Yep – a skilled Java developer here would typically earn between 1.5 and 2x that salary anywhere else. Which means they’ll only pick up desperate people, or people without much of an idea of their own esteem. Neither of which is good.
Cas 
sigh Not in the games industry though. 
Thanks. For an experienced programmer I suppose 26k in pounds is not great, but as a starting out person that would be pretty good over here in Australia (the average wage over all jobs is about A$50k which is about 26k in pounds).
By the way, how much do people contract for as game-devs, if you don’t mind me asking? Is there an approximate hourly rate?
Best bet is to check somewhere like gamedev career section. I don’t see any contracts apart from for microgames. For desktop stuff you seem to have to join a studio permy.
Kev
It’s a viciously exploitative industry - supply of programming n00bs rather outstrips demand by a considerable factor which is clearly shown by a) salaries at 50% of the market rate and b) notable lack of free labour in the form of a contract market.
So they tend to attract newbies and the desperate and the result is what you generally see in the games industry. Frankly I can’t see why so many people want to be games programmers, it’s a lot less fun than it actually looks! A job is a job and programming is a crappy job indeed.
Cas
you guys don’t negotiate about salary? ???
while the grunts are getting exploited, I thought the selected few we’re doing pretty ok.
If you have a portfolio as kev or cas, you have some leverage. If you have something to bring to the plate, other then nice stories, then there shouldn’t be a problem.
Salaries are only vaguely negotiable… you can get a pretty realistic idea of how much they’re prepared to pay by how much their offering. They’ll maybe stretch 10% but as I say, there is a huge oversupply of desperate people and rather little money in it all.
I tried to get a simple J2ME game dev contract the other day. They refused to even talk to me because I’ve not written a J2ME game before. Their loss but doesn’t help me does it
Cas
[quote]I tried to get a simple J2ME game dev contract the other day. They refused to even talk to me because I’ve not written a J2ME game before.
[/quote]
I can almost understand that. J2ME development is truly insane - or at least, it makes me insane. The differences between implementations are boggling. And it will probably always be that way - as long as there is a rush to get new devices to market, there will be strange/buggy J2ME implementations.
It makes sense, that being said make a small j2me game over the weekend.
ploughing though the piles of people submitting resumes… it’s not always the ICT ppl that do the initial selection. So if you don’t get picked right off the bat, I wouldn’t worry.
Based on my own experience doubling up esp considering on entry salaries is not that unusual provided you can show something to back it up and be willing to work on probation for a while. Knowing someone who already works at a company also helps.
I avoid getting the best deal as it puts a stain on things.
J2ME is being phased out completely in the not-too-distant-future anyway, so it’s a bit of a crap “skill” to bother with. Jeez, what do these HR people think we do all day? Learned Java once upon a time, now world expert, couldn’t possibly do J2ME though, etc…
Cas