The problem with the above story is that the engineer lost all connection to the project. It would be like allowing an artist to finish a painting 90% and then firing the artist and giving the painting to someone else. It is heartbreaking to hear. Those are years of someones life.

> Look at all the folks who get PhDs and waste their 30's doing low paid postdocs ($50K is higher end).

Research is different. You are certainly losing out on income, however in my experience you have an immense amount of ownership and autonomy over the project. If you get the boot you can take your project with you. You can publish your code as free software or open source and your papers on open access pre-print services. Academic researchers are often far less alienated from their labor than video game engineers.

Consider two orthogonal vectors: one is income earned and the other is your accomplishments. Ideally you want to maximize both, but failing that different people express different priorities over which one to maximize in a career.

>The problem with the above story is that the engineer lost all connection to the project. It would be like allowing an artist to finish a painting 90% and then firing the artist and giving the painting to someone else. It's heartbreaking to hear.

It's heartbreaking the first time I hear it. After the 100th time, the sentiment transforms to "Why did you allow yourself in this predicament?" And the answer is always "Passion".

This story has been repeated over and over for the last 15 years. You can take this exact story to aspiring game developers and they'll say "I don't care. It's not about the money. I just want to make games. Even if I play a small role in the project I'll be satisfied"

>You are certainly losing out on income, however in my experience have an immense amount of ownership and autonomy over the project.

Many postdocs don't. They do the bidding of some faculty member.

Many faculty members don't. Sure, on paper they do. But they'll all tell you about the work they cannot pursue because they can't get grant money for it.

>If you get the boot you can take your project with you.

Not true for some postdoc work.

>You can publish code as free software or open source and your papers on open access pre-print services.

Not true as a post doc. My advisor certainly forbade it.

>Consider two orthogonal vectors: one is income earned and the other is your accomplishments. Ideally you want to maximize both, but failing that, different personalities often express different priorities over which one to maximize in a career.

I completely agree with this, which is why I'm not sympathetic to the game developer, or with postdocs who regret spending so long in academia. They picked their priorities - it was not imposed on to them. And for many, later in their life, they feel they picked the "wrong" priorities.

>I completely agree with this, which is why I'm not sympathetic to the game developer, or with postdocs who regret spending so long in academia. They picked their priorities - it was not imposed on to them. And for many, later in their life, they feel they picked the "wrong" priorities.

I am sympathetic to them as we have all made bad decisions. I would argue that a neccessary pre-condition to "following your passion" is protecting that passion and pursuing a longterm strategy which allows you to develop that passion and maintain ownership over your work. Chasing passion is not an reason for failing to plan or for allowing others to walk all over you. Software engineers on the whole have sufficient power to not be at the mercy of bosses if they have the will to stand up for themselves. They owe it to themselves and to their limited lifespan to do so.

Edit: I think we both are saying that, to the degree possible, people have a responsibility to themselves to not allow themselves to be exploited.

>And for many, later in their life, they feel they picked the "wrong" priorities.

That, right there, is exactly what im feeling currently.

It all started as a hobby some years ago and I got an opportunity to turn it into a career, so I did. I dont regret that time because I met some pretty amazing people and learned a TON about so many fascinating things. But I finally got fed up last year and left to do some freelancing work while I performed a 'Career-Shift'.

Unfortunately, what I have come to realize is that its pretty difficult to switch from being a contract developer for 10 or so years. I dont know for sure, but I think, because I have the 'Jack of all trades, master of none' resume. It's highly demotivating.

What should have stayed a hobby became a career, and now feel scorned because of it.

>What should have stayed a hobby became a career, and now feel scorned because of it.

I think this statement sums it up.

After a while, I figured out that for most jobs, following passion is too much of a risk. Even if it is aligned with my passions, any minor change (e.g. management decision) can make it a chore or much worse. It will never really be according to my vision.

So I switched to a boring job but with good work-life balance. This gives me free time to pursue my passions. Now I'll grant some passions are demanding enough that you can't reasonably do it in your free time (e.g. certain types of academic research). Fortunately, the solution is to have multiple passions. Even if I have all the time in the world, it is not enough to pursue all my passions anyway. It's OK to pare it down to what is feasible, and it doesn't make me any less happy.

What's your skill set?

Are you getting no offers, or just no offers that pay well enough?

I have trouble believing that noone would want to hire you if you're good and can show that you've built nontrivial stuff.

