The massive gap between UK and US gamedev salaries seems to keep getting larger :(
/cries in Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol...
It's fairly easy to be on £60k outside of London with a few years of experience. Moving up north towards the Midlands or even further like Manchester or Leeds and you're going to live a very comfortable life on a Software Developer salary.
Yeah, it's not the US where people are on £200k at 25. But earning £60k in your 20s puts you so far ahead of almost everyone else in their 20s in the UK.
Yeah, but that is the point isn't it - in the US and some other countries you have the potential to earn a few hundred K per annum. That sort of money just isn't available to software people here. In fact you're more likely to be offered around £50k for a 'senior' role somewhere.
IMHO it's partly because here in the UK we don't really regard software engineers as skilled professionals, most management structures seem to treat us as generic office folks, and unruly, childlike ones at that.
Many US developers are overpaid. That's the reality. The pay floor has been shifted too high and so the ceiling is even higher. We mustn't kid ourselves, the skill floor in software development is relatively low. Why should a graduate front end developer get paid 6 figures? There's some good ones that deserve it, but there's also some really shit ones who will never learn and grow as a professional.
I've worked with good graduates and I've worked with shit graduates. The good ones get rewarded. The unskilled ones who don't learn, don't. I think that's fine. 6 figures for entry level grunt work is just an unreasonable amount of money and the only reason the US gets away with it is because of the pay floor.
Woo, £80K, for people in the top 2-5% of the game (going by salary distribution). Such rewards. Just don't look over the pond...
> If you want to be earning £200-300k then set up your own company. Almost no one is going to be employed by someone else on that money.
And that's part of the problem right there. In the US you can aspire to getting salaries in those sorts of ranges, one day, if you're good at what you do and make good choices.
> 6 figures for entry level grunt work is just an unreasonable amount of money
Sure it is! But unless you either strike out on your own as a contractor (which I have) or leave software behind and go into management/consulting/whatever, six figures is effectively unattainable at all.
I'm not disputing there are a lot of really not-that-great software people around, or claiming we should just hand a bag of gold to every new grad. But there is vanishingly little in the high end for the better people to aspire to. Which is why people either transition to management, go independent or just plain leave.
I'm not sure of your point. Become one of the top 5% of skilled workers and earn in the 95+ percentile. If you want money that's comparable to over the pond then go over the pond.
>And that's part of the problem right there. In the US you can aspire to getting salaries in those sorts of ranges, one day, if you're good at what you do and make good choices.
I don't think you realise how much money the average person in the UK earns, or even what the average american earns. Become an average developer making 50k and you're in the top 15% of earners in the country. That's a lot of money!
Just because the US has higher tech salaries doesn't mean you can't aspire to be a higher earner in the UK. Anyone who sees a £60-80k salary here and scoffs at it has unrealistic expectations.
Yeah, if you want to stay as a developer and not transition into a hands off management role then your earning potential will flatline pretty quickly. But I think that's just the nature of tech jobs in the UK, we don't have the high tech start ups that the US has. It's not like you can become an expert in creating distributed storage engines and have 10 companies knocking at your door here like you can in the US. There's not many companies outside of FAANG where expert software development knowledge is actually applicable and so the job market is less competitive.
I'm well aware thanks, I've looked up the numbers.
> Become an average developer making 50k and you're in the top 15% of earners in the country. That's a lot of money!
Not really, and certainly not in the context of this conversation, if you head back up to the very top of the thread - "The massive gap between UK and US gamedev salaries seems to keep getting larger"
(FYI average dev compensation is under £40k)
> Anyone who sees a £60-80k salary here and scoffs at it has unrealistic expectations
> if you want to stay as a developer and not transition into a hands off management role then your earning potential will flatline pretty quickly
> I think that's just the nature of tech jobs in the UK
All of this is precisely the problem I'm describing, that realistic expectations in the UK are pretty poor in comparison to what you can make elsewhere, in other English-speaking nations. The nature of salaried tech jobs in the UK makes them relatively unappealing. So the most motivated people either go contracting, where they can make 3 times that if they do it well but companies don't really get to build sustainable teams, or they just plain leave the country in droves. Meanwhile British industry complains it can't find skilled people to work for it. There is a systemic problem with poor rewards and poor results in the UK in this area.
