In addition to paying your payroll taxes, if you are a good employer you should include a benefits package.

Believe it or not, some people care about things like health insurance for entire family, life insurance, paid vacations, retirement plans, charity matching plans, paid military reserve leave, paid jury duty, paid maternity/paternity leave, paid sick leave, paid holidays, nerf weaponry, tuition, etc.

These things are not cheap and can cost you a few hundred $ a week per employee. If you don''t pay them the employee will end up paying for these things out of his pocket and think of you as a cheapskate employer. You don''t wan''t your employees thinking of you as a bad employer because they may think of leaving when the going gets tough (and that''s when it would hurt the most).

Remember, happy employees are productive employees (just don''t let them get complacent).

Augh! I know that! What I am asking is about the bloody salaries!

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

In the study you cited, it looked like the average pay for mid-level programmers was in the ballpark of $60K. Inexperienced, a little lower. Project leads with experience 80+

Yup... but that doesn''t fall into line with what the people here are saying rather authoritatively. I was wondering which was more accurate. (My vote is on Gamasutra.)

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development

"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

I''d go with gamasutra. This is mainly a hobbyist board. I''m guessing 90% of posters here don''t have a programming job in the US, much less one for an established game company.

Gotta remember Averages can be decieving. A couple guys like John Carmack can really skew the averages.

I seem to recall that survey saying that it diregared the top and bottom X% of all responses (cant remember if it was 5%, 10%, 25%, etc). Thus, the few large earners wouldnt even show. Thats a pretty standard statistical analysis technique.