As someone who recently finished a post-doc and jumped ship to a more lucrative contractor position.

None of that is worth the lowered income.

Come on it's just a video game not the Sistine Chapel. A few decades from now the games of today will be vanished and forgotten.

No, they are exactly the same.

It's hard to find a GDC talk on Youtube where the creator of a game doesn't get teared up talking about the despair and elation they felt slaving over their game for four years. Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOlcB-JxkFw

I also firmly believe there are games that won't be forgotten in a few decades.

Having watched a great number of these talks, I can say this isn't true. The devs are invested, sure. Chances are good they wouldn't be talking about it at GDC if they weren't. They definitely talk a lot about the ups and downs. But tearing up I've only seen once in a while; I remember that talk specifically because it was unusual.

It's not even remotely the same. The people getting distraught over video game projects have entered a delusional alternate reality and lost sight of what matters in the real world.

How does the Sistine Chapel matter any more than a work that will be experienced simultaneously by thousands, if not millions of people across the world, and will be immeasurably more immersive and entertaining?

I'm as defensive about games-as-art as anybody...but the Sistine Chapel ceiling is, and will remain, more important to humanity than 99.999% of games created.

Do tell us what really matters in the real world

Perform an experiment:

1. Watch someone work hard on a project they care about for months or years. It could be software, a quilt or a carpentry project.

2. Find a legal way to destroy it in front of them.

3. Say "Come on its just X not the Sistine Chapel."

4. Record their reaction and report back.

Your characterization is fundamentally unfair.

It's not as if they found a legal way to destroy it after the work had started. That legal way has always existed. How one can enter a profession where you're paid to make art and not know the rules is mind boggling. I know lots of famous music artists who've felt exploited, but those contracts are likely a lot more complicated than what these developers deal with.

If you're a carpenter, and I hire you to build something, and you don't know that I can stop the project at any point and destroy it, you've got serious issues. Ask any carpenter.

If Michelangelo was paid to produce a masterpiece, I'm sure he knew he didn't own the work. I should probably look up famous artists like him and read up to see if this was even unusual: Getting paid to make something that would be destroyed by the owner.

True. But I am pretty sure that the effort, passion, frustration, long nights, etc. that developers and designers put into those games are the same today as what Michelangelo went through while painting the ceiling. An impatient Pope constantly coming by wanting to see the progress, going from being a sculptor to a painter because of public pressure, hours upon hours of tedious and daunting tasks, so on. All while never knowing how it will turn out.

Its obviously not a 1:1 comparison, but the emotions and feelings are the same is what im getting at ;-)

Video games matter to many people, maybe not on the scale of a Sistine Chapel, sure, but there are legitimate efforts being made to preserve them like other works of art: https://gamehistory.org/who-we-are/

And 95% of the people here spend their days writing yet-another-CRUD-app. That doesn't mean you don't get invested.

Passion is fine. Whatever works for you.

I'd advise against making someone else rich, at your own expense.

Been there, been done like that.

Having a passion is fine.

Following your passion is fine.

Complaining about low pay because you are following your passion is not. If they're complaining, they care about more than their passions, and they (not their employers) are responsible for satisfying their needs.

You can get lucky and follow your passion as well as take care of material needs, but those are the exceptions. Not the norm.

No, passion and money usually aligned. That's the whole undernote of any startup pitch.

If there were not aligned, then we should strive to change the market and society to make them align. Without a proper incentive mechanism, no innovation can be done optimally.

>No, passion and money usually aligned. That's the whole undernote of any startup pitch.

I would beg to differ. The aligned ones are the exceptions.

Unless your passion is to make money, that is.

The whole point is that if your passion is something other than to get rich, you are more inclined than the average person to take lower pay to pursue your passions.

"Wow, it's awesome employer X is willing to pay me to do passion Y. I never thought I could make a living doing this!"

"Those who use their skills to do boring work (code/CAD monkey) to make more money are sellouts!"

Most startups are in it for the money. As pg himself wrote: It's not at all unusual in the early phases for a startup to completely change direction because they didn't find a market for their "passion". The goal is to get rich, not to solve business problem Z.

>Without a proper incentive mechanism, no innovation can be done optimally.

I agree with the caveat that the incentive need not be "get rich". Making a lot of money often lowers innovation by constraining it.

