How to Get a Precise Salary Estimate for Your New Job - Pt. 2

Following up with my last article on negotiating your salary once you have been given an offer, I will discuss further the best method for estimating your target salary.

First of all, factoring in cost of living differences and moving to a different state drastically changes the salary figures for your job title. Essentially, you will want to become an expert with each of the major hub states for the game industry, and understand why they pay what they do and what type of living conditions you can expect. For example, you may get paid more in California, but you will not have a good chance to own a home and will have to pay state tax out of your income. The pay here is actually lower than what you should be making, but it is the standard, since there is more competition in this area and all of the big publishers want to live here because it is one of the most desirable states to live in. On the other hand, you will have a decent opportunity to own a home and not have to worry about state tax in Texas, but you may not like the hotter weather or the lack of activities when compared to coastal cities.

Secondly, you must understand that each website calculates it's cost of living comparison differently. Perhaps the worst one to use is the "quick and dirty" tool that is provided by CNN money: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/. This tool is great if you quickly want to get a very rough estimate of the differences of housing prices between many cities, and you can click a quick drop-down menu to switch between them. The reason this tool is bad, is because it is mainly basing salary on housing cost. There are a lot of factors that skew housing prices exponentially, such as multiple people living in a house, or stretching their budgets, or foreign home investors with lots of personal capital that drive up the prices. You will want to use a technique that is more custom-tailored and in-depth, and I will show you what to do.

The first step in calculating your perfect salary is to go to glassdoor.com. This site is fairly new and there are always new salaries added and for every game studio imaginable. You can get a good average by checking the studios in the city you are planning on relocating to. Understand, though, that some studios do pay a premium since they attract some of the hottest talent and have the biggest budgets because of their successful games. Naughty Dog and Valve are perfect examples. They don't hire huge teams, and are known to take their time with games, and every game they release is a huge hit. Small and more unknown studios are known to pay less because they are not established and know that they would not be able to hold someone with very high talent for very long. This will probably be your first break into the industry, so you can expect to be paid on the lower end of the average pay of studios in a given area. Glassdoor does not easily point out someone's experience level, so you should also base the salary range on their to be targeted to someone more mid-level, as this is the experience level that a majority of develops will have.

The second step in computing your salary, and this one is my favorite, is to use the Cost of Living Wizard from Salary.com: http://swz.salary.com/CostOfLivingWizard/LayoutScripts/Coll_Start.aspx. The reason this tool is so powerful is because it will show you the salary you are required to own a home in a city (like the CNN Money figure), and then it will show you the amount that studios actually pay, which is a lot more accurate. So, if you are moving from Seattle to San Francisco, you will notice that the pay you are required to have the same standard of living (i.e. owning a home or renting an apartment) in San Francisco may be 40% more than Seattle, but the amount that employers are actually paying is only about 20% more. Generally, the more expensive the city you are moving to, the less you will be compensated when related to the actual cost of living. Thus, the first figure is a good reference but essentially useless, and you should be using the second figure. I have used this website a few times and it has turned out to be highly accurate. This technique is more helpful to someone who has already had a job in the industry before, but you can basically use a figure from glassdoor.com as a good starting salary.

Also, always ask around to your friends and industry contacts. Talking about salary is scene as taboo with your current coworkers, but it is something that is important and should be discussed or else companies will start taking advantage of employees. The best time to ask for a coworker's salary is when they are leaving to work somewhere else or their contract has ended. You have to be on a high trust level with this person, which should be obvious, but if you ask when you both are going separate ways there is no chance of feeling resentment or comparison when on the job with them. If you ask too late after you have lost contact with them, it will seem like an awkward conversation topic.

Whenever you have a figure from both websites, you can take the average of the two, and this will be your target number to aim for (remember that you may need to select a salary on the lower-end of the spectrum for glassdoor. If the studio you are applying for is directly listed, with your job title, on glassdoor, then you should definitely run with that figure...especially if it is a studio that is known to not pay well. You should be able to notice this in the complaints about the company, on the same web page.). With this target salary, you should create a negotiating window of $10,000. Thus, if you are expecting to be compensated at $65,000, you should tell your prospective employer that you have done your research and feel that a range of between $60,000 and $70,000 would be fair compensation based on your level of experience and job title.