So to come back to this -
> I'm not sure of your point.
The point is that your earning potential as an employed software developer in the UK is severely curtailed compared to the US and some other markets, to the extent that it causes industry problems.
UK perm roles looking for the sort of experience I have tend to pay somewhere in the region of 33%-50% of what I can make as a contractor. Even in London perm, roles almost never break six figures AFAICT.
And in a post-Covid world, 'being in/near London' may not be able to increase your earning potential in the way it usually has done.
I've basically never seen a perm software role come up that pays six figures.
On the one hand in the US if you save a lot, you can retire early and move somewhere cheap. On the other hand in Europe a lot of things are covered for you without having to deduct them from the salary.
If anyone has researched this subject I'd love some links.
One year of prestigious university is less than 600€ in fees...
Cost of living, education, transportation, etc... also are a factor.
I mean sure, France's government and health care system is probably a bit more efficient than America's, but I doubt it's order of magnitude different. Maybe more importantly, but in the other direction, as a developer in France you're probably paying more for healthcare than you use (subsidizing the average person who pays less taxes). Quite arguably differences like those are things that you are purchasing with your salary by choosing to live in the US instead of France, I don't think it's either desirable or really possible to eliminate them.
62k€ = 75k usd, 150 - 75 = 75. so assuming both numbers are before tax (and neglecting things like bonuses, benefits, equity, etc that you probably need to add into both numbers), there's your comparison.
Now the question to you is "is Lyon worth 75k/year over California". That's not a question of compensation, that's just a question of how much you value the difference in culture and society. Do you want to spend 75k$/year on purchasing universal healthcare (edit: I.e. your share of healthcare for everyone instead of what you purchase in the US, which is approximately just healthcare for you), a better public education system, a better social security system, less... American... neighbors, and/or whatever else you think Lyon gives you over California.
Edit: Accidentally had this saying "after tax" instead of "before tax" for an hour, I think everyone replying to me mentally corrected that anyways, but noting that I fixed it here in case they didn't.
[1] https://www.cabinet-roche.com/en/payroll-taxes-in-france/
There are websites [0] that will help you do the conversion Brut/Net easily
This is getting off-topic, but maybe surprisingly, Americans pay more to subsidize other people's healthcare than the average French taxpayer does, despite the American system not being universal. Some back-of-envelope numbers,
France: Total French healthcare spending in 2017 was $337 billion, of which 77%, or $259 billion, was publicly financed. [1]
U.S.: Total U.S. healthcare spending was $3.8 trillion in 2019, of which 45%, or $1.7 trillion, was publicly financed (29% federal, 16% state/local, 55% private). [2]
Adjusting for the two countries' population sizes, that puts publicly financed healthcare spending at about $3900 per capita in France, versus $5200 per person in the US. Basically the somewhat lower public share for the US (45% vs. 77%) is outweighed by costs being about twice as high.
[1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy...
[2] https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...
Thanks :)
In Europe most of those taxes are paid by your employer, on top of your "before taxes" salary.
So no guarantee of health care coverage after losing your job etc. but it's basically only ~$6,000 extra a year out of your salary at worst. So a $150,000 job in the U.S. is roughly equivalent to a $144,000 job in Europe (before you get into housing and food prices etc.)
In my particular case, when moving from the UK to the US, my estimate is that the "headline" salary number for the US offer I got overstated my pay by about 30% when comparing on a "like for like" basis with the UK salary. It was still a pay increase, but not by as much as you would think from just looking at the two salary numbers.
