There’s a huge gap between the game industry and the rest

People do it out of passion, I guess. It’s funny too because the work is usually significantly harder than the much better paid start-up/SaaS jobs.

Everyone has college degrees, there’s no C++ bootcamp grads

I went to a school which was well-known for its game dev degree so I know dozens of people in the industry (mostly everyone works at Ubisoft) but opted out myself because the pay was way too low

Yup, pretty much. When I left industry it was almost a 100% salary bump. I tossed 2 months of PTO(because the company wouldn't pay it out, per state law and I could never take it) and I made up the difference in the first few paychecks.

Tons of fun problems and passionate people but the industry is an absolute meat grinder. Last I looked at the statistics median industry career length was ~3 years.

In Montreal I have no idea but in Sherbrooke the salaries are generally low, I make ~90k (plus a solid, well managed, pension plan) and work for one of the best employer in the city.

I could look into remote work but I am quite confortable where I am. I love the 35 hours workweek, the 21 days of paid time off, the week and a half around Christmas, my private office with a marble window sills (that I will use only 2 days a week when the telework plan is finally officialized) , the 7 minutes commute, the low cost of life and my beer aficionado colleagues.

Just out of curiosity, is that ~90k CAD or did you convert to USD for the majority of the audience here?

CAD, the boss of my boss is making 90k in USD !