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<\/p>\nCausing a bit of controversy in the 3D industry, vfxwages.com promises to offer VFX, animation and games industry professionals a database of typical salary figures for their job role and geographical location.<\/p>\n
With www.vfxwages.com, Industry Wages Inc hopes that creative artists across the globe will want an accurate portrayal of the current and future wages which they might be paid for their talents. Based on data entered by registered members, it could even tell artists whether they are on an average wage for their current studio. How valuable, or damaging, is such a resource in these already turbulent times for employers and employees?<\/p>\n
Site founder and Industry Wages Incorporated president Aruna Inversen, a compositor at Digital Domain, set the site up with Brandon Ashworth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is virtually no guarantee that a job will continue even if an artist is a staff employee,\u201d says Inversin. \u201cIn this global environment, it is important to assess your value to a company, as well as all possible options for future employment.<\/p>\n
The site allows people to search and compare salaries and wages, and that will allow them to negotiate effectively for adequate compensation of their talents. <\/strong><\/p>\n
Industry Wages Incorporated president Aruna Inversen<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Industry Wages Incorporated decided to launch VFXWages first, since the current industries it services is something that the founders are\u00a0intimate with. We hope to extend the site into larger industries beyond the creative ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently in public beta, the site has three different types of accounts for users. Professional and freelancer accounts feature jobs with salary or hourly paid wages for those particular individuals. Student accounts are for those currently attending any post-secondary schools, or have recently graduated and are looking for work. Company accounts are for recruiters and managers or company owners. Inversin says that specialised services and tools are in the works for company users to take advantage of current data.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe data so far has been very promising,\u201d he reveals. \u201cSeveral occupations have a number of wages entered per years of experience, and their accuracy is quite overwhelming.\u00a0 Previously, wages at many companies have been unknown, or it has taken several public searches across the web to get a closer look.\u201d<\/p>\n
At time of writing users are able to view all wage data points that the site has aggregated by 3200 users, distributed among four different creative industries: animation, motion graphics\/broadcast, gaming, and visual effects.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe graphs are the most successful at giving an overall view of the wages in these industries based on years of experience\u201d says Inversin. \u201cSince we\u2019re still running in beta mode, some of the graphs may contain extreme outliers which we have not parsed yet.\u00a0 Mostly this deals with 0 values and extremely high values, which are fixed once the graphs are run every hour. All our possible combinations are listed, even empty graphs, so on some we just don\u2019t have enough data points to make a graph.”<\/p>\n
One occupation that does have enough entries to populate a full graph is compositors. “Even with people putting in zero, we can see that the hourly rate does increase over time, which gives us some great insight in that people are putting in valuable numbers, and the site is becoming more accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n
However Inversin admits that reaction to the site has been met with both kudos and disdain. \u201cWe received several emails critiquing us on the fact that many people just put in a zero number, to view the graphs we have, even though wage entry is anonymous,\u201d explains Inversin. \u201cPutting in zero or any low number brings the medians down, and as such, users get screwed. We flag the outliers, look at them on an individual basis and decide on whether it is a garbage data point or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Having to register before viewing the data, as well as lengthy terms and conditions, appear to have put some people off. Inversin insists this is not just a scam to harvest valuable personal data. \u201cAt this moment, the only thing we can guarantee is that your valuable wage is entered anonymously,\u201d he says. \u201cWe truly cannot know who enters which wage, or how many wages you have entered. We have set this up so that a user can enter any number of wages throughout their life, giving the graphs even more appropriate numbers.\u00a0 Almost everything is anonymous, the only thing that isn\u2019t, is your email address. We use that primarily to gauge how many users we have, and to allow a user to repeatedly log in. We are looking at other avenues of logging in, from OpenID, Facebook and Google.<\/p>\n
At the moment, company members can be administrators for their own companies, and post jobs that place their position on a map, which can be easily searched.\u00a0 \u201cWe will be starting to populate the job listings search manually in the near future,\u201d adds Inversin. \u201cStudent users have access to all our wage data without putting in any wage information, while professional users must put in at least one data entry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leigh van der Byl, senior texture painter at The Moving Picture Company<\/a>, is critical of the concept in general. \u201cI honestly don\u2019t believe [resources like this] to be particularly useful or productive, because artist\u2019s salaries depend on far too many criteria in order for any useful statistics to be drawn from them,\u201d she says. \u201cI would guess that studios don\u2019t pay much attention to typical salaries, as the salaries they offer probably depend on their own budgets. Even in a relatively small area like the London VFX scene, salaries can, and do, differ quite a bit between the different studios, and I rather doubt that a website full of anonymous information is going to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justine White runs Finish<\/a>, a Soho-based postproduction facility. She is in two minds about vfxwages.com. \u201cI can see sites like this would be useful, since many post jobs don\u2019t even reach job ad pages and it\u2019s sometimes hard to know what is the average\/typical wage for a particular job spec,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
However White adds: \u201cThe only thing with this site is it seems pretty \u2018big brother\u2019 in knowing what average wages in a studio are. I think anyone who runs a company might find this concept a bit daunting. Many companies at the moment are trying to deal with seriously reduced budgets due to the credit crunch, yet keep as many staff on as possible and keep afloat. At the moment some of the freelancer rates make it unviable to do the job. Post houses are expected to be very flexible at the moment, and it is very challenging. The site definitely feels more in favour of the employees rather than employers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nLeigh van der Byl, senior texture painter at The Moving Picture Company<\/p><\/div>\n
I would guess that studios don’t pay much attention to typical salaries. Salaries can, and do, differ quite a bit between the different studios, and I rather doubt that a website full of anonymous information is going to change that.<\/p>\n
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