So now I have to go look it up if I want to gain any actual information from this tweet. Then as I'm looking up what city their office is in, I realize the only reason I'm checking at all isn't because he told me CD Projekt is based in Poland, I just had a recollection they were based in a formerly-communist state.
So now I've been able to fully determine this Schreier guy is a scumbag faster that I can determine just how scummy $400/mo or $700/mo is.
Spoilers: Warsaw and https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Warsaw?displayCurre...
He's not Tweeting any context like that it's X% below median SWE wage in Warsaw. If it's still an insultingly low wage even by the standards of the area, it doesn't hurt to put it in context.
I wish games and tech press didn't have to even acknowledge this stuff. It's just ridiculous I already know all political affiliations of people in tech journalism just by reading one page of their twitter. I just want the days of independent and intelligent journalism again.
Take this in context. $400 for a starting tester (aka zero qualifications) is standard for eastern europe. As a career, it's on par with call center operator.
2-3 years later, he switched to "junior developer" in the same company. I'm reading this to mean there was a conversation with the management that went like this: "You seem like a smart guy and you did a couple of javascript online classes. We'll switch you to dev and teach you how to program properly - oh, and you get 10% raise along with it. When you can do useful work we can renegotiate".
One may teach himself useful programming in a couple of years while working full time as a tester - it's definitely possible. But the baseline probability is that at that stage he wasn't yet productive, and still required what's basically paid training for 3 to 6 months.
I know because I've done this with wild success and everywhere that doesn't do this has had by comparison awful QA.
Like most industries there is bad and good, but the nightmare stories are the ones you tend hear about, there's not a lot of juicy material in "game dev studio provides satisfactory work environment". There are definitely exploitative horrible studios out there, but there are also plenty with satisfied workers.
Just my anecdata as a software dev who happily moved into game dev and has no regrets about the decision.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
Where was Sony and Microsoft when Remedy released Control running at 10fps on PS4 and Xbox One?
Experienced devs can get up to $5000-$6000 after taxes but I know of a few making even more. The thing is you can rent a studio for $300-$400 and food is dirt cheap compared to western countries (another $300 or so, but $200 will do). All in all I’m Warsaw you’re saving much more money than you’d in Berlin or Prague at the same position. So $700 might look really bad but that’s actually enough to get by.
I always advise people against going down that route, unless they are literally ready to sacrifice half of a lifetime of earnings for it. Unfortunately, choosing wisely requires a level of maturity that you do not possess when it is time to make the choice.
