similarly to some other stories posted here, I too have had a company offer to hire me as a contractor in lieu of regular employment and act all surprised when I expected a higher rate than the salary of an employee. I was already employed elsewhere at said salary, there was no more work for me there on that project, but as I said, they couldn't just fire me at will and I wasn't going to just leave and take a haircut elsewhere. When I refused they went back to regular employment, but they wanted part of my pay to be a bonus based on performance, with the bonus taking me back to my original pay. I'm fine with a bonus, but if I'm sacrificing $X pay and getting a bonus instead achieving the bonus should give me more than $X. Also, they wouldn't contribute to a retirement fund which my existing job did, but tried to spin that as a positive for me by telling me "but you won't have to contribute yourself either so this actually means you'll have more money". I'm not sure whether they were delusional or just trying to con me but either way I had no desire to work there whatsoever. During the whole process I kept telling them I had an existing contract that I was looking to match and they kept trying to undercut it. I ended up moving to another division of the company I was already working at who just matched my existing contract to the letter, without me even having to ask them to.
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Jul 7, 2019 12:02
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^^^^ Same Company X tried to recruit me, offered me bullshit “perks” like a gym membership and “free parking” with lower pay and lesser benefits. The real kicker was that they justified the lower pay because they were graciously giving me “stock options”, not stock itself mind you. I looked them dead in the eye, and said what am I going to do with stock options when I can’t afford to buy devalued stock in a company that can’t even afford competitive pay and comparable benefits?! They made me a real offer and I still declined. Year later they laid off their entire games division.... Gotta look out for scams when they try to make up your compensation with bogus perks or fringe benefits, one place joked that I’d save tons of money because of all the free dinners during overtime, I walked away from that place pretty fast because it was a salaried position. Slayerjerman fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jul 7, 2019 |
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Jul 7, 2019 20:23
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Slayerjerman posted:No offense intended, but asking for anything above 110% is unrealistic if you are an individual freelancer and not with an agency that is placing you at some major companies whom are in dire need. Non-game programmer opinion in markets where there is heavy recruiting of passive employees: The reason you have to get 1.25-1.6*salary is just get the same pay and still may possibly cheaper for the employer then salaried. When you're a W-2 contractor you don't get paid for sick time, vacation time, company training, other various things. If you're 1099 then you have all of those issues plus often providing your own equipment/software and covering unemployment insurance/the other 7% of Medicare/SS. Companies will happily pay those rates (non-game developer) because they often have money, but don't have hiring authorization/slots. To give some numbers to help: According to indeed median Senior Software Engineer in Dallas makes $112,645 + bonus of $6,075. For a w-2 contracting role this means the starting rate should be 112,645/2080 = $54. Note: this base rate is actually far below what employee gets, to be more accurate it would be around $120,720 (salary, bonus, +2k 401k match) / (52 - 3 weeks vacation - 2 weeks holiday/personal = 47) * 40 = $120,720 / 47 = $64. Then adding on the multiplier from the base rate: $65-$86/hr. For 1099 you'd want to add on something like $20-40/hr for the other expenses and because you are cutting out the agency overhead. So the bottom end of $65 is just about a pure match in compensation with the salaried equivalent (assuming good time off/no overtime). I don't work in Dallas but these numbers are very similar to other situations I've seen. Again these numbers seem high but it is very likely it costs the company less money to pay someone $70/hr than salary of $112,645 when they account for all of their costs (health insurance, 401k match, mandatory training, hr overhead, pension, company Christmas party, bonus, severance). Everyone has to do what they have to do as all markets are constantly in flux but the reason to know these number is because it's what the market will normally bear. You don't an employer a favor if you willingly under-price yourself as you could easily get headhunted out mid critical project when someone offers market rate. The one times contractors make out like crazy is when there is overtime, but also just as easily the company can tell a contractor that the office is closing for a week and they can't bill. Stick100 fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 18:00
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Your mileage will vary, even within the same company. Been a W2 contractor at a bunch of places, had OT, benefits, vacation/sick/pto. Places that didn't usually kicked in a few percent as a "bonus" to offset the lack of PTO. I worked for one very large LA area AAA studio as a W2 contractor, I had OT, full medical, free food, some benefits.. just no company bonus/profit participation, but I was at a higher rate than average at that place. Thing was, the contractors were very inconsistent in our department. Some were 1099 on a day rate, I was W2 on an hourly rate, I got a relocation bonus and hotel to cover my move/rental search, but my friend who joined a bit later didn't get the relo or starting bonus. Some guys had no OT, others guys had a different health plan, etc. I know the company goofed when a manager promised us in an email that everyone in the department would transition to staff positions within a year. That manager got let go, and the company started pretending stuff was never said or emailed. When the department was shut down with 2 days notice they gave staff guys double severance on a case by case basis and the contractors got 3 months pay if they would sign an agreement. Sucked but I took the money and ran to another job. That being said, saying no as a contractor can be nerve racking, that's why it's good to have a few months living expenses saved up in reserve so you can turn down the bullshit offers.
