hello, i''ve been trying to look up careers (mainly around the game industry) and salaries but can''t really find much. i''d like to know AFTER income tax if possible for someone working on bachelor''s degree in compsci

Why after taxes? This makes the question nearly impossible to answer in a general case. It will depend on your exact locality and your chosen lifestyle. A programmer who is single and lives in an apartment will pay a lot more taxes than a programmer who gets paid the same and owns a house and has five kids and a blind grandmother who lives in the house. It also depends on things like how well you shelter your earnings from taxes.

One thing I will tell you, if you are in it for the money, look at a new career. I''m not saying that you''ll be broke, I''m saying that if you have the skills to be in the industry, you can probably get a better paying job outside it.

You can check out the IGDA salary survey here:

http://www.igda.org/biz/salary_survey.php

If you''re an IGDA member you can get the latest version.

If you aren''t you can get the 2001 version - things haven''t changed too much.


I agree with the AP - tax (and other deductions) depend entirely on YOUR circumstances and location.

--
Simon O''Connor
3D Game Programmer &
Microsoft DirectX MVP

And here''s an amusing perspective on the matter:
In six years or so as an IT contractor doing plain old client/server development, I genuinely earned and frittered my way through just over £0.5m.

Since jacking it all it and becoming an indie game developer, I''ve made a net loss of about £1,500 in the last year.

Hurrah for the games industry!

Cas

I presume you mean starting salary, since the rest is up to you.

IF you can get a job (the industry is in a bit of a question mark at the minute) then my little graduate directory books tells me you are looking at between £16k and £22k. I''d say that was about right for joining a firm like IBM.

Banks and consultancies pay higher up to £25k - £27k, with benefits. But bear in mind they aren''t paying 9-5 anymore, you are expected to really put the effort in. And it''s worth noting that these are often in London where your £27k doesn''t go so far.

I can''t comment on the games industry as such but there are lots of up coming people with game programming interests. Skilled experienced game developers can (like in many industry) command there wages, but don''t been surprised if start salaries seem a bit low - supply and demand as ever.

These are pre tax - so knock about a quarter of them (depending on your need for accuracy this is probably ok - you''ve got to remove not just income tax (say ~20% worst case on this sort of wage) but national insurance (5%), pension contributions (3-5% ?), student loan (7%)).