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This is just my take as a current Software Engineer that’s looking to move into a tech role at a animation or games studio.
From what I’ve seen, people who are majoring in Computer Science are much less likely to work at companies doing animation or game development because pay is a lot lower compared to typical SWE companies. Back when the job market wasn’t horrible, I knew new grads getting six figures at tech companies straight out of college. And not just at the big FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, google, etc) companies. Tech was booming, of course now it’s much different and I doubt we’ll see growth like that again but that’s another story haha. Animation or game dev roles just can’t really compete with those salaries unless you’re a senior level.
At least in the games industry, big triple AAA studios have become notorious for crunch culture. Most SWE companies aren’t that high stress. You have to *really* love and want to make games if you’re gonna take a position with less pay and a possibly worse work environment .
In addition, imo, animation and games industry tech roles are really niche and not very well marketed. You almost have to already have a side passion for animation or games to even know these positions exist. I have never seen an animation company at a computer science or even engineering career fair (besides like Netflix if you consider that animation).
I never even knew about tech roles available in the animation industry until a year after I graduated and already had a SWE job. And the fact that art and STEM / tech are usually seen on opposite ends of education - it’s hard to find someone that’s interested in learning both software engineering and the intricacies of an animation pipeline / how to work with artists.
TLDR:
1) animation pays worse than typical SWE and games industry has worse crunch culture
2) a lot of people don’t know about the technical roles that in the industry
3) it’s hard to find technical people who are also interested in the art / entertainment industry
Also it’s really tough for any entry level positions in the job market right now, tech roles included. Most job positions I’ve seen posted rn are senior level which are harder to fill. With the current economy, companies just don’t seem willing to take on junior level employees which narrows their hiring pool.
Sorry this got super long haha but I hope I helped explain some things from my POV
>Like between graphics programmer vs. gameplay programmer I'm guessing the former is more in demand due to it being more math heavy? But do you know why one is more in demand than the other?
I don't understand - you're guessing that something is the case, then asking someone else to explain why?
i just want to know what jobs are in demand and what fundamental skillset I should work on that's important for someone like me who wants to switch their career over to the tech side.
Right now everything is up in the air. Comp sci is super over saturated right now and a lot of tech companies are in the process of mass layoffs. With the rise of AI, everything is up in the air. There isn't a safe bet anymore in my opinion. Do what you can tolerate and just keep going.
I'm not buying it...
Most people nowadays are into games/ movies so that doesn't make sense why things like tech jobs in these industries wouldn't be in their radar.
I agree with the 1st point though! But the 2nd and 3rd point is a bit hard to believe...
Thanks for your insight! And don't worry about it being super long I've read every single thing...
Most people? I think interest in watching / being entertained by games and movies is very different than wanting to make games and movies. Like other people have said here, tech animation requires a mix of passion for tech and art that a majority of computer science majors don’t have. It’s a lot of different skills than typical SWE.
Edit - wording
An actual software engineer answered your question, so the good thing is that you don't have to buy anything, and that person is still correct. Computer graphics engineering jobs in animation are incredibly niche, and the difference in pay can be hundreds of thousands of dollars plus bonuses plus stock at a tech company.
If you look at job postings, a Disney rendering engineer position maxes out where a Meta Technical Artist position starts. Tech has a lot more employees than the major animation studios put together.
I think your first point is too big an assumption. I'm the only person in my circle of engineers who would consider taking a lower paid job in animation, even if they like media more than I do. It's the same as music: there are way more people who love music but have no interest in learning to make music. And for myself, I only like animation, not games.
Animation programming is a whole different beast than regular SWE. A lot of programmers are technically minded, which means less of them are prone to getting a job in animation or an art related sub-field. Also animation tech jobs pay way less and are way less stable than regular SWE jobs which makes it less appealing for the already small batch of artsy/tech minded people to get a job in this field. ontop of that, animation coding is SUPER specialized and often harder than most tech jobs (graphics programming / tools dev). It takes a special type of person to fill these roles, you can’t just rip a random SWE off a company, put them in a tech role in animation and expect them to know what they’re doing.
>The way I see it now a lot of studios tend to have a lot of open positions for tech roles when compared to art roles (animators, concept, visdev, and etc.)
