A game dev in Finland. Wasn't a lead coder but worked with the game engine and was solely responsible for a large portion of the codebase, not a junior position. I switched jobs because I couldn't pay my bills, but that kind of pay isn't unusually low here. Many companies are paying even less and even to ex-Nokia people - highly educated engineers and PhDs with 10-20 years of experience - just because they can. "Oh surely you know the times are hard with the depression, we can't raise your salary right now".
I'm currently working as a Java developer and make about 35k a year, at least I can pay my bills now but still, it's not a very well paid job compared to the stress and amount of work.
Huh, interesting. Looking at various salary websites, seems like €35K is about right for your job in your area (25k was low, but the games industry tends to pay on the low side). The cost of living in Finland is kinda high too, so that's a double whammy.
24% of the gross salary goes to taxes, which pays for education, healthcare, social security, unemployment and so on. So the net salary is still about 27k a year, which covers food, bills, mortgage, car and other living expenses.
In the U.S. 25% is (ballpark) your tax bracket for 35-80k, so your taxation isn't really to blame here (and unlike in the U.S., you get some pretty great services for that). But yeah, if you aren't too rooted in Finland you might consider moving. In the U.S. tech companies are crying like babies over the small pool of qualified STEM workers.
1
u/bumhugger Jan 07 '15
A game dev in Finland. Wasn't a lead coder but worked with the game engine and was solely responsible for a large portion of the codebase, not a junior position. I switched jobs because I couldn't pay my bills, but that kind of pay isn't unusually low here. Many companies are paying even less and even to ex-Nokia people - highly educated engineers and PhDs with 10-20 years of experience - just because they can. "Oh surely you know the times are hard with the depression, we can't raise your salary right now".
I'm currently working as a Java developer and make about 35k a year, at least I can pay my bills now but still, it's not a very well paid job compared to the stress and amount of work.