I'm responding to statements made in this recently closed thread.

Quote:Original post by d000hg Also, $120/h? That's reasonable for a contracting developer but not a tester.

Depends on the tester. There are senior-level "testers" called quality assurance engineers. My eldest uncle was one of a handful of such engineers who evaluated microchips used in space vehicles until he retired. That's as much as I could understand about his work anyway. I know he worked only half the year. Granted, that level of expertise isn't necessary for most entertainment software. (As an aside, I called him a tester once, and he was, shall we say, adamantly opposed to not being called an engineer.) On the other hand, hiring Cem Kaner and James Bach as senior quality assurance consultants will probably cost more than US$120 per hour. Entertainment software professionals are all too willing to work for a pittance. Have you seen what the average attorney charges? Nevermind all the five-digit referral fees they receive.

Quote:Original post by nsmadsen $120/hr equals $4800 for a 40 hour week. That means $19,200 per month and $230,400 per year. AS A TESTER. Most testers I know of make around $10-15 per hour. It is generally an entry level job and I know of no testers making 6 figures a year, nor do I know of ANY company willing to pay that much to their testers.

SCEA pays entry-level testers $9 hourly base. SOE pays $10 hourly base. SEK pays junior-level analysts $20-25 hourly base. The farther removed you are from games, the more you get paid. As quality assurance practices become more developed in the games industry, you'll probably see significant wage increases. Right now, anyone can walk in off the street and get an entry-level game testing job, especially through certain staffing companies that are only interested in filling their quotas instead of providing quality people. (Pun not intended.)

Quote:Original post by Morgan Ramsay
The farther removed you are from games, the more you get paid.

I would be interested to know if this also holds for development and creative positions?

Quote:As quality assurance practices become more developed in the games industry, you'll probably see significant wage increases.

Is this necessarily true? If one of your uncle's chips blew up, you lose a multi-million dollar spacecraft and kill a couple of highly trained astronauts. If the QA on a big database system screws up, a bank loses millions of dollars. But if the latest AAA game crashes all the time, you just blame ATI/NVidia for lousy drivers, and push a patch out after a couple of months. On a console you can't necessarily patch the game, so things have to be a little tighter, but you still find many bugs in commercial games, on every platform.

Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
On a console you can't necessarily patch the game, so things have to be a little tighter, but you still find many bugs in commercial games, on every platform.

Right. I've mostly been involved with console and web QA. If you use the same example for console games that you used for PC games, the "crashing all the time" bit, a publisher could wind up with a massive multimillion-dollar recall as well as shutting down a studio or two to recoup costs. A class-action lawsuit could come about from consumers who received faulty products, also costing the involved companies millions. Quality assurance is incredibly important, especially as a risk-management tool for upper management. A business skimps on quality assurance at their peril.

Quote:Original post by d000hg
So what you're saying is testers can earn $100+ an hour, but only when they're not testers?

Testing is also a department and a function. When you say "tester," I think of someone involved with test, which includes everyone from analysts and engineers to consultants, trainers, and strategists to supervisors, managers, and directors. Consultants in any field have higher earning capacities than even the highest-level employees.

Quote:Senior QA guys are not testers. They manage testing strategies used by teams of testers and are responsible for making sure the QA procedures are useful, etc.

That's a fairly limited job description for a senior QA engineer. Most junior and senior QA engineers actively test their products, too. The chief differences between entry-level analysts and junior/senior-level engineers is their skillset. Analysts typically perform black box, regression, stress, and limited compatibility testing. Analysts usually aren't experienced with, or aware of, the various techniques and tools. Engineers also perform those same tests (with additional competency) plus white box and and automated testing, facilitated by tools they usually create themselves. What truly separates engineers from analysts is their technical knowledge.

Quote:Original post by Nuget5555
Having worked as an entry level tester for SCEA in San Diego many years ago, I would say that the $9 dollar/hour starting rate (while hard to live on in the area) is sufficient compensation for the skill set the job requires

Unfortunately, that's a consequence of the staffing agency's liberal hiring policy. The studio's QA department is structured the way it is to improve accountability for the products undergoing test. That means limiting the responsibilities of walk-in analysts, and reducing their wages to a reasonable minimum, a la film production staff where a "job" entails having one responsibility. That also means plenty of red tape and a glass ceiling.