The main differences were: 1) my UK taxes were lower, 2) the UK job made pension contributions worth about 18% of salary, while the US one didn't, and 3) the US job deducts about 5% of my salary for health insurance premiums.
And UK has 20k PA ISA allowance (put 20k beyond tax) and a 12.3 k CGT Allowance and we don't get crucified on employee shares, if my EMI shares vest I pay no income tax and 10% CGT
Even to do that, you need to consider:
* State and local income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes
* The value of the particular benefits packages at the respective jobs
* The comparative cost of living difference (housing can be up to a 10x difference)
* Insurance rate differences (which can vary widely because most insurance regulations are per-state)
Yeah, there's cost-of-living factors involved, but gamedev in the UK (and Europe?) just pays poorly. There's certainly money being made, but it's usually buying fancy cars for studio directors, not going into rewarding the dev team.
Plus HSA contributions, 401k matching, dependent care FSA contributions, etc. The US has tons of tax advantage pay options for the well heeled employers. If someone says they’re earning $250k, and doesn’t specify if it’s total comp or not, I assume the employer is kicking in an extra $50k for various benefits.
Not really. The ACA (Obamacare) caps overhead and profits at either 15% or 20% depending on market (google "medical loss ratio").
The dirty secret is that too many doctors go into medicine for the wrong reasons (making money, instead of helping people), and collude to limit the number of new doctors created each year. The AMA is by far the most effective union in the US.
Number 1: It's not the profits that are capped. Profits plus operating expenses are capped. Operating expenses (like paying folks in the call center to answer questions about coverage, adjudicating claims, etc.) come out of the insurance company's 15/20% (national/regional). If medical claims are less than 75/80% of premiums, the insurer is legally obligated to issue rebates. If the cost of administering the plan is more than 15/20%... too bad, so sad: the insurance company is legally obligated to loose money and (eventually, if they don't fix it) go bankrupt.
Number 2: I never said that it wasn't more expensive in the US. Just that health insurance companies are not the reason it is so (which was the reason you cited for the US's high healthcare costs). Mathematically, even if you assume it's entirely graft and profit (and it's not--processing claims is not free), the very best you can do is a 20% reduction in costs. What accounts for the rest?
Bear in mind that medical doctors in the USA earn as much as FAANG engineers. The average doctor salary across all specialties in the USA is $300k. Many earn 2x that. By way of comparison, it is unusual for a doctor in the UK to earn even as much as $200k, and the average is around $100k.
Unless the UK is somehow finding people who will pay money to the NHS in exchange for the honor of answering phones and administering claims, I find it difficult to believe that health insurers are anywhere close to the biggest driver of healthcare costs in the US.
$100k is about £71k. Starting salary for consultants in England is £82096.
1. Not every doctor is a consultant. Specialists range £41k to £76k. GPs range £61k to £91k.
2. The salary bands are fairly narrow. Consultants may start at £82k, but they only go up to £111k.
Here you can have it from the horse's mouth: https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/pay-d...
> Specialists range £41k to £76k.
You've misunderstood what they said. They said "speciality doctors", not "specialist doctors". In England the trainee ranking is Foundation Years, Core Trainee, Speciality Trainee.
As an employer I would have to pay 78.852 if an employee had a base salary of 60.000.
This is before personal income taxes, which are also very high.
https://www.verksamt.se/web/international/running/employing-...
In terms of the proportion 31% is relatively small honestly - employee charges in the US generally range somewhere in 40-60% but senior developers with families often have payroll overhead that can run upwards of 80k and can represent a much higher proportion of the employer's out of pocket employment expenses. These costs can be extreme at relatively hip progressive companies that employ some unskilled folks. Your 5k/month healthplan might be proportionally little on your 150k salary but if someone working in the mail room and earning 20k annual has the same benefits it'll work out to 300% their take home cost - this is why employers often segregate benefit packages to different pay ranges.
