10 ms·

As a former game dev turned regular old swe, I highly recommend just going the indie route (i.e. nights and weekends). Game dev is just doing software engineeri

by cellis 4y ago

As a former game dev turned regular old swe, I highly recommend just going the indie route (i.e. nights and weekends). Game dev is just doing software engineering, just harder (oh those trig classes matter! calculus has a purpose! linear algebra all day! ), that pays less,with the same or worse politics (studio bosses instead of eng/prod directors), and in most cases doesn't result in a playable game. Sorry, I'm jaded, left that industry at 27 and never looked back. One of my old bosses once told me that new 22 year old CS grads were "meat" for the grinder, and after even 3 years I knew why that's true.

johnea 4y ago
After decades as a EE / SW Engr, every single person I've known who worked in game dev has told this story. More work, less pay, more irrational management... After the tens of thousands laid off in SW over the last few months, the sweet spot is in embedded, more than ever...
- habibur 4y ago
  Few weeks back, others were talking about embedded getting paid less than web app development. What would you say, true? I understand that they aren't getting laidoff, there's a big gap in high demand and low number of experts in this field.
  - m-ee 4y ago
    Definitely true. You’re not gonna starve, if you doing embedded at $BIGTECH probably 200-300k TC, but there will be a discount compared to the regular software engineers wherever you’re working.
    - jacknews 4y ago
      Where are 'regular' swe's getting more than 300k? Or even, where are embedded engineers getting 200k+?
      - roland35 4y ago
        I think a lot of big tech companies are getting into hardware in order to diversify and help build a platform to support future online components. Meta has AR and VR, Google has Nest and Fitbit, Apple obviously makes tons of hardware, Amazon with Alexa and warehouse robotics. All of the above make custom servers which require firmware. Even Netflix has some embedded devs working on supporting streaming devices. What’s nice is that embedded swe equals regular swe salaries at these companies! I am an embedded dev at a big tech company and interviewed at most of the FAANGS recently.
      - m-ee 4y ago
        Any FAANG. But take a look at square for example because they’ve posted more reasonable salary ranges than most. Senior android engineer, 222-272k. Expired now but they had a senior firmware engineer for 202-247k. Unclear if those are base or TC, if it’s base then you’d definitely be over $300k with RSUs, but even if it’s TC a good year in stocks pushes that over.
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  I’d love to write Rust code for embedded systems.
  - randmeerkat 4y ago
    It’s not a job, but I’m guessing you would like this book: https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/ https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/
    - throwaway5959 4y ago
      Thanks!
- m-ee 4y ago
  This is the first time I’ve heard someone be optimistic about embedded. Better than game dev or EE but that’s only one step up on the work/pay ladder. I find my work interesting but I would have made a lot more optimizing the search bar on the Facebook android app or whatever.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  The stories about embedded I've heard is that they've got outsourcing partners in India and China delivering shit-tier code and hardware that they need to fix themselves, on top of their actual jobs. YMMV though. (Mobile) game jobs aren't a more work less pay environment in the least, the successful ones make so much money that the companies want to keep the teams who made the game at all costs. The companies also recognise that it's the people who make the games, so the pay and bonuses reflect that. And because the successes are so big €€€-wise, most companies can afford to spend time making the next big game instead of forcing people to crunch and sleep under their desks. PC/Console gaming is a whole different world, don't know much about that.
- scruple 4y ago
  My experience in embedded was great except for the: more work, less pay, more irrational management part. I doubled my salary moving to web backend services.
CliffyA 4y ago
I'm not as jaded, I've been lucky enough to work at nicer places, but having made the same jump I would strongly recommend the same thing. Either nights and weekends, or after a few years as a SWE you could just retire somewhere cheap and go nuts on your game dev passion.
oriolid 4y ago
What would you recommend for someone who thinks the math part is interesting (and yes I know in normal game project Unity or Unreal Engine would handle it), but isn't that interested in in promoting their indie project?
- cellis 4y ago
  Oh, yeah, game mechanics or game physics engineering is amazing, but understand it's about 1% (if that) of what makes a successful game. I was watching my nephew play Fortnite over thanksgiving and thinking to myself "gee, the graphics are shit, essentially low-poly with some nice shaders!". And CoD Black Ops puts the physics to shame (and thinking that old timers used to tell me the physics of that were bad compared to e.g. PubG/Battlefield). But Fortnite is super colorful, and for a kid just coming off Roblox, it's accessible enough to play. So the HUDs and UIs and leveling and map dev and a million other admin tasks are where the majority of your game dev experience will be. Even doing some (gasp!) web dev, for things like in game stores and so forth. The gameplay mechanics and physics math of particle engines or calculating missile intercepts or inverse kinematics (jacobian matrices anyone?) for skeletal animations are mostly solved problems, but they can still be interesting to reimplement.
  - ngc248 4y ago
    Back when there was no commoditization of game engines, every team starting a game had to do their own engine, tools etc. Now that you have unreal and unity etc, you can actually concentrate on game design and gameplay instead of worrying about the engine and tooling. I agree though writing a game engine and physics engine is very interesting. I used to work for the R&D team of a casino games manufacturer. We created our own in house game engine. It was fun, but adding any new feature would take a very long time. In the end we shifted to unity.
  - oriolid 4y ago
    To me it sounds like someone's still making a living from R&D even though the big money is at casual games and selling diamonds or hats in in-game stores. The question is just how to get that job.
vvanders 4y ago
As another ex-gamedev let me pile into this thread and concur with the parent. There's a very high chance that even if you break in you won't work on the game types that brought you there(I didn't) and pay/work life balance will be hell. If you really want to do it, side projects are the way to go. There's a ton of good engines out there and way more resources than when I was in the industry.

