Just curious to know, if you are a full-time employee at some company, with a guarantee of consistent work. How much do you get paid hourly?
Please don’t answer if you made a couple million off an app, and are just dividing that income by months it took to make it. Also please don’t answer if your are a contractor that gets occasional on and off work at a really high rate.
What I am seeking to know is the kind of rate someone should get paid as an employee if a company is to guarantee consistent long-term work plus the standard benefits like health insurance, retirement and some paid vacation.
Depends on the company, really but I would quantify them as such.
Jr-Generally new, doesn’t have much experience and will require guidance from the lead devs.
Mid-A seasoned dev that can hold his/her own and work diligently
Sr-Mostly a lead position, can assist and solve most problems and direct the project(Code Architecture,Design,Art direction)
There’s going to be a big difference between full time employee and full time contractor. Generally the contractor even on longer contracts (6-12 months) will have a loading of 50+%.
Sounds pretty low to me. A senior developer leading a project should be getting a bunch more than 80k a year, and a junior (presumably an IT grad) should be getting much more than 35k a year.
EDIT: Of course I’m sure it changes from country to country too. I believe Australia has a pretty high cost of living so 35k here is probably not going to go as far as in the US.
EDIT: Some rough research reveals that average IT graduate salary in Australia is around 52k, US just a little less … so back to my original thoughts… yes its too low.
But it doesn’t really mind.
On oDesk you have a plenty of Indian and Chinese working for 1-10$/h.
Now I found a lot of chinese working for 30-40$/hours.
I thought i was getting underpaid…then i realised this is US dollars…call early morning brain fart. Ironic though as i’ve been considering asking for a raise. i’m moving from Junior to Mid level now. Even running a few projects myself
Those sounded very low to me as well, but things not only vary country to country, but area to area in the US. In the South Bay area (Silicon Valley), I make nearly double what I did in the Northwest (OR/WA). But then again, I am paying nearly 3x the rent, so cost of living plays a big part. If you are looking at wage averages, be sure to include the specific area. And when negotiating salary (outside your local area), be sure to check carefully the cost of living in that area.
Though I would say, that there are probably very few positions for a “Sr. Unity Developer”. Typically at the Sr. level you are expected to be largely tool/language agnostic (though we all have our favorite tools/lang, and fall back on them when given the chance). I use Ruby whenever I can, our lead eng solves every problem with Python. Code is just code and tools are just tools and they change often in this industry.
People I’ve worked with in the past have billed $100 an hour, others on this forum have claimed around that rate too.
But I think that’s more in the realm of ‘Unity Specialist’
When you say “have billed $100 an hour” it sounds like you’re talking about contract work which is always higher than a wage you will get as a full-time employee. All contracting wages should be higher because there is a lot of effort in finding new contracts and lots of potential down-time between jobs. For example, I have a full-time job which I think works out to being about $30 AUD an hour (+ benefits) but when I’m contracted out to clients by my company, my rate is up to $160 AUD an hour.
On the “have billed” part (sounds like billable rate), mechanics here charge over $100/hour, my gf’s company bills more than $270/hour and she makes about $40/hour. A company has to charge a lot more than they pay employee’s. There are tons of costs other than what someone charges per hour. Not all hours are billable, there are payroll taxes, benefits to account for.
I’m in the $15-$20 group but it’s my first real programming job and all my experience was just personal projects, so I didn’t ask for much and they were willing to work around a few things, like having brain surgery 5 days after the interview and they held the position for me…
Which keep in mind, in Portland OR, where Intel is headquartered ( well actually 10 mins down the freeway in hillsboro ). The average salary for a senior level software engineer at intel is $85,000 a year. That is pretty median for your experienced comp sci grad in this area. I know alot of programmers with like 20+ years experience that pretty much just top out at around 90k.
However around here highly specialized people can make more. I know really skilled iOS objective-c programmers can pull in like 200k-300k a year. Or some highly specialized web programmers who can take on the hard parts of implementing major websites can pull in 150k+ easily.