That being said, the way healthcare is paid for in the US is complete garbage for basically everyone that doesn't have that same (more or less) guarantee of employment (with benefits) and is a huge problem. It just isn't for upper middle income (and above) workers.
Same with college. In my experience most SW engineers in the US make enough money to drop money in some kind of investment account for their children monthly so that college isn't so burdensome unless their children go to the absolutely most expensive places or they have a ton of kids.
Again, it's the people in the middle and bottom that are getting screwed. The top 20% of earners in the US come out ahead i think.
EDIT: I'm not advocating this as a positive thing or anything, just noting that I think SW engineers in the US have a pretty good gig compared to many other people both globally and at home.
Also as the average age of many high tech companies increases, expect more cost limiting changes from offered benefits.
I'm general, QOL is going to be better in Europe if youre in a low income bracket because you get so much as a public service. But if you make real money, you're going to be better off in America.
It's a huge problem nationwide, though, and ultimately needs to get addressed at the federal level. It's absolutely insane and fraudulent that an in-network hospital has out-of-network providers within it.
That's complete nonsense.
150k is scraping by when attempting to live in any of the most desirable cities of the USA, some of which happen to reside in California.
It's a huge state, there's plenty of housing outside of Santa Monica and San Francisco.
We would probably need about $20k more for the same lifestyle had we not gotten lucky with timing buying a house (we bought in 2011, right before a big increase in prices). Alternatively we could have kids sharing a bedroom and live otherwise the same.
Second, yes after taxes your take home pay per month is ~8k, and a little more if you have dependents. But here's a couple of things to put into perspective:
1. It's not a lot of money if that's your household income and you have kids. Buying a house is nearly impossible with that salary and the average rent for a two bedroom apartment goes 3.5k which also includes a significant commute. Houses are even more expensive to rent. You can definitely get cheaper deals, there's no shortage of shitty housing in California. There's also rent control deals if you never moved out of a house for a decade.
2. A decent employer sponsored health insurance costs about 350 a month for the family.
3. Car payments and insurance on an average are about 400 per month.
4. you put about 500 per month to 401k if you want any decent future savings.
5. Utilities (Internet, water, electricity, gas) comes to about 300 per month
6. That leaves you about 3000 for groceries, gas, medical expenses, school related expenses, recreation, clothing, and bunch of other expenses for say a family of 3-4. That's not a lot of money tbh if you want to save anything at all.
Sure 150k is a great salary if you're fresh out of college and share an apartment with other people. But 150k isn't a starting game dev salary. And it isn't a remote part of CA salary either. This is a salary paid in big cities that are too freakin expensive to stay in.
PS: most of these estimates are conservative, it can easily exceed the cost. For eg, we only have one internet service provider in our area. And if you want the worst plan with bad speed and data caps, you still shell out 80$/month after they finish adding all the bs fees.
Er, they don't. The median, not lowest, pay for employees of the City and County of San Francisco is barely into six figures. [0]
The lowest pay categories (calculated by annualizing the biweekly max,so this is probably a slight overestimate) pay $36,114/yr, which is far short of 6 figures. [1]
[0] https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2019/san-francisc...
[1] https://sfdhr.org/sites/default/files/documents/Classificati...
Sure those numbers exist, because the city has to have pay scales for every job category, but I think the more important thing to ask is what percentage of the workers are actually low paid employees.
I couldn't find a report that would easily displays that info, but here's a news item from a couple years back where 75% of the bay area city employees were earning 6 figures. [0]
Another question you want to ask is what positions exist in that excel spreadsheet, do people even take those jobs full time and what percentage of people do sit in that spectrum? For example here's another story that reports a starting wage of almost 50k for a Janitor. Of course there's going to be a few jobs that exist in lower end of the spectrum, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that it's expensive to live here and therefore, you shouldn't compare high salaries in the bay with others elsewhere one to one. [1]
[0]https://www.dailyrepublic.com/all-dr-news/solano-news/fairfi...
