EA Montreal is now Visceral Montreal

    I see.. Got me wondering what a Senior Level Designer actually earns. I guess it won´t get you a Ferrarri

    Let´s say i wold get a job from "Visceral Montreal" as a Senior Level Designer, i would´nt have a clue if it was a good salary or not since i don´t know what it costs to live in Montreal and what not. Like here in Sweden a typical factory worker earns between 3000 and 3500 dollars / month before taxes. In Norway i guess they earn almost the double from what i´ve heard, altho prices are way higher in Norway. I hope you see where im trying to get at :embarrassed:

    3000 and 3500 dollars / month? Wtf... I'm not sure if I believe those numbers, lol.

    Funny fact, a factory worker in Portugal get 405€ a month! (Minimum Portuguese wage)

    My gf earns around 3100 dollars before tax, and after taxes it´s around 1800 dollars.. We have shit high tax in Sweden.

    Im glad im not in Portugal

    I earn 73 200.00 US$ before taxes as a programmer (after ~3 years as such) in Norway, per year.

    As for major costs:

    My rent is 9 900.00 US$ per year

    My car costs around 12 000.00 per year (for a total of 5 years) and its a Audi A3 sportback 1.9TDI (2006) 80 000km. (bought it today:D).

    and you can count around 6 000.00 US for electricity, diesel, food, internets per year

    Quote from Thrik

    But it'll be more visceral and emotionally engaging, as well as taking players to places they've never been before!

    like the moon or space. a shooter in space would be very original...

    I think the whole senior/lead thing is the same in most creative industries, in that a senior is someone who's been doing the job for a good number of years and is typically trusted with more responsibilities, highly important work, etc. A lead is the same, except they've become a manager and thus spend more time doing that than actual production (and have a higher salary accordingly). Management isn't for everyone and it's perfectly possible to earn a lot as a senior in the right company, and obviously you'll be paid a specific wage based on your experience and your responsibilities. Two seniors aren't necessarily equal.

    What Thrik said, though the level of management work varies depending on the team size. Some leads will basically do nothing but admin work (organising / scheduling / planning / communicating / geeing up the troops) to help ease the burden for the rest of their team. As a general rule, the more people you have under you as lead, the less production work you do. Leads are usually very busy chasing up problems and making sure the rest of their team can progress without issue.

    If you see a lead who is in charge of a huge team but spends most of their time doing production work, you should be... suspicious

    Oh please... I'm so sick and tired of this "grunts Vs leads vs managers" mentality...For all the bullshit grunts throw around at the "suits that don't get it", there is a metric ton of fucktards that don't know their left hand from their right and couldn't possibly get anything done by themselves.

    Good teams make good games, and everyone has his role to fulfill. People that don't get what leads and managers do only prove they should never climb to these positions themselves. Same thing for the salary.

    Leads don't necessarily get paid much more (or even any more at all) -- it depends on the company and position. Some companies offer a dual career ladder where you can progress as a technical specialist and earn just as much as a lead. Others will offer a lot more money for leads. It just depends.

    Quote

    Lead the guys who do the REAL job and keep the BIG BUCKS.

    That's a pretty naive outlook. If you've ever worked under leads of variable quality, you'll know why good leads are worth their weight in gold. I moved team about 5 times at RTW and the difference in productivity / effectiveness from team to team can be very noticeable. When an excellent lead is involved, they pro-actively identify and solve problems, offer support (either moral or technical) when needed, mentor team members and help foster a culture of self-improvement. The notion that you only do real work when sitting at a desk producing code/art assets etc. is totally ridiculous. I know you may have been half-joking when you said that, but it's a bit of a disservice to the awesome leads who really do make a huge difference Two of the most effective leads I worked under spent less than half of their time developing despite being in fairly small teams.

    The flipside is that some folk just aren't cut out for it. Some leads basically end up either ignoring most of their responsibilities and spend the maximum amount of time in the trenches. Someone can be an excellent developer and a lousy lead, but they take the job because there's more money on offer, or they feel they have to due to management pressure. Others just don't have the required personal qualities to lead teams, but fail to develop on the job and also receive a lack of support from management.

    So yeah, don't be hatin' on leads. I wouldn't mind being a lead one day

    Over here at least the leads are equivalent to senior seniors. We have production managers/producers that deal with the paperwork. Whilst they may do more paperwork (which depends on department) than a senior, the majority of their day is still hands on.

    That said being in the design department we do spend a lot of time in meetings/writing anyway

    Crap, i did not mean that they dont do any work. Meant more in a way that for me making the maps is the fun (real) job or nevermind since i was not serious about what i wrote anyway. Thanks for sharing your views, it actually helped alot! One could say they are important since they exist!

    I really hope you understand what i meant

    Quote from Furyo

    Oh please... I'm so sick and tired of this "grunts Vs leads vs managers" mentality...For all the bullshit grunts throw around at the "suits that don't get it", there is a metric ton of fucktards that don't know their left hand from their right and couldn't possibly get anything done by themselves.Good teams make good games, and everyone has his role to fulfill. People that don't get what leads and managers do only prove they should never climb to these positions themselves. Same thing for the salary.

    Furyo - taking design n00bs to school since 2006!

    Oh I'm a noob too, but at least I don't claim to know what I'm doing

    In all seriousness, sorry for the heated reply there. It wasn't even a bad day, just that I keep hearing this generally from juniors with no clues in all teams I've worked with. I'm sure I have said the same thing when I started too, but with experience and the teams I've worked with you understand that you're really just a noob with a very narrow view of the overall picture most of the time.

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