Moving question

tell us the story about the amd ceo the midget and the donkey

 

I don't believe it, no way!

Humus has a girlfriend?

 

Congratulations, Humus!

I hope you'll still have time to hang out here. I think I can speak for everyone in saying we all really appreciate and enjoy your contributions.

 

I know it sounds unbelieveable, I barely believe it myself.

I'll be around, don't worry.

 

Congrats Humus, to both of you.

Hope everything works out well for you and your move ain't as painful as you think it will be. You have my full sympathies, I HATE moving.

 

Congratulations for your new job Humus and good luck!

 

Remember before you go steal everything that isnt nailed down

 

All the best to you Humus! Avalanche should consider themselves very lucky.

And I think the best advice I have for moving is not to rush it if it's at all possible.

Good luck!

 

Congrats on the new position and best of luck with the move!

 

That funny because usually it works out the other way around, with hardware companies offering a lot more than game studios could for the same guy. I knew a couple people that originally planned to work in game development but couldn't turn down the far better offer at ATI.

Congratulations and good luck!

 

Well, this was my first real job (except a few summers jobs). Got here fresh from university, and as such I didn't start off very high, but it was a good start on my career though. Also worth mentioning is that the Swedish game industry is booming. It has doubled in value in two years, and most companies have a hard time finding competent people.

 

Maybe things are better in the EU, but in the states, the game industry is a sweat shop, through and through.

 

Well, I've visited game developers on a regular basis in my job the last three years and I can't say I've gotten that impression anywhere really, even though I know there are places that are pretty bad. I'd also say there's a different attitude among Swedish game developers compared to North America. I had the chance to work onsite at Avalanche for three weeks earlier this, so I've seen enough to be convinced there won't be any issues of that sort.

 

My experience has been a glut of people wanting into the game business, which depresses salaries, and long hours come with the territory.

But if you're happy, run with it! That's the best reward.

 

Congrats, Humus! Just Cause was tons of fun (albeit a little bit shallow), so I'm really hoping Avalanche will continue with the genre, but add some more fulfillment and varied ways to take down objectives.

 

Interesting. I was talking about starting salaries, actually. My exposure is to the hardware side at ATI, even though the colleagues I mentioned are just doing software to help in the design/analysis of hardware. I guess you were doing stuff that's more directly comparable to game programming, so maybe salaries in that division are more comparable.

"Sweat shop" is a relative term that Russ is using. Game devs aren't starving or anything. They just seem to earn a lot less, on average, than a competent programmer would elsewhere.

 

In the annual salary survey in Game Developer Magazine game developers don't look too bad off to me. But then I don't know what the average programmer earns elsewhere, so I'd love to be enlightened if someone has any numbers.

I don't have the 2007 numbers, but 2006 averages for game programmers are:
US: $82,107
CAN: $58,944
EU: $46,997

 

yes humus but what hours are they working ?

ps: why not move to Norway instead - at least it has its own species of parrot

 

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192202043&pgno=1
http://www.salary.com/

EE times has the average electrical engineer earning ~$100K. The numbers from salary.com for 'software engineer' seem low, from my experience as a hiring manager.

But anyways, dont' let us discourage you. Its a dream job--nows definitely the right time to do it while you're young and single without children. Game companies are almost always like startups--they want %110 of you, and then some.

 

Not all the companies are like that, believe me, there are extremely successfull game companies that don't ask you to work 12 hours a day or more and that pay you a decent amount of money, in USA and EU as well
IMHO things are slowly changing for the better, the industry is maturing even though not as fast as it should..

Marco