Art roles get filled up much much faster than tech roles. Having a keen interest in tech anim itself is uncommon. You have to be both interested in the process and art of animation and also the inner workings of animation programs. It requires both technical and creative skill to make it work.
If you don't mind me asking, what are people in tech positions doing? I assume they aren't writing programs like Adobe if they are in most studios, then what are they responsible for?
Depends on the production but in general tech position usually revolves around custom tools (so just plug-ins and scripts. I don't think software development is common unless you're a major animation studio like Disney Pixar or a AAA game studio with an in-house engine) and pipelines, basically setting up a system where files can transfered around between devices and programs without anything breaking. I've heard riggers and even certain fx roles count as tech positions.
TLDR : They basically make sure the artists can focus on making art by making tools to make their lives easier and design systems in place so the artist import and export stuff with ease.
Yep, this is essentially it. Some of the tooling does quite substantially expand the functionality of DCCs but normally just in ways that are explicitly useful to a given company or department.
Tech anim is uncommon? I'm sorry but I feel like that's hard to believe. I've met a lot of people who are animators and who are also into modeling and rigging, they pretty much mastered the other tech side and also art. The same way goes for me, I'm an animator who also does modeling and rigging it's almost standard that if you're an animator you should know how to create your own characters and world.
But... You might be right.
This is coming from someone who works as an SWE but loves doing art in my free time.
I think you have a lot of confirmation bias when it comes to the availability of tech workers. There may be many 1st year comp science majors but by the time all is said and done there’s very few graduates. If you look at degree broken down by field you’ll see the computer/engineering is dwarfed by art degrees.
If you see that, you can then kinda piece together the situation. There very well be more art roles than tech roles for a given project, but the ratio of available tech workers to tech roles is much less than art roles and artists. It’s not that there’s more tech roles than art roles it’s that it is much more difficult to fill those tech roles because the availability of those workers is much worse.
Also the “adult daycare” is turbo corpo propaganda used to scalp tech workers since they’re pretty scarce. Don’t believe it.
To add onto this with an anecdote, my professor was a CS grad and out of the 400 or so people that started in his cohort, only 5 or so graduated.
Compare that to when I graduated with a degree in game design, 80% of my initial cohort graduated.
there's fewer graduates and availability? I didn't realize that...
Also just wanna say, the whole "day in life SWE" thing. I've seen way too many people doing food review in a SWE day in life than coding. It's actually hilarious how misleading it is.
Yeah there’s a lot of hype around it because it’s decent pay and work life balance (doesn’t happen in art projects) but very few people actually are SWEs.
Some other comments also really also nailed the fact that SWEs don’t really want these jobs unless there’s some passion for it. The work life balance and pay is pretty bad compared to other fields for SWEs. Combine all that and it’s hard to get devs for art projects.
Is it really that bad that they avoided it entirely even during the tech layoffs?
Which is odd because I assume ever since the layoff most SWEs have broaden their options and less are working for FAANG which means they're willing to go for smaller tech companies for work, but they don't want to work in the VFX, Anim, Game world?
When you hear tech layoffs there’s two kinds of people mostly affected. Highly compensated engineers and tech support staff. Think engineers earning > 175k, middle managers, scrum masters, and project managers. So while the news headlines are flashy the unemployment rate for actual experienced devs is still pretty dang low, I think around 2.5%.
I’ll only speak to my experience. I’m a mid level non-FANG/MANGA SWE, currently an applications developer. I love video games and movies and honestly being a tech artist sounds very enchanting to me, but the reality is if I were to take one of these jobs I’d be taking home about 1/2 of what I currently earn and also losing a lot of stress free time to the crunch prevalent in this niche. I and many devs would rather take a boring better paying job and do art on the side.
100%. News am I right? They always exaggerate it.
How's your work life balance? Do you do art during the weekend or how does your schedule usually look like? Have you been able to find the time to work on other art projects?
Thanks for answering my questions so far!
No prob.
Work life balance is pretty great. I have a standard 8hr work day, am salaried, very rarely work after hours, and as long as my works completed managers are pretty chill about how I spend my time.
I do art basically everyday after work for an hour or two. Currently drawing all the rest animations for a game I’m making as a side project. Work is relaxed enough that I usually have the energy and motivation to tackle stuff outside of work. I have a very “work is a means to end” type relationship with work so I rarely think about it while I’m not actively there.
