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 torgoch wrote:
GW salaries are in general very low and the company has a major imbalance in internal pay due to the legacy of its transition from a private company to PLC.

My understanding is that:

Painters get it worst, I think they are on 15k (whatever the UK minimum wage is)

Design Studio types get around £18k to start with I understand, be they involved in the physical product or IP product. Their is progression, but not a lot.

For roles in which there is a job market, salaries tend to be a bit more market proximate, so publishing is poor (As a Black Library editor I was offered 19.5k about 10 years ago, which was about the market rate really outside London), media is a bit better and the finance, legal and operational dept manager roles are the best paying jobs.

There you go. That sums up the strategic outlook and operating dynamic that governs GW.

Look, I understand that all jobs operate in a marketplace. You do have to pay people in finance and legal competitively to attract talent. And it's also true that people like game designers, writers and artists do not necessarily work for money alone.

But they do need to earn livings. And companies do need to be able to attract creative talent.

The strategic ramifications become decisive. Any organization that devalues its creative people tends to develop not just a salary hierarchy, but a hierarchy of outlook. Organizations in which finance and legal people make the most money tend almost invariably to be organizations that make strategic decisions on based principally in financial and legal assumptions. Creative people fall to the bottom of the status chain, and once they do, creative possibilities stagnate.

Some organizations are run, at their core, by their engineers and other "product" people. Some by their salespeople. Some by their financial officers. In each case, the strategic outlook that develops is shaped by their respective core thinkers and deciders.

GW was originally founded and run by its creatives. Now, the organization is not even willing or able to pay their creatives living salaries.

(edited for grammar)

Is there great disparity between GW's pay for the design team and other industry giants like Wizards of the Coast? Did Andy Chambers get a 10x pay increase when he moved to Blizzard? Or is it all similar numbers give and take? It seems like GW must pay less to their design team than they do to their regional managers? Seems really bizarre when the design studio is what drives new product creation.

 Bottle wrote:
Is there great disparity between GW's pay for the design team and other industry giants like Wizards of the Coast? Did Andy Chambers get a 10x pay increase when he moved to Blizzard? Or is it all similar numbers give and take? It seems like GW must pay less to their design team than they do to their regional managers? Seems really bizarre when the design studio is what drives new product creation.

It is an indicator of corporate priorities though...

Those were all genuine questions :-)

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
they lied about the salary (it took a £6K drop in the week between my agreeing to travel down, and the actual interview),

It is possible your tattoo scared the crap out of them. Was a surprise for me

...I wore a plain silk headscarf. And an Armani suit obviously.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
...I wore a plain silk headscarf.

Hmm... maybe you should have gone Snake Unleashed instead then.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
.And an Armani suit obviously.

That might have made you look like a gangster.

The salaries aren't great for the design team, the sculptors can negotiate salary based on sales performance, but £17k is about right for the rest. It's at the very low end of livable wage, I.e. enough for a mortgage, but much else after.

I'm still shocked at how low it is. I dare to think how much the store managers make then!

 Bottle wrote:
I'm still shocked at how low it is. I dare to think how much the store managers make then!

A traditional store manager will make more, although that is partly through the ability to earn bonus. Don't know how single stores compensation works.

Well, you get what you pay for.

 Bottle wrote:
I think £17k wouldn't even allow you to live in Scunthorpe, lol. Surely shelf staking in tescos full time would get you close to that sort of money?

This is why it's so easy to distort the narrative in this country around pay & benefits, people have no idea what folk on low incomes deal with; working a 40 hour week all 52 weeks of the year on UK adult minimum wage will get you less than £14k(and Tesco pay only pennies more than that). The most generous benefit available(contribution-based non-work group ESA for disability) is £5k a year.

I get that GW are stingy when it comes to design salaries, but the reason they can get away with it is for everyone like Ian who have substantial experience & skill and who want to be paid commensurately, there are five or six other folk with not even no experience but just less, who would leap at the chance of a guaranteed £17k annual salary and will happily go along with the company's happy-clappy "attitude over all" kool aid party for a few years.

Yeah, I googled it after writing that comment. You can't live off 14k a year. GW only pay 3k a year more than that, and I don't see how you could live off 17k either. You won't get a mortgage with that except for on a shared ownership property or another scheme - and rental wise you'd be looking at a room in a shared flat and nothing bigger.

Is this the sort of money Alessio was offered when he dropped his medicine studies and relocated to the UK to work for GW? I hope he's getting paid more now for working across the road for Mantic.

Lack of royalties or other incentive payment would be a huge aspect as well.

What motivation would a creative type have to share their best ideas knowing they'd only get their base salary and no cut of the revenues created?

They'll hold on to their ideas until they can jump ship or start up their own shop.

