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I dunno. My friend is making $250K working for Roblox. He’s 15yrs into his career - all game dev. Doesn’t seem too bad.
by ttul 5y ago
I dunno. My friend is making $250K working for Roblox. He’s 15yrs into his career - all game dev. Doesn’t seem too bad.
- dbish 5y ago15 years in software could get you a lot more outside game dev
- Thaxll 5y agoMost dev in the US don't make 250k after 15years.
- xvector 5y agoMost devs in the US don’t care about maximizing their career.
- ashtonkem 5y agoPay isn’t even the main reason I’d avoid gaming, it’s the tendency of game companies to grossly abuse their workers via crunch time and sudden studio closures that worries me. The same dynamics that suppress game dev salaries also lead companies to treating their workers as replaceable, which is a pretty bad situation to end up in.
- dbish 5y agoYes, but I think of Roblox like a FAANG in terms of success and money. If you moved to a FAANG with that experience you would likely make a good chunk more
- the_only_law 5y agoI was shocked at the pay at Roblox. I was on levels.fyi the other day and came across a list of companies with the highest pay for new grads and it was in the top five I believe.
- martincmartin 5y agoSo is he making games, or making a game platform? There's a big difference.
- ttul 5y agoThis is a good point. He works on the platform.
- rawtxapp 5y agoThat's great, but most FAANG eng make more than that by their 2nd or 3rd year. With 15 years of experience, they could be making at least 500k+. edit: for the skeptical, this is what an L4 makes at Google[1], L4 is easily attainable within 3 years, pretty likely in 2 years, that's assuming you start at L3 (straight out of college or very little experience). 1: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engineer/L4/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...
- daniel-thompson 5y agoMost FAANG eng in their 2nd or 3rd year are not FAANG anymore by their 15th year.
- wikibob 5y agoInteresting hypothesis. Where do you think they go? I’d say it might seem this way because of the hyper growth. Most people at FAANG haven’t been there long, because they haven’t been big that long.
- xenihn 5y agoIn my network: - early retirement - founding their own companies - landlording - teaching for fun/enjoyment/fulfillment, not because they need money Some have done all 4 of these.
- rawtxapp 5y agoI've had plenty of coworkers who've been at Google or Apple for longer than 15 years, but what I've seen is people will usually jump after 4 years for even more comp or go the startup route. So those FAANG salaries are like the lower bound for most. Of course, some people will just save/invest and retire after 6-10 years, that's fine too.
- ironmagma 5y agoCitation? Even in the Bay Area the median is considered somewhere around $150k.
- ashtonkem 5y agoAnd some college athletes will eventually end up in a Tom Brady situation, that doesn’t mean I would recommend anyone bank on getting drafted as a career.
- johnnyanmac 5y agoweird comparison since even a regular 3 year professional will make millions in their short career. 250K is not unusual money if you are regularly advancing on oppurtunities (and for the people around here, it wouldn't even be seen as impressive). Whether you want to wait a decade to move to that point or 5 years at FAANG is up to the individual. But the topic here seems to assert that you can't make good money at all in the industry, not how fast you make it.
- hu3 5y agoGood for him. But that's an exception. How much does the average roblox dev make?
- wikibob 5y agoYou can see for yourself here: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Roblox/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Roblox/salaries/Software-Engi... IC1 Software Engineer (Entry Level) $221k IC2 $249k IC3 Senior Software Engineer $285k IC5 Principal Software Engineer $422k
- hu3 5y agoI'm not sure how Levels.fyi work but those are great despite being paid in part with stock grants and bonuses. However, Roblox itself is an exception. I'd guess the average game developer income to be much lower.
- kilbuz 5y agoI love levels but the self-selecting group who reports their comp there cannot be used to reliably estimate the average, since they are not a random sample. I would guess propensity to report is correlated with higher TC.
- jmcgough 5y agoFriends at blizzard are paid well too, but a lot of them didn't start out in games - they started in devops. Lots of need for that skillset for big MMOs.
- DubiousPusher 5y agoRoblox is a very different kind of game company though. I've noticed the more service oriented game companies have better wages and work life balance. The more old school, content heavy ones have lowe pay and longer hours.
- Impossible 5y agoUltimately it's working on game tech and companies like Roblox also hire for other roles that don't have exact equivalent in web or mobile development (art and game design roles mostly). Limiting your definition of "game development" to content heavy games with low pay and longer hours, especially when the industry is moving away from that type of game with a few exceptions, doesn't make sense.
- stale2002 5y agoRoblox is an exception. I am in a similar situation, at twitch, where I work, but these companies are the exception and not the rule, for game dev stuff. Epic games probably pays highly, as well as riot, and value. But I can count on maybe 1 hand, the number of actual good "video game" companies that I would want to work for.