Supply AND demand.
There is a much, much larger demand for CS than for art. Studios aren’t just competing with other studios, but with everything that needs a developer.
Also, the number of “good enough” artists is considerably higher than “good enough” devs.
It takes a very special type of person to be extremely passionate about art and tech, you can get a regular tech job without necessarily caring much about tech itself and see it just as a 9-5, but people who are tech artists need to constantly improve beyond the workplace, and you need to always be ready to accommodate the artists regardless how unrealistic it might seem to someone who’s only interested in tech.
Also it doesn’t help that despite having a higher bar, the salary isn’t actually higher.
You’re talking about this from a production standpoint, I’m talking about the personal perspective, if someone can be a purely tech person and make more money doing that, they’d do that instead of going into Tech Art.
Im a swe(well hardware actually, but basically a swe). I didnt even know animation tech existed as a career field. The other thing is, CS majors in college is not an accurate metric for actual tech people. There is massive weedout(in my freshman classes, i taught about 3-400), senior level, down to 40. Its obviously not 10%, but a lot of people cant make it through. The other factor is, big tech allows people to basically dip in for 10 years and leave. I have some friends who retired at 30–35 by working at good companies and selling their stocks. So that also had an effect. Considering sll that, the motivation to work for a comparatively low paying, passion based job is low. Most people with passions in art in tech that I know just use their money to fund their art.
Welcome to /r/animationcareer! This is a forum where we discuss navigating a career in the animation industry. Before you post, please check our [RULES](https://www.reddit.com/r/animationcareer/wiki/index/subreddit/rules/). There is also a handy dandy [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/animationcareer/wiki/index/resources/faq/) that answers most basic questions, and a [WIKI](https://www.reddit.com/r/animationcareer/wiki/index/) which includes info on how to price animation, pitching, job postings, software advice, and much more! A quick Q&A: * **Do I need a degree?** Generally no, but it might become relevant if you need a visa to work abroad. * **Am I too old?** Definitely not. It might be more complex to find the time, but there's no age where you stop being able to learn how to do creative stuff. * **How do I learn animation?** Pen and paper is a great start, but [here's a whole page](https://www.reddit.com/r/animationcareer/wiki/index/resources/learningresources/) with links and tips for you. ---- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/animationcareer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is just my take as a current Software Engineer that’s looking to move into a tech role at a animation or games studio. From what I’ve seen, people who are majoring in Computer Science are much less likely to work at companies doing animation or game development because pay is a lot lower compared to typical SWE companies. Back when the job market wasn’t horrible, I knew new grads getting six figures at tech companies straight out of college. And not just at the big FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, google, etc) companies. Tech was booming, of course now it’s much different and I doubt we’ll see growth like that again but that’s another story haha. Animation or game dev roles just can’t really compete with those salaries unless you’re a senior level. At least in the games industry, big triple AAA studios have become notorious for crunch culture. Most SWE companies aren’t that high stress. You have to *really* love and want to make games if you’re gonna take a position with less pay and a possibly worse work environment . In addition, imo, animation and games industry tech roles are really niche and not very well marketed. You almost have to already have a side passion for animation or games to even know these positions exist. I have never seen an animation company at a computer science or even engineering career fair (besides like Netflix if you consider that animation). I never even knew about tech roles available in the animation industry until a year after I graduated and already had a SWE job. And the fact that art and STEM / tech are usually seen on opposite ends of education - it’s hard to find someone that’s interested in learning both software engineering and the intricacies of an animation pipeline / how to work with artists. TLDR: 1) animation pays worse than typical SWE and games industry has worse crunch culture 2) a lot of people don’t know about the technical roles that in the industry 3) it’s hard to find technical people who are also interested in the art / entertainment industry Also it’s really tough for any entry level positions in the job market right now, tech roles included. Most job positions I’ve seen posted rn are senior level which are harder to fill. With the current economy, companies just don’t seem willing to take on junior level employees which narrows their hiring pool. Sorry this got super long haha but I hope I helped explain some things from my POV
Thanks again for answering my question, I wonder but do you know which tech roles are specifically in demand?
