Do you pay graduate programmers NZ$35 000? If no, then maybe that's why he's not able to get local staff. Not even Halfbrick are that stingy...
I mentioned in an earlier post we are typically paying NZ$40-45k for programming graduates. We were paying $35-38k or so for programming graduates when we were starting out around 15 years ago with no funding.
According to that article, that translates to $23,000 in US money, which is around $11 an hour. You can find hamburger places around here that pay around that amount... More, if you include benefits. In-N-Out is one example. If domestic programmers are getting paid less than that, no wonder it's so difficult to find talent there.
I'm not saying it isn't low. I was just correcting you that he isn't shipping in foreign workers to drive the price down.
That is something that has always made me curious, why in do programmers in the game industry get paid less then other IT roles? I have never seen a satisfactory answer.
I would argue that game programming, especially within certain disciplines like graphics, is harder and requirers a more specialised skill set then many other programming jobs.
I can't believe the answer is something as simple as their is just less money in games compared to all other areas that require programming.
Returns in game development are often low, especially in the work for hire aspect of the business, and self publishing is incredibly hit and miss. There are a lot of success stories and some companies making massive returns, but nobody really gives a platform to the bulk of the industry that is barely scraping by or going bust.
Unfortunately, it is more or less a case of there is both less money and more unpredictability in games as compared to something like corporate IT (especially commercial contract work), even if the work required to make a game is much more complicated by comparison.
Thankfully, with the growth we have seen in the market and the lessened stranglehold that publishers and retailers have on paths to market, we are seeing industry revenues getting shared more readily amongst a wider set of companies, and the number of successes and margins climbing which is helping bring average salaries up.