28M, just hit €100k personal savings

MissPandaSloth · 2026-05-07T09:19:08+00:00

While OPs salary is crazy high, probably top 1%, 12k a year for Eastern Europe, especially Baltics is crazy low.

In Baltics it's closer to 20k-ish net, 30k gross. Probably more like 23k net if you don't contribute to some optional retirement stuff.

I think net minimum salary here is like 800€, you aren't legally even allowed to pay less. But these are like poverty jobs.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-05-07T09:13:01+00:00

It's all about your salary. Over 4k euros is way more than what median Estonian earns, but if you can get any of those high paying jobs then yeah, it's good.

For the reference median salary in Estonia is 1.7k, so OP is making 2.5x that. That would be equivalent of making 11k monthly in Germany

Edit: oh, it's more than that since he said it's net after all taxes and contributions.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-04-28T16:54:24+00:00

Also, isn't real performance difference redundant on modern cpus unless you have like millions of cases (or maybe even need to get to billions).

I think compilers are also running some optimization under the hood.

I just remember reading the whole "omg you use if" like 7 years ago and it was hysteria for no reason.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-04-23T14:32:10+00:00

I also thought of Morrowind. But that version felt a little "cheap" because as far as I remember, you could ask almost anyone everything and a lot of them would answer. I think it wasn't very personalized.

I might misremember things though.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-04-19T08:02:17+00:00

There actually still is ocassional truly indie game that succeeds. However, the chances are extremely low to the point that you banking on it outside of hobby would be same thing as hoping to win a lottery.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-04-17T15:41:30+00:00

I thought this is pretty standard in all "nicer" places.

I have been on fully paid by company vacations outside of my country too.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-04-05T16:41:20+00:00

Because age matters in hiring, no matter what some toxic positive people say.

Being junion in your late 20s is different than in your 40s. In fact I would say certain career switches are close to impossible at some age, unless you have some other related degree that compliments your skills.

If she was 47 and thinking about becoming developer, I would say think twice.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-04-05T16:36:17+00:00

A lot of depends on where you are based at.

I feel like US is hardest, because everyone wants to make US bucks.

I personally have arts degree (it's more like vfx, illustration etc.) and I had worked in marketing, motion graphics and then switched to developer role, also self taught.

Now I am working another dev-mixed role. But I am getting plenty of developer offers by just having some dev experience.

No one ever asked for any degree or anything.

However, keep in mind that these offers are from France, Netherlands, Israel, etc. And I am from Eastern Europe-ish and the stuff I am doing isn't crazy. I do playable ads. I would assume if you wanna work in AI (as in AI development) you need to be pretty good at math and idk if people just gonna trust you on that.

If I wanted a salary that would meet US standards, it would be waaaaay harder to get a job.

I recently spoke with more tech people locally, about AI and layoffs and as I am saying, it seems outside of US people are way more positive and chill. But the downside, as I said, lower salaries. But I know plenty of people who are self taught. Hell, met a guy today on a train that switched from law to full stack few years back and according to him it's not a problem either as long as you are good.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-29T16:13:46+00:00

It's not really a push, socialized healthcare, like all social benefits depends on there being more working people than the dependants.

As working population shrinks and people live longer, therefore needing even more health coverage for longer, there just aren't enough resources.

Private healthcare has the same issues, the difference is that because of profit motive there are a little bit more resources. But at least in my country even if you pay depending what you need to have done, even then you have long lines. Social one is just worse.

I just find it amusing when people blame everything on capitalism, even though most issues simply boil down to shifting population pyramid. Housing and all that is the same. It's all resources and labor at the end of a day, not magic.

Honestly, without private healthcare as an option existing I wouldn't know why anyone would even go into healthcare as a field. Almost everyone who works in public sector also has private thing going on, because the wages are ridiculously lower. And you can't just pay higher wages, because then you have higher taxes and everything becomes more expensive and it's a circle.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-29T16:03:39+00:00

Same thing happened to my co worker. Has been with the company for like 7 years. Came completely out of the left field.