It's the same reason Marvel and DC are coasting with 50-75 year old characters, everyone waits for a chance at a creator-owned title to do anything new.

 Bottle wrote:
Yeah, I googled it after writing that comment. You can't live off 14k a year. GW only pay 3k a year more than that, and I don't see how you could live off 17k either. You won't get a mortgage with that except for on a shared ownership property or another scheme - and rental wise you'd be looking at a room in a shared flat and nothing bigger.

Is this the sort of money Alessio was offered when he dropped his medicine studies and relocated to the UK to work for GW? I hope he's getting paid more now for working across the road for Mantic.

Alessio started his own Company, River Horse when he left GW, he does subcontracts to mantic I imagine. Given he's just picked up the Hunger Games license, he must be doing fairly well for himself I should think.

So, does GW supply the crayons for this job, or would you have to bring your own?

 torgoch wrote:
GW salaries are in general very low and the company has a major imbalance in internal pay due to the legacy of its transition from a private company to PLC.

My understanding is that:

Painters get it worst, I think they are on 15k (whatever the UK minimum wage is)

Design Studio types get around £18k to start with I understand, be they involved in the physical product or IP product. Their is progression, but not a lot.

For roles in which there is a job market, salaries tend to be a bit more market proximate, so publishing is poor (As a Black Library editor I was offered 19.5k about 10 years ago, which was about the market rate really outside London), media is a bit better and the finance, legal and operational dept manager roles are the best paying jobs.

Long-term higher-ups are on wages that are linked to the fact that the company used to pay royalties on products to designers. Those who have joined since it became a PLC cannot expect to ever reach that level, so as a member of the design studio, you will simply cannot aspire to earn what Jervis earns while remaining with the company.

15k! Duncan noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Talk about a slave wage... Jesus.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
They are unlikely to get someone talented unless they've massively changed their recruiting policy... last time I went for an interview for a creative job there (about 7 years back, admittedly -- the position was an editorial and writing one) they lied about the salary (it took a £6K drop in the week between my agreeing to travel down, and the actual interview), which was already pretty low, and made it clear that, as ever, their main desire was to recruit yes-men cogs-for-the-Machine-God rather than anyone with any skill or background doing the job.

Yeah, pretty much what I suspected. I imagine the position is going to be that of a numbers cruncher.

Imagine it: The boss walks in and says "I want to be able to do x, y, and z, and I want it on my desk by Monday."

Every week.

In between all that wonderful food and weather that England is known for, of course.

Well, judging from the quality of their rules, it's always been painfully obvious that they can't attract people who possess grammatical, spelling, or critical thinking skills. The salary helps explain why and also further confirms where their priorities lie; sales, models, something, something, rules...in that order.

I applied for another rules editing job in 2010, just after the Cruddace tyranid codex. As part of my application I pointed out the spelling, grammatical, and logical errors in the first dozen or so pages. I didn't really have time for more than that, and I figured (correctly) that that would be enough to convince them they didn't want to interview me that time, if my earlier insistence on actual pay hadn't been enough.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I applied for another rules editing job in 2010, just after the Cruddace tyranid codex. As part of my application I pointed out the spelling, grammatical, and logical errors in the first dozen or so pages. I didn't really have time for more than that, and I figured (correctly) that that would be enough to convince them they didn't want to interview me that time, if my earlier insistence on actual pay hadn't been enough.

That's what you get for showing them you have the right skills, not attitude

£15k isn't so bad, I only earn about £10k a year and feel fairly well off. No car (I walk instead of getting fat), nice rental house shared with my partner, bit of disposable income. As soon as you get rich the taxman eats it all anyway, no point.

Living costs up North aren't so bad either, and the people are friendlier than what you get down the smoke.

If I were in Nottingham I'd go for it.

As expensive as I hear the UK is, how can people afford to live much less spend a month on holiday each year?
http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Location=Nottingham-England%3A-Nottinghamshire/Salary

Seriously, the only salary that makes sense in the linked info is the teacher's assistant salary.

https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/nottingham

Especially with prices like these. 1400 pounds/month for rent on a tiny apartment?

 agnosto wrote:
As expensive as I hear the UK is, how can people afford to live much less spend a month on holiday each year?
http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Location=Nottingham-England%3A-Nottinghamshire/Salary

Seriously, the only salary that makes sense in the linked info is the teacher's assistant salary.

https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/nottingham

Especially with prices like these. 1400 pounds/month for rent on a tiny apartment?

The UK has incredibly cheap holiday packages. Here's a week in the Baleares, all-inclusive, including plane flight, for 400 pounds: https://www.thomascook.com/holidays/spain/balearic-islands/menorca/package/. As far as the time off, I believe it's basically government mandated, so that 17k is I guess spread out over 11 months essentially.