Our definition of "rich" likely differs.

I am saying rich being above average and can secure a above average starting point for offspring. I do not think rich should be "rich enough to be considered privileged".

So you are saying get rid of SV?

Greed and desire for the pot of gold are illusions.

if you're working as an employee for someone else, it's not your passion. it's their business and your misplaced enthusiasm.

True but its also your rent check and food money while you (hopefully) build the skills and experience to come up with your own.

yes, precisely. that is a pragmatic attitude that ought to be sufficient to prevent heartbreak and career dislocation. however, it is clear that many people are not so pragmatic and act with greater naivety and do get exploited by taking a job as an employee in something they have enthusiasm for, and conflating that with their passion, inevitably leading to a poor outcome for them.

You have to have passion for something that makes money....

Is it a waste? Our system does not map monetary reward to value created. Better to assume someone not making big money is doing something worthwhile.

If salary were a function of social value added why is the Pepsi CEO so well paid? So many industries just appropriate wealth from real work.

If people don't yield to the flawed system I say hats off to them.

>Is it a waste?

It's up to them to decide. I, for one, have seen far too many people go the route of academia, stick to it, and then regret it because they either didn't get a tenure track position, or because they were so old when they got one.

It depends on the discipline. Engineering/CS is soft on academics. When I was doing my PhD, it was not unusual for a graduate to get a TT position without doing a postdoc. But if you're in the sciences or math: Good luck.

You are responsible for taking care of your needs. If all you care about is research, and not enough money to pay for your kids' college (the situation of a number of career post docs I know), then I'm the last one to tell you to reconsider.

Where does it end? Your kids get their college money so they can do what? Do a phd? Throw their interests in the bin in the name of consumerism and so their kids can ... what?

This is why a system that fails to associate value added with reward gained is so utterly damaging.

There is, in fact, a ton of money in boring ass software.

There is, but the problem with that is people get drained doing boring software over and over for years. No passion, no motivation, etc. Believe it or not, most people dont care about making a ton of money. Making a good income doing something you enjoy is worth more than making 3x that income doing something that makes you feel bored and crappy all the time.

Yeah, but usually, that 3x income also comes with normal, 9-5 working hours. So you slog through the day, and have plenty of time to do the passion stuff at home.

Plus, if we're talking about games, you have the money to pay people for quality art, sound, etc. So when you are ready to make that step, you can really give it some polish.

Not only your 30's, you also waste your 20's getting the PhD (which if you are lucky pays only slightly less than a postdoc). Two decades of lost opportunity costs really adds up.

As others have said, it's a personal judgment call. I wasted my 20's that way, and have no regrets. The PhD did not help my career one iota. But the journey was worth it, and I accept the price I paid (which is entering the job market a little older, and thus retiring a little older).

If someone wants to keep that up with postdocs, more power to them. I just observe that there are a lot more postdocs who regret their journey than those who stopped at PhD.

Am in my 30s doing a postdoc getting paid $50K. Can confirm. ;)

That said, I do enjoy doing research. It's frustrating working with researchers sometimes though. :P Sure, everyone push to master without testing, no problem! I'll just spend my afternoon making things compile again..

Just create a new branch in git, call it 'production', and... literally throw piles of shit at people who push to that branch. Then they'll get the hint. /s

Lol.. just venting ;) But thanks, I take your point. And actually good idea regarding the production branch, I might just do that.

I don't know if it's the git way or not, but I learned with subversion, so I treat master as unstable and make a new maintenance branch for each release. So what I'm saying is: more than just one production branch. That way you can test the next release on its own branch without freezing trunk and without affecting the current production branch (suppose you want to roll back to the previous release?)

Just wondering but why are you still in a postdoc position? My previous field was Medicinal Chemistry and had I continued with my Ph.D, I would have gotten it by 26/27. Post docs are usually for 2 years in Med Chem I believe.

Well, you can look at age timeline:

Start school at 7;

Start university at 19;

Start PhD at 25 [4-year bachelors + 2-year masters] if you can do that immediately after masters, or 26;

Finish PhD at 28, or 29 (if it's a 3-year PhD, otherwise older);

Finish first post-doc at 31, second one at 33/34.

By mid-30s you are just starting your tenure-track (assuming you get some semi-permanent position at a university or research institute)

I'm currently doing a PhD [quantum chemistry] and this is basically my expectation for the future.