40k to start? That's surprising, I thought the IT industry is one of the highest paying. Many fields start you of with a higher salary, on 40k it would be hard to exist given the high cost of living. And if you live in a big city you will struggle......Justine

>40k to start? That's surprising, I thought the IT industry is one of the highest paying.
Experience dictates your salary. When you have years under your belt and knowledge to back it up, you can command higher pay. I don't see why you would expect an entry level position in an easy to enter field to earn more than that.

>Many fields start you of with a higher salary
Such as? I'm willing to bet that they have a huge cost of learning, a fairly solid guarantee of quality in new hires, or a lot of danger. Programming has none of those.

>on 40k it would be hard to exist given the high cost of living
If you're talking about Atlanta, then it's BS. Most Atlantans live well on quite a bit less than 40K.

>And if you live in a big city you will struggle
So tell your "friend" to get into another field if it sounds that bad.

I'm not one to tell my"friend" as YOU put it to go in to another field, that will be entirely her decision. Atlanta? if you want to live there and I'm sure that doesn't apply to all people in Atlanta, merely your opinion. We all have our opinions/views, you are entitled to your and the rest of us can have ours. I just don't agree with you, can you handle that.....Justine

So are you two going to fight in every thread in which you have both posted:eek:

And offcourse I'm just joking...

Niek

>I'm not one to tell my"friend" as YOU put it to go in to another field, that will be entirely her decision.
Well, then maybe you should offer her your opinion directly instead of making incorrect statements here, where she probably isn't paying attention.

>Atlanta?
Yes, Atlanta. The city that I was using for my estimate.

>if you want to live there and I'm sure that doesn't apply to all people in Atlanta, merely your opinion.
You said that people making 40K or less would struggle. Since my estimate was assuming the city of Atlanta, and I'm well aware that it's not the case, you're wrong. Unless, of course, you can gather an unbiased focus group that makes less than 40K in Atlanta and will admit that they struggle to survive.

>We all have our opinions/views, you are entitled to your and the rest of us can have ours.
Finally, you say something that I can't dispute.

>I just don't agree with you, can you handle that
I can handle it just fine. But I'm not going to sit quietly when I know that your opinion is wildly incorrect.

is that 40k in dollars?

£40k is very good wage here in the uk

$40,000 USD is only worth about £20,000 in England. £40K is about $80K here, which is pretty good wages in most (but not all) usa.

@Justine

I hope you realise that the game development field of Software development is very demanding. I don't want to seem pessimistic, but I am yet to see a professional game developer who didn't start coding at the age of 14-16.

To put it in a mild way, the people who develop games are maniacs...so if she wants to start game development at the age of 28 then good luck from me. (here I am assuming about PC game development using C++ / DirectX).

If your friend really has the talent, she can perform better in the other fields of software development like Web development ( PHP + MySQL ) wherein you get a job easily and at the same time you cna do freelancing given the volume of projects involving Webdevelopment.

Hope it helped, bye.

Jeez, it doesn't matter if you started when you're 14 or 28. It doesn't matter if you're in New York or Atlanta. If you want to go into game programming, do it!

Start writing a few games yourself, learn what you can. Find someone in the field and ask if they will mentor you. That's the best thing you can do.

Forget the money. At the beginning, "they" will dictate how much you make. As you get better, you can slowly start dictating -- you have something to dictate with.

And don't be confused by the money thing. In New York, rent can run 2000-3000 a month, therefore salary must be $50,000 or greater. Where I'm at, you can find places for under $1000 so $30,000 is very doable.

Narue- I'm not looking to argue with you because it's not worth my time. If you accept or reject my view that is your choice, either way it doesn't make a bit of difference to me. I am keeping my friend informed and again it will be her decision on what she decides to do. Your "opinion" on "most people in Atlanta" is wrong. When you interview "most people in the city" please tell us all your findings. My research with the cost of living and individual lifestyles prove you otherwise. Remember that not everyone shares your way of living as "adequate"

Thanks to the rest of you for all your input. Yes in the UK 80K is much different than 40k in the U.S. Try living on 40k in most big cities and try to raise a family. See how far you get....and I'm not talking about eating Mc Donalds chesseburgers to survive.......Justine