Lead programmer with management experience, realistic hourly rates?

Personally I have only worked with by the hour payment. But if the customer pushed for fixed price I would definitely go with a milestone setup

 

The only issue I see with hourly payment is... you could easily pad your hours right? and just bank on fact that person wouldn't know the difference if something shouuld take 6 hours or three weeks.

if it is milestone based then the responsibility is more on you to budget your time wisely. I mean you could still overestimate things dramatically just to be a dick, but at leas tthen that is taken care of up front so there is more opportunity for me to double check things.

 

I'm writing this without stopping my clock You always pay for some none dev work, but I can do something in 1 hour that takes someone else 8, so its ok Milestones are good, even when paid by the hour you have sort of milstones in form of the backlog, burndown charts etc

 

Milestones are notoriously difficult to scope, especially in games where iteration can change the direction and scope of features, even for experienced game directors. I'd prefer to hire someone I trust to be honest with their hours. If they're dishonest, would you want to work with anyway, even under a milestone format?

 

No, of course not @TonyLi . I just thinking out loud here.

By the time I interview somebody so much, i should be able to tell if they are that level of a shyster. But then again, I mean some people are really good at being shysty. But more likely a person like that is already running a company, not trading time for money.

 

You can always kickout a by the hour freelancer/consultant. Its harder with a milstone approuch, you gotta pay for the milestone atleast even if half finished.

edit: For our next game we will look into somekind of partnership with someone good at open world, will have the same dilemma you have.

 

TBH, I think milestone vs time based is a hard choice.

Milestone without adequate technical oversight can also have problems since you can't evaluate the quality of the underlying work.

I think per diem would probably be how I would arrange it.

Any way you cut it, the problems with a project like this would be that you think everything is going well for around 4-6 months, then you realize things are a mess and you can't actually get things fixed. Problems won't actually materialize until at least 3 mo in.

At that point, you can't really change horses without scrapping tons of work, but moving forward can be very difficult because trust is broken. Suddenly there are months of refactoring time, etc, where there is literally no forward progress... but is that needed? Who can evaluate that? Do you just trust the contractor?

Bottom line is that managing a year long dev cycle with almost zero technical experience --- there's gonna be major problems there.

 

So what do you recommend? Hire a consultant to help with hiring?

The idea is to hire a project manager. Not somebody I have to manage.

 

Honestly, I dont know dude. My gods honest recommendation is scale down and build more experience before you take on a project of that scale.

There are so many potential issues and problems and you're talking about quite a lot of money. If you have zero obligation to deliver anything and no clawback if your effort fails, I guess it doesn't matter, but it sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

 

But you don't know anything about the projects scope. Almsot every aspect of this project is dramaticalyl simpler than the work I have done with you on both occasions. I designed it that way purposefully, so I can spend all the extra time iterating on game feel and content.

There is a reason I want an experienced project manager. It's not because I'm trying to make a huge game. It's because I want experience to help solve problems before they are problems.

 

Hire a technical consultant on an hourly basis to spend a few hours helping with hiring, and then an hour or so every few milestones to make sure things are on track. (You still need milestones, even if you're not paying by the milestone.) The consultant doesn't even need to be as technically proficient or as good a project manager as the person you hire. They just need to be experienced enough to recognize whether someone's doing the job right or not.

 

You mentioned a 12 month dev cycle, so I'm operating off that assumption.

My recommendation would be to bite off something very small, like TBHC or less. Learn the ropes on management and technical. There are so many discrete skills involved here, including stuff like just raw dealing with contractors, planning, design, technical overview, progress checks, etc.

Non technical guys can run technical projects, even larger ones, but IMO, baby steps. There are a lot of discrete skills involved, many of which, you may not have been tested on yet.

Run at least one smaller project from top to bottom with a dev cycle in the range of a couple months before you look for much larger scale work.

 

just an extra pair of third party eyes, basically. right?

 

I've worked with non technical management before, and it can be done without a consultant (actually, I would recommend it in this case, personally I think you should expect to evaluate a lot of this yourself). But IMO, in order for non technical management to be effective they need a lot of exposure to technical work in general so they have calibrated expectations.

Ultimately, I think this might be where the real problems are. That's why I'd recommend rolling a few smaller projects before targeting a 12mo project. So you can build a set of calibrated expectations and have a better ability to judge the underlying work yourself.

 

You only have two choices here:

- You swallow this frog and learn how to manage a development as you go (and you may be lucky and find someone who is honest and you can work together)
- You hire someone to watch the someone who you hire to do the work... and who will watch the someone who watch?