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Jul 10, 2019 04:20
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Big K of Justice posted:That being said, saying no as a contractor can be nerve racking, that's why it's good to have a few months living expenses saved up in reserve so you can turn down the bullshit offers. Always be extremely polite when communicating with recruiters/contracting companies/employers. Every contracting shop has a list of blacklisted people and the recruiters tend to share them with each other. It's almost certainly unofficial for legality reasons but take a recruiter out to lunch (or let them take you out) and ask them for any bullshit stories they have and they all have plenty of both companies and contractors being stupidly rude sometime to the point of getting extremely personal.
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Jul 10, 2019 18:51
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Is there a reason why 30 FPS became the ‘standard’ framerate for most console devs? What’s special about 30? Why not 35 or 40?
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Jul 11, 2019 03:03
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Captain Beans posted:Is there a reason why 30 FPS became the ‘standard’ framerate for most console devs? What’s special about 30? Why not 35 or 40? It comes from TVs. In the NTSC/PAL/SECAM era most developers were based in NTSC countries with 29.97fps. Nowadays HDTVs pretty universally support 30/60fps.
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Jul 11, 2019 04:22
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It's also a divisor of most of the common display refresh rates (60, 90, 120, 240hz), so your frames should generally line up nicely with v-sync on the display at 30 (since you can hopefully just use each frame for 2 v-sync intervals), whereas other rates don't divide in as nicely.
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Jul 11, 2019 05:10
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j.peeba posted:It comes from TVs. In the NTSC/PAL/SECAM era most developers were based in NTSC countries with 29.97fps. Nowadays HDTVs pretty universally support 30/60fps. And this itself was driven by the standard frequency of AC power being 60 Hz in those countries.
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Jul 11, 2019 07:43
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And conversely that's why we had the whole problem with games being slower in PAL countries (where the base frequency was 50Hz) unless developers retimed them or had a toggle in the first place (Jak & Daxter is the first console game I remember having a 50/60Hz toggle in the config menu). On Dos-era PCs 35hz was a common tickrate because you couldn't count on using the display as a reference and 35Hz was one of the most reliable frequencies you could get through reconfiguring the internal clock that allowed you to preserve the current date and time. This eventually changed in the post-DOS era as Windows 9x started offering a dedicated API for reliable high precision timing.
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Jul 11, 2019 12:08
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Contractor talk: I was in charge of sourcing contractors for a number of teams at Blizzard -- it was actually about 30-35% of my team's capacity. Need for contractors came from one of two places: 1. Team had a specific capability need that wasn't in-house. I'd bring in a contractor for that particular team/project. There was a lot of that around GDPR across a number of teams. 2. Team had tried to get headcount. Was not successful in getting headcount. Needed to get projects done, would then hire one or more contractors for a project. As far as pay, my team had internal run rate numbers for roles company-wide, so we knew what the hourly rate should look like. For example, if the run rate for a mid-level NodeJS backend developer was $3500/week (that's TOTAL compensation), we'd try to bring the contractor in at $85/hour. Given agency markup, I'd be looking at $100/hour. All of this completely circumvented HR, as their contracts were with the big "commodity" sourcing companies like Volt or Robert Half, and we'd have to spend a lot more time on vetting the person, whereas with the agencies my team was dealing with, we'd just get them to loan us a dev for a quarter or two, and they'd just show up the next day/week. Some of our agency folks were there for up to 18 months before we had to have them go back to their agency, but this was 100% because of operating budget vs. headcount budget. Wherever we could convert to FTE we would: about 50% of the time with devs; 75-80% with Program Managers. We almost never worked with individuals, as we had a substantial insurance requirement for E&O coverage. In a couple of cases where we did have an exceptional individual or an exceptional need for a particular individual, we'd run them through one of our agency partners as a pass-through. EDIT: All contractors managed by our team got game credits. Feral Bueller fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Jul 12, 2019 |
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Jul 12, 2019 06:05
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Feral Bueller posted:Contractor talk: I was in charge of sourcing contractors for a number of teams at Blizzard -- it was actually about 30-35% of my team's capacity. To work your numbers backwards, $3500/week is $182,000/year given benefits/overhead/bonus/employer 7% medicare/ss I assume that's a salary around $120,000? Then our other calc was salary/2080 = $57/hour * 1.25-1.6 = $72-$92/hour which is similar to the range you specified when working as a W2 running through an agency.
