In addition to paying your payroll taxes, if you are a good employer you should include a benefits package.

Believe it or not, some people care about things like health insurance for entire family, life insurance, paid vacations, retirement plans, charity matching plans, paid military reserve leave, paid jury duty, paid maternity/paternity leave, paid sick leave, paid holidays, nerf weaponry, tuition, etc.

These things are not cheap and can cost you a few hundred $ a week per employee. If you don''t pay them the employee will end up paying for these things out of his pocket and think of you as a cheapskate employer. You don''t wan''t your employees thinking of you as a bad employer because they may think of leaving when the going gets tough (and that''s when it would hurt the most).

Remember, happy employees are productive employees (just don''t let them get complacent).

In the study you cited, it looked like the average pay for mid-level programmers was in the ballpark of $60K. Inexperienced, a little lower. Project leads with experience 80+

I''d go with gamasutra. This is mainly a hobbyist board. I''m guessing 90% of posters here don''t have a programming job in the US, much less one for an established game company.