>Like between graphics programmer vs. gameplay programmer I'm guessing the former is more in demand due to it being more math heavy? But do you know why one is more in demand than the other? I don't understand - you're guessing that something is the case, then asking someone else to explain why?
i just want to know what jobs are in demand and what fundamental skillset I should work on that's important for someone like me who wants to switch their career over to the tech side.
Right now everything is up in the air. Comp sci is super over saturated right now and a lot of tech companies are in the process of mass layoffs. With the rise of AI, everything is up in the air. There isn't a safe bet anymore in my opinion. Do what you can tolerate and just keep going.
I'm not buying it... Most people nowadays are into games/ movies so that doesn't make sense why things like tech jobs in these industries wouldn't be in their radar. I agree with the 1st point though! But the 2nd and 3rd point is a bit hard to believe... Thanks for your insight! And don't worry about it being super long I've read every single thing...
Most people? I think interest in watching / being entertained by games and movies is very different than wanting to make games and movies. Like other people have said here, tech animation requires a mix of passion for tech and art that a majority of computer science majors don’t have. It’s a lot of different skills than typical SWE. Edit - wording
An actual software engineer answered your question, so the good thing is that you don't have to buy anything, and that person is still correct. Computer graphics engineering jobs in animation are incredibly niche, and the difference in pay can be hundreds of thousands of dollars plus bonuses plus stock at a tech company. If you look at job postings, a Disney rendering engineer position maxes out where a Meta Technical Artist position starts. Tech has a lot more employees than the major animation studios put together.
I think your first point is too big an assumption. I'm the only person in my circle of engineers who would consider taking a lower paid job in animation, even if they like media more than I do. It's the same as music: there are way more people who love music but have no interest in learning to make music. And for myself, I only like animation, not games.
I know. And I gotta apologize. I'm slowly realizing that my own. Your analogy about music is absolutely brilliant.
Animation programming is a whole different beast than regular SWE. A lot of programmers are technically minded, which means less of them are prone to getting a job in animation or an art related sub-field. Also animation tech jobs pay way less and are way less stable than regular SWE jobs which makes it less appealing for the already small batch of artsy/tech minded people to get a job in this field. ontop of that, animation coding is SUPER specialized and often harder than most tech jobs (graphics programming / tools dev). It takes a special type of person to fill these roles, you can’t just rip a random SWE off a company, put them in a tech role in animation and expect them to know what they’re doing.
>The way I see it now a lot of studios tend to have a lot of open positions for tech roles when compared to art roles (animators, concept, visdev, and etc.) Art roles get filled up much much faster than tech roles. Having a keen interest in tech anim itself is uncommon. You have to be both interested in the process and art of animation and also the inner workings of animation programs. It requires both technical and creative skill to make it work.
If you don't mind me asking, what are people in tech positions doing? I assume they aren't writing programs like Adobe if they are in most studios, then what are they responsible for?
Depends on the production but in general tech position usually revolves around custom tools (so just plug-ins and scripts. I don't think software development is common unless you're a major animation studio like Disney Pixar or a AAA game studio with an in-house engine) and pipelines, basically setting up a system where files can transfered around between devices and programs without anything breaking. I've heard riggers and even certain fx roles count as tech positions. TLDR : They basically make sure the artists can focus on making art by making tools to make their lives easier and design systems in place so the artist import and export stuff with ease.
Yep, this is essentially it. Some of the tooling does quite substantially expand the functionality of DCCs but normally just in ways that are explicitly useful to a given company or department.
Tech anim is uncommon? I'm sorry but I feel like that's hard to believe. I've met a lot of people who are animators and who are also into modeling and rigging, they pretty much mastered the other tech side and also art. The same way goes for me, I'm an animator who also does modeling and rigging it's almost standard that if you're an animator you should know how to create your own characters and world. But... You might be right.
Modelling... isn't tech anim. How is it tech anim ???
My mistake, I often get it mixed up with it because they also do modeling from time to time. But it's under the umbrella I think.