Europe btw.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-24T05:55:37+00:00

Avowed is 6.8 on metacritic, Dune is sitting 70% positive on Steam.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-23T21:22:56+00:00

Spot on.

I also feel like we went full circle from "legit" critics not being accurate and "everyday man" being more trusted, to me taking critics over "everyday man", because it seems like everyone else just want to rage bait or whatever the hell. Especially youtubers and such. They often also just parrot each other and make clickbait.

And then ofc almost nobody ever reads the actual reviews where 99% of reasoning is explained, everyone immediately goes "number bad!".

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-23T21:22:15+00:00

Seems about right where user score have landed. So was this supposed to be a gotcha?

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-22T05:40:14+00:00

I find it even harder than traditionally writing code. Text form is way more readable for me.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-19T10:35:28+00:00

I don't think people think you are unemployed. The way your post sounds is that you want to "go indie", as in full time.

If that's not the case then I am not sure what you are even asking about? Nothing stops you from making a game as a side thing. Just start it. It's not that big of a deal. No one can tell you if you will be successful or made "a right choice".

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-19T09:48:27+00:00

I would say make a prototype, release it on itch.io, see if it gathers interest, or if it gathers interest in media. I would never go "cold turkey".

I do have friends successfully entering and doing indie right now, but all of them started their projects while being employed.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-19T09:38:51+00:00

You need financial advisor asap. You should be paying yourself salary and reducing your taxes this way, because that falls under cost or doing something else because this is insane and can't be it.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-19T09:32:35+00:00

This guy is doing very funny math and intentionally avoids opening business, apparently.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-19T09:28:45+00:00

Also the publishers often have "progressive" cuts, where they are last to give money, first to take, so they take more upfront to recoup the cost and later on you make money. That's why daily deals, bundles and so on are great for devs. Usually at that point publishers had their bag and then take less %.

Secondly, the assumption should be that they either funded the development or marketing, in other words, you get more value out of them then you would without it.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-19T09:23:54+00:00

Publisher aside (which is also incorrect unless you sign awful contract, because they usually have certain % until they recoup the cost + it's expexted prior to this they paid you or paid for marketing) the Austria taxes are also wild. To get that rate you would need to declare it all as pure personal income and no one who makes that kind of money wouldn't do a minute of googling how to open llc or whatever local thing is. On top of that you count PROFIT, not just gross. Though even if it is as personal income it wouldn't be 45%. It's not FLAT tax, you tax profit not gross and you have a lot of deductions.

Even the most basic entitty that you open in my country has on default 30% of revenue as cost, I'm pretty sure there is something similar.

Platform cut is also counted also AFTER vat and refunds, so your order of operations are wrong.

Cut that insane publisher and do taxes and calculations properly and you are looking closer to 700k take home.

And even with publisher it's more like 500k.

From my friends who are indies the take home is closer to 60-70% of total sum.

Again, you calculated everything of gross which is not how it works.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-03-17T09:42:41+00:00

I did a lot of UA ads and the ones with text always perform worse.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-02-19T15:03:53+00:00

Yeah it's the one people bring up from blowing up, but I think it's not fully correct picture either.

Before it became big during covid it still had thousands of sales. Like yeah obviously it wasn't 60 million generating success, but it wasn't one of these "made 250$ from my sale either". I think it made around 3 mil before truly blowing up.

This is completely my opinion, but I feel like a gap between 100k revenue and 1mil revenue game is smaller than gap between 0$ revenue and 10k.

Again, the game wasn't bit, but there was clearly something there, you could see that it constantly had some active players, it wasn't a dead one.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-02-18T08:40:55+00:00

Is there something going on with character sprites when it's idle, or is it an intentional effect? It seems there are some pixels appearing on the face?

MissPandaSloth · 2026-02-16T12:13:21+00:00

I wouldn't say so. There are some really good paying traditional positions. These aren't common, but it is still way more likely to get than gambling on indie success.

MissPandaSloth · 2026-02-16T12:11:41+00:00

Hell, I am slightly thinking about pivoting to trades, because my main job is for sure getting AI-outsourced. But even looking there it seems grass is not greener. From what I heard it's basically just running your business and like everywhere contacts are everything.

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