Something else I am kind of wondering is, do you all think Unity programming will ever reach that specialist high wage level? You know, like a Flash programmer probably has trouble pushing 85k a year. However I know senior 3D game engine programmers (like Unreal engine or other) can pull in a premium salary like 150k+ a year. Do you think Unity programming is going to go the way of cheap commodity that lots of people do like Flash, or will there be places where major companies pay a high premium to keep senior Unity developers around?
Unity is a tool, not a language or an established pattern. The languages it uses already have specialists. It is certainly is the case that companies will hire specialists in certain areas an leverage their skills in a Unity project. For example we recently add a kick-ass shader specialist (who when not making games, teaches advanced graphics theory/shader programing at the college level), initially for a Unity project, but we now use his abilities on native platforms/flash/other tools. Sr Eng, killer game modelers, graphics engineers, etc… have the skills to handle anything in Unity. There is really nothing in Unity that requires specialist knowledge that isn’t a subset of another field. And it is very easy to learn Unity specifics.
Unity is designed specifically not require specialist knowledge. And it continues to add more and more to remove those barriers. (Mechim, nav mesh, etc). The asset store supports that as well. There are full games, editor extensions, full systems, visual programing, simplified tool available for very little investment. With little knowledge you can roll a complete game in pretty much any genre you want. Not to say there isn’t room to hire a skilled engineer to create something that may not exist or work as needed, but given it is modular, and games have a short dev cycle, have someone like that is in most cases going to be a contract job, not full time.
Generally speaking, a company that would use Unity as their primary tool in the first place, probably is the type of company that would fork out for six figure developer. (especially since on year of their time is more expensive then buying pretty much every asset in the asset store). And on the flip side, a company that employs those types of developers ins’t going to be using Unity as a primary tool.
I’m not saying anything about Unity, I love it, but it is an advanced DIY tool that is great for single or small teams. Thier own words:
That being said, you mentioned Unreal Engine dev. It might conceivable that one could become a Unity Source specialist and make that kind of money, as it would be a rare skill set. Top Unreal Engineers (for example), can get that kind of money because there are very few of them. Few people have access to the Unreal Engine, and so it is scarce commodity. Which isn’t the case at all with Unity (specifically contrary to their goals.)
The doesn’t mean you can’t make a living at, I just wouldn’t plan on buying a Tesla Roadster from doing it though.
I understand where your coming from, but I don’t think it’s entirely correct.
If your objective is to lets say for example, get some cars driving around a track with AI. Ya you can piece it together modularly with little knowledge. Use the roads tool on the asset store, use unisteer and use the racing AI package. Hire an artist to make a track, drop it in, set up colliders, bake lighting, bake umbra.
There you go, you have a very generic racing game.
But what about menus, fancy menus with lots of custom animation? Refinement of AI, driving mechanics, all those little things that go into the ‘feel’, integration with social networks, multiplayer!?
For a finished, polished racing game that is worth selling or making any fuss about. I would argue that drag and drop would only get you like maybe 30-40% of the way there. Which really, UDK I think gets you about that far in the racing game department as well. It comes with cars, car AI and all that already integrated. But just because there are potentially usable base components does not mean it is approaching anywhere just being able to ‘modularly’ make a finished polished game with no coding or in-depth knowledge.
Visual scripting is also cool and all, but can one really rely solely on that for entire games internal framework?
For all of Unity’s modularity, it is still hardly just ‘drag and drop’. I don’t understand where this notion comes from, as I have heard other people say it. I showed the games in my signature to some potential clients and they began to question me to make sure I didn’t make them by just ‘drag and drop’, but had actually programmed them from scratch. It seemed rather ridiculous that they thought Unity was drag and drop to that degree. Perhaps simple vanilla prototypes can be partially drag and drop, but full finished game commercial worthy game with lots of unique aspects? No way.
Being able to oversee and manage the entire codebase for a game that would be comparable to WipeOut or Dirt. That is a huge task. Which I think does have the potential to earn a wage on par with what someone would get if they had done it in the Unreal Engine.
