[psykotic]

I'm going on personal knowledge and IGDA salary surveys. What part of the industry are your friends in? I should maybe have mentioned that the growing F2P, casual, mobile segment bears little resemblance, economically and otherwise, to what I would consider the traditional AAA game industry (which may eventually go the way of the dodo).

[Bahamut]

I have friends in various parts of the industry - F2P, AAA, mobile, and indie.

The consensus amongst my friends in game development is that it doesn't pay well for the amount of work they're doing, but it's what they enjoy doing so they're willing to tolerate it.

I should also mention that I am a bit of an anomaly - I'm an AngularJS expert, which seems to be in extremely high demand right now. I'm making around $160k (including stock compensation), and I may have even lowballed myself in salary negotiations.

[jere]

You make almost twice the median for developers in the US, so I'm not surprised that you make twice as much as some of your friends (and more than twice as much as me).

To be honest, I had no idea such salaries were to be found in web dev, especially by specializing in popular JS frameworks. Thanks for sharing! I'd be curious to know your location and how much experience you have in Angular. [update: Oh, I see you posted 1.5 years in web dev.... wow, maybe I should reevaluate things]

[sillysaurus3]

Wow, thanks for the salary datapoint! Do you live in a high cost of living area like California, New York, etc (anywhere it costs $2k/mo for a 1 bedroom) or a less expensive area?

[Bahamut]

Silicon Valley, recently moved from Washington, DC - I could have easily nabbed compensation for a little less around Washington, DC for what I do though. My move out west is for largely personal reasons.