[1]https://sfist.com/2016/08/29/san_franciscos_city_worker_sala...
Its about 50% above median family income in California for a family of four, and most of those families of four aren’t getting by with just a single worker.
> That leaves you about 3000 for groceries, gas, medical expenses, school related expenses, recreation, clothing, and bunch of other expenses for say a family of 3-4. That's not a lot of money tbh if you want to save anything at all.
Yeah, it is. I mean, its not “eat out every day” money, but its quite comfortable.
> Sure 150k is a great salary if you're fresh out of college and share an apartment with other people
150K is almost the median household income of households headed by a Ph.D. holder (not the single personal income of someone who just graduated with a Ph.D., but the median of all households headed by a Ph.D. holder.)
> And it isn't a remote part of CA salary either. This is a salary paid in big cities that are too freakin expensive to stay in.
Then don’t stay in the big city; Sure, SF the Bay Area core cities are quite expensive, but you can drop to a much lower CoL within a reasonable commute distance, either within the 9-county Bay Area or adjacent, such as southwestern Solano County; that’s how plenty of people with families get by making far less than gamedev salaries working outside tech in core Bay Area cities.
You're missing a key point, that this thread is about game dev salaries and most of them tend to be in major cities (and require you to go in). Sure you can central California and work on a farm, but that's irrelevant.
>Yeah, it is. I mean, its not “eat out every day” money, but its quite comfortable.
It depends on where you are and for most game devs, I wouldn't consider it "quite comfortable".
>150K is almost the median household income of households headed by a Ph.D. holder
Sure, but they'd still won't have it easy if it's a family of 4.
>but you can drop to a much lower CoL within a reasonable commute distance, either within the 9-county Bay Area or adjacent, such as southwestern Solano County
I used to work for Ubisoft in San Francisco and let me tell you there isn't a single county within "reasonable" commute that is cheaper to live in. My commute was one and half hours each way and was still paying $2200 for a single bedroom apartment (two bedroom was unaffordable).
There's no denying there's people in California who make way less and live far from the big cities. But there's a reason why the limit to be considered "low income" is $120000 in San Francisco for a family of 4 (and similar in other big cities where game studios have offices).
That’s where (to within viable commuting distance) the majority of the people in California live, so, no, that doesn’t make the statewide aggregates inapplicable comparators. More than 20 million of the just under 40 million state population lives in the 9-county Bay Area, LA County, or San Diego County, and that doesn't even cover all the major cities or the full reasonable commute distance from those it does.
> I used to work for Ubisoft in San Francisco and let me tell you there isn’t a single county within “reasonable” commute that is cheaper to live in.
Almost every other Bay Area has a substantially lower cost of living; within a 90-minute commute radius you can be in a place with literally half the cost of living (e.g., Vallejo.)
If you're living in a more expensive area, its because you prefer a more expensive area, not because its all there is within a reasonable commute radius.
> There’s no denying there’s people in California who make way less and live far from the big cities.
There’s plenty of people that make way less and live in the big cities (not just their commute radius); per capita annual income in SF is about 70K, median household income $112K. [0]
> But there’s a reason why the limit to be considered “low income” is $120000 in San Francisco for a family of 4 (and similar in other big cities where game studios have offices).
It’s actually $146,350 in SF. (Including Marin and San Mateo; the San Francisco HUD Metro FMR Area).
But just next door its $109,600 (Oakland-Fremont, CA HUD Metro FMR Area, which includes Alameda and Contra Costa Counties) Out to Solano County its $77,600.
In Sacramento County, where EA’s Capital Games studio is located, its $72,500. [1]
And, again, those are all household thresholds; supporting a family on a single earner’s pay has been a luxury for decades; that you can only just barely do it above the local “low income” threshold on the game dev salary you quote if you choose to live in literally the single most expensive place possible, despite other less-expensive places being close by, isn’t a sign that the pay in your field isn’t great.
[0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocit...
[1] All low income threshold data from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html