Yes, eventually you need to trust someone or you need to take the risk to learn as you go. This is how it works. And I know it can be intimidating and scary, but that's just the life of an entrepreneur.

BTW, my opinion (reading the thread here), you're a bit over-complicate this (and yes, because it is scary and it is messy and you cannot be sure, you cannot control everything).
Now, just to make sure: I'm not an entrepreneur. I don't run a business. I am a tech lead with extensive interview-experience, so I have no first hand experience how it feels when I put my own money at risk. But, if you want to run a dev business, you need to find someone who you trust above all else. No matter if technically he/she is not the top-notch tech lead or whatever, it is more important to trust him/her. You basically tell him/her to juggle with your money. And management, tech management can be learned. If trust is not there from the get go, it is very hard to put in place because of the stress you both will endure over time.
So I would rather concentrate on a not-necessarily-top-notch tech lead, who already shipped bazillions of games and knows AAA companies inside out, but would try to find someone, who has at least the basic knowledge, how development works and can be trusted.

But again, it comes down to the questions if you're willing to learn the management side for real, and of course if you can and would take the risk.


ps: also if you start to go to meet ups and networking, you can look out for mentors. A lot of people are willing to teach you and/or mentor you as you go. And don't be afraid to ask questions, obviously.

 

I vote for this one. But doing this kind of learning curve where you're betting hundreds of thousands of dollars is a recipe for a train wreck.

Start small. Get your sea legs. Learn management, technical workflow, expectation calibration.

Vote against hiring a consultant as @Lurking-Ninja mentions, "who watches the watcher". IMO, you gotta do this yourself, and to get there you gotta run projects (with programmers) yourself.

Expecting some kind of world class execution here off the bat is a setup for failure and disappointment.

 

All this is assuming that the result matters. If the money is just free money and who cares what happens, then whatever. But if you want the money spent well and the project managed well, I really recommend building more experience before biting off a larger scale work.

 

There is no hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake here.

Suggest rereading the thread, or asking for clarification.

In any case, it's not a vote. This is what I am doing, so there is either solutions to a problem or not.

 

Sorry, I thought you were looking at a 12mo dev cycle with top shelf talent, which would be 6 figures in usd.

Is that wrong?

I assumed this was your project cycle.

 

Yup. Not full time. Just a couple hours to help you hire the right tech lead, and then maybe a one-hour catch-up every month or two to give you an objective look at whether you're on track. The best managers leverage experts.

 

QFT

 

No, because programming just isn't the same.

As touched on above, you cannot break game programming tasks down into identically sized milestones like that. The character controller does not take the same amount of work as the menu system or the character creator. What I do does break down into specific sizes, and there is an industry standard way of charging (at least locally).

If you aren't paying until the milestone is complete, you most likely have to be paying based on hours worked. An experienced contractor/company may be comfortable with quoting you a flat rate of $X for a character controller and $Y for a menu system, but everything I've seen and read makes me believe that is unlikely.


I do recommend you start with some small or partial milestones so you can get used to working with the person and see their work before you both get in too deep. As a simplified example, instead of a fully-functioning open-world character controller for all six of your characters that includes swimming and flying and skill use, start with the first milestone being a character controller that can run one character around a simple demo level. Then tune that. Now you and the contractor have learned how well you work together, how clean their code is, and other important information, yet you probably have not spent a massive amount of money. In fact, while painful, it's still in the ballpark where you can end the relationship if things are just really bad. (Bad hires happen to everyone.)

 

In reality though, if you have almost no technical experience - how do you evaluate a character controller milestone? Like, would you be able to differentiate between custom work and a tweeked asset store item?

I think its hard to imagine where building a character controller is where problems will start to emerge. It's when you need to start integrating character controller behaviours into other interactions and the like where people will run into "oh, we gotta refactor" and other issues start to emerge. At this kind of point, we're already probably months in.

And therin lies the problem. I think its hard to predict when there will be problems in the future without having experience running technical projects (as a non technical lead).

 

That I cannot answer. I also do not know if the character controller is the best place to start, and was only using it as an example as it's one of those things that is in a lot of games.

Someone with at least some coding proficiency is going to have to evaluate the milestone. Unless your plan calls for outsourcing all programming and completely trusting whomever you are outsourcing too, you are ultimately going to need someone qualified to evaluate the work product.