I think there will be a market for people using Unity to just make temple run clones on end. These guys might be working at gameloft or smaller type company, making less than 70k. But I do also think Unity is going to push itself to larger more established titles that top Unity guys will potentially be able to command the same weight top Unreal programmers can. Unity’s usage in cheap mass produced games I think has nothing to do with Unity’s incapability to compete. But rather that Unity being on iOS first, and Unity’s licensing model being more permitting, it attracted that crowd. If UDK was available on iOS with a one time fee licensing scheme, I’d bet the iOS app store would be closer to 50/50 udk, unity for all the masses of lower grade mass produced games.
Everything you said is absolutely true, I fully agree.
However, that isn’t the point I was making. In fact, your comments pretty much support what I was saying. UI/Animation/AI/Design/Software Architecture/Project Management/etc. are all skills that are not specific to Unity. They are game development skills, and applicable to the engine or tool you use. Virtually everything in Unity leverages existing, proven tech/practices. There is very little specialized knowledge about Unity required to be proficient at developing with Unity. More importantly everything that is specific to Unity, is freely available to everyone, including Unity itself. Unity is designed (wonderfully) in a way that anyone with existing advanced skills, can be up and running very quickly. And also structured in a way that beginners start simple (with templates and visual tools and such) and learn actual development skills/knowledge in the process.
Can a developer earn top dollar using while Unity? Yes, without a doubt. But the practical reality is that they are earning top dollar because they are a kick-ass developer. And the skills that allow them to command that rate are easily transferable to any engine/tool they might use with some minimal ramp up. Take AI. A company may pay very well for someone who specializes in AI. But at that level, there is no practical difference between writing AI for Unity, internal engines, Flash, C++/Python/Javascript or whatever. The skill is what earns, not the tool.
That said, just as (for example) advanced AI is a specialized skill, so can be experience and knowledge writing for the Unreal Engine (and by the same token, someone with knowledge and experience with the Unity source, not Unity… Unity source code.)
It is important to understand that UDK and Unreal Engine are different. UDK is a IDE/tool in similar to Unity, where the core functionality of the engine is abstracted via UnrealScript. Unreal Engine is that as well, but all the full source code. An Unreal Engine Developer is pretty much by definition someone with experience working at a AAA/large studio, since that is only way they could have experience using it. It is a specific knowledge area that not many people have access/experience with. Not a comprable skill set to those needed to build games in UDK/Unity. And often hardcore engine level geeks aren’t really “game” developers, often they are math/logic nerds and the like. (some can be pretty serious characters).
Typically, once you are in that six figure bracket (senior developer, whatever people want to call it), you are pretty much expected to know (or pick up very quickly) whatever tools, tech/tech-stack or language is used for a project, often a many technologies in a single project. In a way Unity mirrors that eco-system if you are a small team or independent developer. When you build a “Unity” game, practically speaking you are combining many skills that are independent of Unity (C#, shader scripting, networking, project management, etc, the types of things you pointed out). That is one of the reasons I love Unity, it lets me leverage skills I already have not have to invest time in learning tech that is specific to only one toolset (like UnrealScript or things like that). It is does a great job of being pretty easy to master if you already have the knowledge/skills, and being “draggy-droppy” enough for hobbyists who want to make a slender clone. It can be nothing more than game builder toy, or it can be serious tool for building and publishing quality, professional games. It just depends on the skills of the hands using it.
Think of if this way, it is unlikely (probably unrealistic) that anyone, anywhere is getting paid 100k entirely based on their knowledge and ability to use Photoshop as a tool. But there are many people who make that (and more), that work nearly 100% of their time working in just Photoshop. Unity is sort of in the same realm. Sure, there are people who may have more knowledge than others in Unity, but there is virtually no specialized knowlege about Unity that will make one developer dramatically more “vaulable” than another that isn’t based on existing skill set.
Sorry, kind of verbose there. Ultimately it is really of minor issue of semantics. Yes, you can make great money using Unity (professionally or as an indie), but not because of any special/unique/rare Unity skills, but because Unity makes it easier and more efficient to apply and use those skills. Hopefully that makes what I was trying to say a little more clear.
Very true. Honestly I don’t think Unity even has any serious problems competing with other engines in its class. Players certainly aren’t going to judge a game by the engine, just game itself. And larger studios typically weigh many other factors over something like that. Unity is really starting to become the tool of choice for mobile. Usually at any given time there are usually a couple of Unity based games in the top charts in app store.
