I can, but it does mean leaving the 10 years of career behind and starting from zero with no formal education in CS.

clarification: I'm doing truly microscopic amount of development at work. And usually these are simple Python scripts.

Wow, so the credits are really that thorough? That's awesome to hear. I also now have new respect for movies with really short credits - I'd wondered if there were any positions deemed "too irrelevant" and not included.

I'm also particularly curious about the "no formal education in CS" bit - for various complicated reasons I haven't (yet?) completed basic HSC, and am wondering how to break into the industry in general. I'm not 100% sure where I want to start, but "simple Python scripts" sounds rather interesting. I assume there was a bit of being in the right place at the right time, but besides that, how did you get yourself noticed?

I got a formal education and degree in software engineering over a long, hard fought four years, which still has me about $25K in debt.

I got my job by getting noticed through my GitHub blog, to which I dedicated only about a half hour every other night for a month or so.

One night I got an article at the top spot of HN's front page. I had a great job offer within hours from a dev at a company which I've always respected.

Content on my blog was self taught, 99% of what I do at work is self taught. Formal CS education is still useful, but the ratio of cost/reward is terrible.

Funny enough, sometimes our crew isn't included in full.

In VFX? I dropped from the Uni, went to the local VFX shop and offered them to work for free during night shifts. It was during the crunch time, so essentially it was an offer they were unable to refuse :] After some years of low quality TV spots I got into feature film industry. That's what I still do.

Ah, so sometimes people do get dropped out. I'm not surprised.

Very interesting, working for free is (for hilarious reasons) something I could probably pull off right now. I'm curious what kind of work this was - was it more generic coding or industry-specific? I've wanted to play around with graphics for some time, but "get a GPU and mess around with it" has repeatedly not worked out for me, so I've no industry experience.

Yeah, don't worry too much about the lack of a formal education. I've worked with multiple people who didn't have that and were successful in the field.

I bet the OP can make loads more money in VFX than going back and doing some junior programming role, hence I'm with him.

I would question the word "loads" ;] Sups are usually earning around 150-200 CAD p/y, seniors 100-130. I may be wrong with the numbers though.

what is "sups"?

Supervisors. VFX/Dept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_effects_supervisor

Thanks

Over time with investment in self, the money would outstrip vfx, even if the first job only matched it. If you like development, do some projects!