Startup programmers really make that much? I thought only the established "big" industries can afford the really high wages (like banks, telco, insurance...).
Its a theorectical average salary. You've got a very large chance of earning nothing or almost nothing and a very small change of being a zillionaire. You get one or more attempts at getting a good outcome. The average outcome would be approximately 100,000 pounds.
Any foundation for that statistic, or is it a wild guess?
Yeah, that seems fishy to me too. Altough i can see an argument about how the high salary is needed to compensate for the lack of job stability.
Your numbers for finance, consulting and application programming are far too low (in London at least). With C++ and experience of derivatives you could clear 6 figures + bonus on top of that. As a consultant/contractor, you could certainly get close to 6 figures (tho' with no benefits/bonus).
If you're in the UK and you've got fair qualifications in maths, computing and physics then your choices are as follows:
- Finance - 60,000 pounds per year. Insane hours. Very little job satisfaction.
- Consulting - 50,000 pounds per year. Long hours. Moderate job satisfication.
- Film post processing - 40,000 pounds per year. Long hours. See your own work at the cinema.
- Application programmer - 30,000 pounds per year.
- Teacher - One year training course, possibility of 40,000 pounds in five years if you can handle unruly kids. (Many don't make it.)
- Games programmer - Insane hours. Project may require porting code or using a legacy engine. Awful third party libraries licensed to shorten development cycle. Pay depends on previous success. May require beginning as a game tester at minimum wage.
- Startup Programmer - Theorectical average salary of 100,000 pounds per year. Large control of project specification. Good chance of recognition and job satisfaction.
> game development now lends to larger teams, less individualism...
In the summer of 1996, I got some work experience testing a game at Bullfrog. In 1996, Bullfrog games were taking between 20-22 man years to develop. As a lead programmer, the latter phase of the project would consist of 12-15 hour days of bug fixes and build failures. In the subsequent 12 years, I haven't had the inclination to apply for a job in the games industry.