by cellis 4y ago

johnea 4y ago

After decades as a EE / SW Engr, every single person I've known who worked in game dev has told this story. More work, less pay, more irrational management... After the tens of thousands laid off in SW over the last few months, the sweet spot is in embedded, more than ever...

habibur 4y ago
Few weeks back, others were talking about embedded getting paid less than web app development. What would you say, true? I understand that they aren't getting laidoff, there's a big gap in high demand and low number of experts in this field.
- m-ee 4y ago
  Definitely true. You’re not gonna starve, if you doing embedded at $BIGTECH probably 200-300k TC, but there will be a discount compared to the regular software engineers wherever you’re working.
  - jacknews 4y ago
    Where are 'regular' swe's getting more than 300k? Or even, where are embedded engineers getting 200k+?
    - roland35 4y ago
      I think a lot of big tech companies are getting into hardware in order to diversify and help build a platform to support future online components. Meta has AR and VR, Google has Nest and Fitbit, Apple obviously makes tons of hardware, Amazon with Alexa and warehouse robotics. All of the above make custom servers which require firmware. Even Netflix has some embedded devs working on supporting streaming devices. What’s nice is that embedded swe equals regular swe salaries at these companies! I am an embedded dev at a big tech company and interviewed at most of the FAANGS recently.
    - m-ee 4y ago
      Any FAANG. But take a look at square for example because they’ve posted more reasonable salary ranges than most. Senior android engineer, 222-272k. Expired now but they had a senior firmware engineer for 202-247k. Unclear if those are base or TC, if it’s base then you’d definitely be over $300k with RSUs, but even if it’s TC a good year in stocks pushes that over.
throwaway5959 4y ago
I’d love to write Rust code for embedded systems.
- randmeerkat 4y ago
  It’s not a job, but I’m guessing you would like this book: https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/ https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    Thanks!
m-ee 4y ago
This is the first time I’ve heard someone be optimistic about embedded. Better than game dev or EE but that’s only one step up on the work/pay ladder. I find my work interesting but I would have made a lot more optimizing the search bar on the Facebook android app or whatever.
theshrike79 4y ago
The stories about embedded I've heard is that they've got outsourcing partners in India and China delivering shit-tier code and hardware that they need to fix themselves, on top of their actual jobs. YMMV though. (Mobile) game jobs aren't a more work less pay environment in the least, the successful ones make so much money that the companies want to keep the teams who made the game at all costs. The companies also recognise that it's the people who make the games, so the pay and bonuses reflect that. And because the successes are so big €€€-wise, most companies can afford to spend time making the next big game instead of forcing people to crunch and sleep under their desks. PC/Console gaming is a whole different world, don't know much about that.
scruple 4y ago
My experience in embedded was great except for the: more work, less pay, more irrational management part. I doubled my salary moving to web backend services.

CliffyA 4y ago

I'm not as jaded, I've been lucky enough to work at nicer places, but having made the same jump I would strongly recommend the same thing. Either nights and weekends, or after a few years as a SWE you could just retire somewhere cheap and go nuts on your game dev passion.

oriolid 4y ago

What would you recommend for someone who thinks the math part is interesting (and yes I know in normal game project Unity or Unreal Engine would handle it), but isn't that interested in in promoting their indie project?

cellis 4y ago
Oh, yeah, game mechanics or game physics engineering is amazing, but understand it's about 1% (if that) of what makes a successful game. I was watching my nephew play Fortnite over thanksgiving and thinking to myself "gee, the graphics are shit, essentially low-poly with some nice shaders!". And CoD Black Ops puts the physics to shame (and thinking that old timers used to tell me the physics of that were bad compared to e.g. PubG/Battlefield). But Fortnite is super colorful, and for a kid just coming off Roblox, it's accessible enough to play. So the HUDs and UIs and leveling and map dev and a million other admin tasks are where the majority of your game dev experience will be. Even doing some (gasp!) web dev, for things like in game stores and so forth. The gameplay mechanics and physics math of particle engines or calculating missile intercepts or inverse kinematics (jacobian matrices anyone?) for skeletal animations are mostly solved problems, but they can still be interesting to reimplement.
- ngc248 4y ago
  Back when there was no commoditization of game engines, every team starting a game had to do their own engine, tools etc. Now that you have unreal and unity etc, you can actually concentrate on game design and gameplay instead of worrying about the engine and tooling. I agree though writing a game engine and physics engine is very interesting. I used to work for the R&D team of a casino games manufacturer. We created our own in house game engine. It was fun, but adding any new feature would take a very long time. In the end we shifted to unity.
- oriolid 4y ago
  To me it sounds like someone's still making a living from R&D even though the big money is at casual games and selling diamonds or hats in in-game stores. The question is just how to get that job.

vvanders 4y ago

As another ex-gamedev let me pile into this thread and concur with the parent. There's a very high chance that even if you break in you won't work on the game types that brought you there(I didn't) and pay/work life balance will be hell. If you really want to do it, side projects are the way to go. There's a ton of good engines out there and way more resources than when I was in the industry.