| hibikir said: 100K a year would be a conservative estimate in most of the US. Office space rental(about 100 square foot per employee), heating, health benefits, 401k matching, software licenses, social security and medicare taxes, cleaning crews, secretaries, help desk, system administrators... it all adds up. In a previous job, in the midwest, the cost of keeping people in my (non-game related) development team up and running were about 120K each. The average salary was in the mid sixties. The rest was all extra expenses. Unfortunately, most of the costs of those details aren't readily available. How many programmers can be supported by a build administrator? What's the actual cost of the office? How much does it cost to clean it? It's all in a case by case basis, but any software entrepeneur or manager can give you ballpark figures, which will probabbly add up near the 100K on average, after taking into account that most of the 200 are artists, which tend to make less than programmers. |
I just wanted to confirm this figure, yes it is conservative escpecially for an American city, I am a payroll manager for a construction company, and I can tell you a carpenter costs a company in New York City about 135,000 a year, without a single hour of over time. Don't forget I'm not saying he makes that much you have to remember benefits are expensive, the company has to match what the employee pays in Social Security and Medicare, plus there is Workman's comp and such. Then you perhaps have other expenses associated to a worker.(Of course construction unions are pricey, and construction insurance isn't cheap) But I come up with total employer cost reports all the time and you'd be amazed at how expensive workers are to a company.
I also imagine these 200+ people don't include any overhead staff associated with the project, which is obviously expensive being that there is 200 people involved.