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Jul 12, 2019 15:18
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Stick100 posted:To work your numbers backwards, $3500/week is $182,000/year given benefits/overhead/bonus/employer 7% medicare/ss I assume that's a salary around $120,000? Then our other calc was salary/2080 = $57/hour * 1.25-1.6 = $72-$92/hour which is similar to the range you specified when working as a W2 running through an agency. Yep. $90-110 for Seniors, which we preferred. $75-90 for mids. The conversions were always a bump.
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Jul 12, 2019 23:12
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Feral Bueller posted:Yep. $90-110 for Seniors, which we preferred. $75-90 for mids. The conversions were always a bump. FYI you can get Senior devs in most non-San Fran/Seatle/New York US markets for ~$60/hour most mids are happy with $40/hour.
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Jul 13, 2019 03:39
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Stick100 posted:FYI you can get Senior devs in most non-San Fran/Seatle/New York US markets for ~$60/hour most mids are happy with $40/hour. Good thing blizzard is in a non San Fran Seattle New York market so they could do that! Oh wait...
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Jul 13, 2019 03:41
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Price wasn't the primary consideration. https://medium.com/javascript-scene/why-cutting-costs-is-expensive-how-9-hour-software-engineers-cost-boeing-billions-b76dbe571957
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Jul 13, 2019 06:03
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Stick100 posted:FYI you can get Senior devs in most non-San Fran/Seatle/New York US markets for ~$60/hour most mids are happy with $40/hour. These are not good rates. Everyone at these levels should charge above these rates.
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Jul 13, 2019 06:17
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It’s a bit unfair to be citing Blizzard’s compensation when they can just throw money around for top-tier staffers and most would practically do anything to get Blizzard on their resume... Most mid level and lower tier studios/projects don’t and will never have those kind of budgets. And most couldn’t get a foot in the door with the big boys straight away, as suggested they aim for senior level talent, hence the large compensation packages. When I did due diligence studio visits, often it was for AA and second-tier projects to be staffed by mid and junior talent and we had lots of those type of contracts to fill. Often these were 40-100 person studios churning out movie games and licensed IP stuff (Disney brands etc). This is where most talent is going to land and get their feet wet, not Blizzard, so lower salary/contractor rates should be considered in these cases. The larger projects (Star Wars, Batman, certain FPS series, etc) would get money thrown at any problems, including staffing. It’s the “too big to fail” sort of projects that get blank checks for whatever they need.
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Jul 13, 2019 06:21
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Agreed with one clarification: Blizzard has a fairly robust college internship program, and an equally robust, if slightly smaller program for veterans of military service. A lot of new hires come out of both programs https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/students/internships https://taskandpurpose.com/how-blizzard-supports-veteran-employment It's not easy to get your resume read without an internal referral -- I got my referral through a goon and a couple of PMs, and referred several goons while I was there.
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Jul 13, 2019 14:04
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mutata posted:These are not good rates. Everyone at these levels should charge above these rates. If you're in the US but non-crazy markets you can def. get Senior devs for ~$60/hr W-2. If you even tell someone you've ever gotten $80/hr they think you're crazy/lying. $100/hr will get you the very best developers if you're willing to locating a place like Phoenix/Orlando/StL. Which to be fair you can get a 1600 sqft. house 15 min drive from city center and all amenities for $200,000 with some patience.
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Jul 14, 2019 07:34
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I'm sure companies can find contractors for those rates but those rates are bad if you're on a 1099. What I'm saying is contractors need to he asking for more. W-2s account a bit differently, though. I work primarily remote from Salt Lake City as a senior level 3d artist on 1099s and ask for and get rates higher than $60/hr and I'm not "the best of the best" or whatever. I'm also just an artist so if you're an engineer you should be asking for more as well. You can negotiate downward, of course, and I often do, but plenty of companies just don't want to pay fair rates and I'm happy to not have to deal with them as clients. Some teams are indie or small and just don't have any budget, which I understand too. I don't blame them for not being able to match full rates. On the other hand, I have 2 kids and a mortgage so while I wish them well, if their passion project isn't also my passion (and even if it is!) I have to wish them well and move on. mutata fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Jul 14, 2019 |
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Jul 14, 2019 16:39
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mutata posted:I'm sure companies can find contractors for those rates but those rates are bad if you're on a 1099. What I'm saying is contractors need to he asking for more. W-2s account a bit differently, though. Yeah those were W-2 rates working for an agency rate so more like ~$100-~$150/hr 1099.
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Jul 14, 2019 17:43
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Stick100 posted:Yeah those were W-2 rates working for an agency rate so more like ~$100-~$150/hr 1099. Ah, gotcha! Understood. Yeah, that washes with my math, too.
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Jul 14, 2019 20:01
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