 

It's getting a bit off topic. The question is not how do I manage the people I hire. I am trying to estimate how much money will be necessary to hire a certain type of person.

 

Rough estimate: $100/hour in the USA. Budget $120/hour to include overhead costs. You might be able to negotiate them down to as low as $70/hour if it's a longer-term contract, depending on location. Factor in $100/hour for a few hours of consulting by an unbiased, technically-savvy third party for hiring and milestone reviews.

 

Thanks @TonyLi you've been a big help.

Can you give an example of what an overhead cost might be? Woudl this be like, programmer realizes he needs some software or something so we decide to just buy a third party thing to save time?

I just ask because the more detail i can include in business plan write up the better.

 

There are always extra costs. The overhead could be general wiggle room, or it could cover things like payroll fees. If you're paying the contractor for full time work as their primary income, they may need to be handled as an employee, which means you'll need workers' comp insurance, etc. Most areas have nonprofits associated with the Small Business Administration that can guide you through all that for free.

If you're applying for a grant or a publisher deal, estimating the total number of hours is just as important as nailing down an hourly rate. A short-term tech consultant that you trust, like I mentioned earlier, should be able to help you pin down a number and then pad it out another 40-50% since things inevitably happen during development.

 

thanks.

I am working with an organization that assist veteran entrepreneurs with training and eventually funding to help get started out. i am just getting started out with them and havent been through any of the training yet but hopefully they can help get me up to speed on a lot of what you've mentioned.

i'm gonna have some time coming up soon that i wont be able to work on game so that will be good chance to read through business 101 stuff as well.

 

Great! Best of luck!

 

The thing with people management is that you cannot hire a certain type of person, you can only hire a person with a certain probability of doing certain things in certain circumstances. Those circumstances can and will change, for better and worse. The way you manage people will absolutely change the amount of money spent during the working relationship.

I think frosted has a good point. There's a lot that goes into making a project happen, and your perspective seems to be, imo, too focused on the compensation equation. A good hiring manager will be able to find a good, hardworking, trustworthy person whether that person is fresh out of school or has 30 years experience. And they will be able to also weed out the person who has spend 30 years working the company hierarchy and building a flashy resume, but would be useless in a startup environment. Salary and even experience (depending on what kind) is only partly relevant.

From what I can see, in terms of the compensation equation, most game projects bomb not because they do not pay competitive rates, they bomb because they pay nothing at all (collaboration), or the project is managed badly and funds run out, so suddenly no one is getting paid and loyalty is destroyed.

Anyway, the only way to learn is through experience. Everyone has their own opinion and personality that affects the way they see this kind of question. If I were you I'd prioritize getting involved in any sort of goal-based group activity that gets rapid exposure to people management.

 

I appreciate your guys concerns and I take all feedback seriously. But frosted has made his point clear so it's time to move on.

I've managed a lot more than game projects. I recognize that apples aren't the same as oranges, but I've been in charge of peoples lives in extreme high risk environments, and worked on some of the best military teams in the world. I was doing this while barely out of high school. So it's not like I don't know how to deal with people.

There is always more to learn so I listen, but that does detract from the main question I had so I want to move forward from that.

 

Sounds like you have a ton of life experience, not trying to say otherwise. My point is that, imo, it's not possible to control the overall expenditure for an employee by setting a specific compensation. So I would worry much more about precedents and day to day management (i.e. how well you click? how do they see the project, and what intangible value does it have for them? How does your communication and behaviour affect their attitude?) than compensation.

Anyway, I think it's cool that you're looking at this with the idea that you need to 'spend money to make money' right from the start, there's too many projects that are just never taken seriously enough from a financial standpoint and die. Looking forward to seeing more actual results on the forums!

 

Yeah I agree completely. But I got to put something down on paper for business plan to write grant proposals. And I'll need to be able to be able to answer questions.

I've got quite a bit of time before getting near that stage though. First things first is to get a demo ready, but I am working on funding with the veterans charity already. Their first reaction was that $300 was way high, but I think this thread has given me enough hints that I should be able to find more info to defend the 300k estimate. I will probably come back with more questions about this, because obviously I can't just be like, "well some dudes on the internet said so and they sounded smart." If I can point to reputable sources and numbers that's going to go a long way.

 

I've been lurking in this thread with interest but didn't have a lot to contribute that hasn't already been said. Just had a quick question for curiosity, are you looking at US-only for the potential employee(s)? As it'll have a big impact on the compensation expectations of a lead developer / project manager.