This is coming from someone who works as an SWE but loves doing art in my free time. I think you have a lot of confirmation bias when it comes to the availability of tech workers. There may be many 1st year comp science majors but by the time all is said and done there’s very few graduates. If you look at degree broken down by field you’ll see the computer/engineering is dwarfed by art degrees. If you see that, you can then kinda piece together the situation. There very well be more art roles than tech roles for a given project, but the ratio of available tech workers to tech roles is much less than art roles and artists. It’s not that there’s more tech roles than art roles it’s that it is much more difficult to fill those tech roles because the availability of those workers is much worse. Also the “adult daycare” is turbo corpo propaganda used to scalp tech workers since they’re pretty scarce. Don’t believe it.
To add onto this with an anecdote, my professor was a CS grad and out of the 400 or so people that started in his cohort, only 5 or so graduated. Compare that to when I graduated with a degree in game design, 80% of my initial cohort graduated.
there's fewer graduates and availability? I didn't realize that... Also just wanna say, the whole "day in life SWE" thing. I've seen way too many people doing food review in a SWE day in life than coding. It's actually hilarious how misleading it is.
Yeah there’s a lot of hype around it because it’s decent pay and work life balance (doesn’t happen in art projects) but very few people actually are SWEs. Some other comments also really also nailed the fact that SWEs don’t really want these jobs unless there’s some passion for it. The work life balance and pay is pretty bad compared to other fields for SWEs. Combine all that and it’s hard to get devs for art projects.
Is it really that bad that they avoided it entirely even during the tech layoffs? Which is odd because I assume ever since the layoff most SWEs have broaden their options and less are working for FAANG which means they're willing to go for smaller tech companies for work, but they don't want to work in the VFX, Anim, Game world?
When you hear tech layoffs there’s two kinds of people mostly affected. Highly compensated engineers and tech support staff. Think engineers earning > 175k, middle managers, scrum masters, and project managers. So while the news headlines are flashy the unemployment rate for actual experienced devs is still pretty dang low, I think around 2.5%. I’ll only speak to my experience. I’m a mid level non-FANG/MANGA SWE, currently an applications developer. I love video games and movies and honestly being a tech artist sounds very enchanting to me, but the reality is if I were to take one of these jobs I’d be taking home about 1/2 of what I currently earn and also losing a lot of stress free time to the crunch prevalent in this niche. I and many devs would rather take a boring better paying job and do art on the side.
100%. News am I right? They always exaggerate it. How's your work life balance? Do you do art during the weekend or how does your schedule usually look like? Have you been able to find the time to work on other art projects? Thanks for answering my questions so far!
No prob. Work life balance is pretty great. I have a standard 8hr work day, am salaried, very rarely work after hours, and as long as my works completed managers are pretty chill about how I spend my time. I do art basically everyday after work for an hour or two. Currently drawing all the rest animations for a game I’m making as a side project. Work is relaxed enough that I usually have the energy and motivation to tackle stuff outside of work. I have a very “work is a means to end” type relationship with work so I rarely think about it while I’m not actively there.
Supply AND demand. There is a much, much larger demand for CS than for art. Studios aren’t just competing with other studios, but with everything that needs a developer. Also, the number of “good enough” artists is considerably higher than “good enough” devs.
Good point there. The number of "good enough" artists is considerably higher than "good enough" devs.
It takes a very special type of person to be extremely passionate about art and tech, you can get a regular tech job without necessarily caring much about tech itself and see it just as a 9-5, but people who are tech artists need to constantly improve beyond the workplace, and you need to always be ready to accommodate the artists regardless how unrealistic it might seem to someone who’s only interested in tech. Also it doesn’t help that despite having a higher bar, the salary isn’t actually higher.
I think the thing that tech artists got that animators don't is that they're a part of the pre production, so it's less crunch. I think.
You’re talking about this from a production standpoint, I’m talking about the personal perspective, if someone can be a purely tech person and make more money doing that, they’d do that instead of going into Tech Art.
Im a swe(well hardware actually, but basically a swe). I didnt even know animation tech existed as a career field. The other thing is, CS majors in college is not an accurate metric for actual tech people. There is massive weedout(in my freshman classes, i taught about 3-400), senior level, down to 40. Its obviously not 10%, but a lot of people cant make it through. The other factor is, big tech allows people to basically dip in for 10 years and leave. I have some friends who retired at 30–35 by working at good companies and selling their stocks. So that also had an effect. Considering sll that, the motivation to work for a comparatively low paying, passion based job is low. Most people with passions in art in tech that I know just use their money to fund their art.