Salary: entry level TA

Professional
#1

Ive been contacted by a producer for a quite large game dev company here in Sweden, and there is a possibility that I get my first job as a TA. I dont want to have any false hopes but so far things are on the positive side.

Anyway, Ill go straight to the point here as I am on my phone typing this atm: Sooner or later I am going to get the question about the salary (how much I would like to have), and I havr no idea what a TA earns.

None of my friends work as a TA, and the only person I -personally- know in this business, is a woman working in the NL as a tech animator (and we arent rven good friends, we talk on FB a few times a year thats all)

There is a large swedish site that list average salaries, but this field of work is rather rare here in Sweden so its not even listed there.

About how much can someone expect to earn from an entry level TA position in Sweden (or any other nordic country like say Finland or Norway)??

If you have a rough guess, or just a percentual approximation based on say, the salary of a 3d artist, then please make a post here. Anything will do!

#2

I read something on reddit a while back about this sort of thing. Here is a similar blog post:

The main point is, it doesn’t matter. Dont give them a number at all. Its none of their business. If you think their offer is fair for how you value your work, then that’s what matters. But as the blog post said, negotiate. In the reddit post, they said, no matter what, ask for 5k more. its trivial for them and a couple hundred bucks more a months for you.

#3

Thanks for the link. While I understand the general advice here there are a few things Im unsure about:

“Negotiating your salary is about understanding the value of your work.”

  • she wrote, and I have absolutely no idea about this. I only know that roughly, TA’s make more than 3d artists (same age, same experience), and I know that I’ve been underpaid for my current job, which leads me to my second worry:

This is a company that many ppl apply to, and I really, really doubt that I am the most competent around in terms of experience. Im afraid that asking too much from the start - or pushing this too far - will make them just drop me. In other words: I need at least a concept of how much Im worth so I dont make a huge mistake (ending up unemployed for half a year, or maybe not ever break into the business as a TA).

Truth is that the nature of the job is something I value a whole lot more than the paycheck; something I can never admit during an interview I know - Ive never greedy and I have a working class background (ie, Ive been taught to appreciate what I got).

#4

it sounds like you already have an idea of what the position gets paid so that might help when/if you see the offer. say they offer 50k and you are pretty sure the industry standard it 100k, then you might say something. maybe thy have bonuses to make it up or other perks.

I know its a scary thought to throw away an oppurtunity because of money or misinformattion. But dont negotiate until you get the offer. Try your hardest to avoid the questions about previous salary or what youd like to be paid.

the thing is, once you have the offer, the job is yours. if you ask for more they arent going to pull the offer. if you think its a fair offer, ask for 5k more anyways. its like asking a girl out, the worst they can say is no and the best is you get more money.

do as much research as you can, look at glassdoor or something, so if they do low ball you, you can at least ask. worst case is you accept the offer on their terms :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks for the reply. I checked out glassdoor and it appears to be of similar nature as the swedish site Ive browsed (one that tracks salaries from SCB - statistiska centralbyrån: the swedish equivalent to the american amstat).

Unfortunately neither appears to have any info on this matter. Is this line of work really that rare and unusual? I checked the hourly rates for various TA jobs on glassdoor, and the differences are huge (increases with experience ofc, but still.) so yea, back to square one :frowning:

Edit: talked to the producer via phone today. We spoke mainly about the company and our past experiences - it wasnt really a job interview but more like info talk. Told me he would notify me once the job position is available this week. Is this kind if pre-interview contacts common? Im pessimistic now considering that im still going to have to apply “manually” and compete with tons of others. I mean, if I were of genuine interest to them, wouldnt they just give me an interview right away. He is a producer ofc but I doubt he can somehow bypass HR. Ive applied to them before without them noticing my TA potential. Maybe im just being overanalytical… Either way, this is OT.

#6

Statistics are not easily available at that level of granularity. Even the Game Developer Salary Survey only started splitting technical artists from the rest of the profession in the last couple of years (as you can see, they lumped TA’s in with leads, which implies about a 15-20% premium over a regular artists salary) The survey definitely shows how big the spread is for different levels of experience - easily 2X for people in the 10 years of experience bracket.

In the US, the entry level art job market starts around $50,000 per year for larger employers; startups and small studios typically pay less. That is generally higher than similar jobs in Europe; I seem to recall that an entry level artist job in the UK equated to around $39,000 USD but I can’t find the reference so don’t treat that as certainty. There are of course significant differences in different countries – health care is a big competitive bidding thing here, but not so much over there, for example; very few US devs work on hourly salary (so, no overtime), and so on.

One thing you can try to find out his how the company imagines it pays compared to the industry - they may be willing to say “we pay in the 75th percentile” which means they generally pay above average wages. Not all companies will give out that information freely. Can’t hurt to ask.

As for pre-interview contacts: they are fairly common, particularly when the job is fairly technical. The actually technical people’s time is usually quite limited, so it’s common to have a producer or human resources person try to screen applicants and eliminate people who have no chance anyway before passing them along to working developers who will try to evaluate their real skills and so on. The first-pass screeners can usually turn people down, but typically don’t have the authority to actually hire without some input from technical specialists. If you do really well – or more likely, if you do really well and happen to fit quite closely the template that they are trying to match – you may get forwarded on to a real interview right away. If not, you generally go into the a pool of applicants which they will work through starting with their most promising people first.

The main lesson here is not to try too hard to predict what will happen. There are a lot of variables in that process – a team may be eager to fill a job soon but the studio management doesn’t actually have approval to spend the money yet; or perhaps they may be too picky in the early stages of a project and less picky later when time is short – and many of the variables don’t reflect much on you as a candidate. It’s best not to take it personally :wink:

#7

Excellent answer Theodox. Thanks a bunch!