 

No, I don't care where they are coming from. So long as the communication is there. Best candidate would be military background, because then we have common language and I know the discipline is going to be there.


BUT..... some of the grants I am going to apply for may have certain stipulations. In particular I may be looking for Canadian citizens.

 

$300K is high. Game programmers unfortunately earn significantly less than equivalent peers in other industries. Some numbers in this thread were suggested by programmers whose day jobs are outside the games industry. However, they may also have been padding the number under the assumption that development usually takes twice as long as originally estimated. It might help your grant application to lower the hourly estimate to something like $80-90/hour and increase the estimated period of work from 12 months to 24.

If you need to justify even that rate, let them know that game companies are notoriously tight-lipped about compensation but the common estimate from years ago was $10K/month/employee (an article to get started). $12K/month is probably more realistic now. This covers additional business expenses, but it's also dragged down by the vast majority of lower-earning employees such as entry-level programmers, QA testers, etc. Senior levels may be costing the company much more than $12K/month.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, a consult with an experienced game producer can probably provide Glassdoor.com reports to justify your compensation estimates to the grant approvers, refine your timeline and scope, and help you find the right tech lead for the project.

 

Probably obvious, but you also need to know your grant source. Are they telling you that your numbers look a little high and you should recheck them or are they telling you that your numbers are a little high and that may be an issue in getting it accepted? Is the person giving you feedback going to evaluate your grant proposal or are they just giving you feedback? Just some things to think about.

I'm going to take a wild guess that this is through CanVet. I'm pretty sure I've had a client that had their plan rejected. I've also seen clients who have had pretty nice retraining programs paid for.

 

@TonyLi makes a good point in that games dev salaries are notoriously low compared to similar roles outside of game development (particularly at the low-end but some disparity remains up the chain).

I think the follow is a pretty reasonable summary:

* If you need to report a salary, even as a fixed term contract: around 150k is median and 200k is high end
* If you need to report an hourly rate around $100 per hour should cover it (it probably looks better if you add additional hours to your estimate rather than bumping the rate)​

It's likely your grant application will be rejected if you are planning for rates notably higher than this.

 

Please be aware that creative work and dangerous work and repetitive work all engage people in different ways and are best managed differently as a result. I don't want to trivialise your past leadership experience, but I do think you need to be wary when directly applying it to creative-style work.

 

Yeah, for a year of work I think this is too much. Certainly I wouldn't pay it unless I was getting a specialist who was top in a specific, high-value niche.

 

Do you really need the best of the best?
In europe $100 an hour is a huge amount of money for a long term project unless you are the best around!!

 

I don't need somebody with extraordinary specialized skills. Most the work is not something you couldn't build from tutorials on the internet. Some of the work would benefit from some cleverness, but most I aim to keep simple as possible.

What I need is somebody with project manager experience. I think, typically, you don't get to that position without years of technical experience below it anyhow.

@GoesTo11 , I'v enever heard of CanVet. I will check that out too.

The biggest grant I am looking at is from Canada Media Fund.

 

For a one person household, the poverty line is about $12,500. Not sure if you're drinking champagne daily or something, but $50,000 is a pretty high income compared to someone living in poverty.

(Source of screenshot: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, aspe.hhs.gov)

 

I wtf'd at that too, but I think he meant that $50k is the scale, so above $50k you'll get nothing.

 

Correct.
It used to be 45k, above that you get nothing. Below that you get a reduction in your monthly insurance bill.
Being self employed myself I have been around 28k adjusted income lately so I pay just 36% of the total bill.
Most is made up by the Federal gov and a bit by the State, MA.
This varies by state though, because some states dont want their people to have health coverage.

Of course I would be very happy to be back at 70k per year and pay for it myself
Also as self employed you can deduct 100% of what you pay for health insurance.

 

You have to keep in mind different states go to different lengths to help, and don’t all necessarily follow the same definition of poverty.

Also, in areas with a $15 minimum wage, by definition poverty would have to be around 30k. You might also find that living on 40k pretax feels like grinding poverty in some areas. Housing could easily eat more than 50% of that sum.

 

Poverty doesnt mean who has tje least. It means is ypu hungry more than you fed.

 

Just quoting the official source for the average of the country. Clearly the US government bases it more on how many mouths you have to feed (which makes sense). Housing in SF Bay area is premium; same with NYC. So even on a pretty good salary, I wouldn't wanna live in those places. Anyway, just trying to share some facts as we go off on a tangent of opinion...