One last point to mention: If you are receiving exceptionally high compensation at your current job, and you are living in a more affordable city, there is a slim chance that you will actually be converted to the same quality of pay in a more expensive city. Each studio has their limits, and if you are already stretching the limit at your current studio, it will be a hard to expect the same at the new employer. You will be getting a raise in salary but will be taking a pay "cut" at the same time. Alternatively, if you are moving from a more expensive city, it is always easier to argue a case for a highest-tier salary in a less expensive city. You will still be taking a pay cut, but since your salary was way more than anything the new studio can fulfill, they will want to try and impress you and give you the most they are able to afford. This is why, in my opinion, it is beneficial to work in the most expensive city that you can, because you can always fall back on another city and don't have to try as hard when negotiating.

I hope that this has been informative and that you are now confident in your application process and are able to sell yourself as a more serious candidate that has done their homework and knows what to expect in their job.

-Ken

How to Get a Precise Salary Estimate for Your New Job - Pt. 1

Face it: knowing an exact figure of what you should be paid is required before you even submit your first job application. Why? Because one of the first questions you will be asked (usually after "are you a citizen of X country?" and "are you willing to relocate?") is "what are your desired salary requirements for this position?" I have done a multitude of research on this and have my own theories and opinions on whether or not you should answer this question and if a game studio should be asking you this so blatantly and early in the hiring process. There are some strategies you can use to try and circumvent this, but the reason of this article is to explain to you the best method for giving an accurate estimate of what you should be earning and to not get burnt by agreeing to something to low.

You can always use the line "what is the typical salary you offer for this position?" I have actually used this a couple of times, and it works about half of the time. If they want to work with you, or the hiring manager is a bit novice, they will tell you upfront what their figure is. Generally, the party that reveals a number first in negotiations has less power. I successfully got a higher salary by asking this question with WB Games, because I had a certain figure in my head about the salary I was willing to take--I was uninformed as to the area and what they paid, though, as it was a new city I was relocating to--and what they were offering was actually higher than that. So, when time came for them to give me the offer, it was in line with what they told me and I accepted it. I could have made nearly $5,000 less per year, but just because I decided to ask that question and hold my tongue, I was able to win a decent salary for the area. A time when this question didn't work was when I talked to HR at Sledgehammer, and they responded "we don't generally give a specific figure as it is case-by-case and varies based on the individual's experience and skills." This is what most salaries are based on, anyway, but this was a smart way to basically say that they were not going to give me an answer to my question. Thus, you should always have a backup plan but it never hurts to at least try to ask this question before you reveal your cards.

The next step in negotiating is to have your salary figure ready, but to base it on the average market value for the area and by using your current salary and converting for the cost of living difference, if you are indeed moving cities (hint: if you are moving to a less-expensive city, you can basically try to ask for your current salary and they can always match it or tell you they can't pay you that much, and then negotiate more within their means. It seems that it's always easier to make a higher salary in a least expensive city than to transition from a cheaper city to a more expensive one, in my opinion, because they always have excuses as to why the area you are moving to is "really not that much more expensive than where you are living now." Basically, you have to have more arguments than just that, so that's where checking what competing studios pay comes in handy). You do not want to reveal the exact figure that you are expecting to be paid, but rather give a range where that figure falls roughly in-between. I like to give ranges in the form of a $10,000 window, ex: $70,000-$80,000. That way, you can expect them to offer you something near $73,000, but you should negotiate to $75,000. For this, you definitely need to know what the comparable jobs are paying in the area.

I have a solution, that is the most accurate estimate I have recently formulated, to calculating the salary that you should earn while moving cities and while leaving a current job for a new one. Stay alert for part two on this topic: where you will come up will a solid figure that you can benchmark from and form your negotiation game-plan around.

-Ken