Live data from Hacker News

What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

gist.github.com

11–20 of 61 posts

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#11
Please take care of your mental health, people. Especially as a man, most men are trained to avoid seeking help. If you think there is something suspect about your behaviour, get it checked out.

In 2012 I realized there was something wrong with my brain, the way I was acting and living wasn't normal. 6 months later I sat down with my wife and we tried to make an appointment with a psychiatrist. It never happened because I was arrested due to my abnormal behaviour and spent the subsequent 8 years in jail. That was as bad as realizing that the 20 years before that had been lived vastly suboptimally.

You only have one life to live. It sucks if you're not living it at 100% of your capacity.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#12

Aside the medical misfortunes your story is absolutely typical. The games industry has a tragic problem with churn. I see eager CS graduates go off to "get into games". Within a few years they get out, bitter and burned, and go into more regular jobs in medicine, defence, finance or whatever. It's called the 20:20:20 rule. Only 20 percent of creative projects ever get to the production stage Of those, only 20 percent…

My whole childhood in the 80s was writing video games at home. It's all I wanted to do. I was really fucking good at it.

First job out of school - writing video games professionally. It sucked. Really sucked. This was back in the mid-90s when the profession was in a really bad place.

I got out within 2 years and never went back :(

I heard the industry was much better now, though?

This is the game I worked on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Proje...

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#14

> I'm posting it here since HN rejects it with "that comment is too long. My god just thinking that you typed all this in a text box and were one accidental mouse click/backspace away from losing it all is making me shudder. That final link really resonated with me. thank you so much for sharing.

I always type messages in an editor (EditPad Pro for me) and them paste them into the text boxes. I do this for email also.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#15

> I'm posting it here since HN rejects it with "that comment is too long. My god just thinking that you typed all this in a text box and were one accidental mouse click/backspace away from losing it all is making me shudder. That final link really resonated with me. thank you so much for sharing.

[deleted]

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#16

> I'm posting it here since HN rejects it with "that comment is too long. My god just thinking that you typed all this in a text box and were one accidental mouse click/backspace away from losing it all is making me shudder. That final link really resonated with me. thank you so much for sharing.

Does this not persist when you navigate around? I've only ever seen the page contents here -- including text input values -- change if I explicitly reload. I haven't looked in any detail, but based on the behavior it seems to generally be getting cached in the browser?

(Though it does seem to be an HN thing specifically, and yes, I would absolutely dread this if I were typing a draft anywhere else)

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#17
post #9
post #7

This is a great read and I'm happy for Shawn. Things seem to be better. I'm also grateful for the pointer to Gwern Branwen's site https://www.gwern.net/ . What an amazing creation! I haven't even scrolled yet and already have half a dozen tabs open from it.

It's in the same class of cognitohazards as tvtropes.org.

I'm not sure if you're saying that stumbling across this site will ruin my life, or enhance it....

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#18

Aside the medical misfortunes your story is absolutely typical. The games industry has a tragic problem with churn. I see eager CS graduates go off to "get into games". Within a few years they get out, bitter and burned, and go into more regular jobs in medicine, defence, finance or whatever. It's called the 20:20:20 rule. Only 20 percent of creative projects ever get to the production stage Of those, only 20 percent…

My whole childhood in the 80s was writing video games at home. It's all I wanted to do. I was really fucking good at it. First job out of school - writing video games professionally. It sucked. Really sucked. This was back in the mid-90s when the profession was in a really bad place. I got out within 2 years and never went back :( I heard the industry was much better now, though? This is the game I worked on: https:/…

> I heard the industry was much better now, though?

Perhaps get a hearing aid? It's extremely toxic.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#20

Please take care of your mental health, people. Especially as a man, most men are trained to avoid seeking help. If you think there is something suspect about your behaviour, get it checked out. In 2012 I realized there was something wrong with my brain, the way I was acting and living wasn't normal. 6 months later I sat down with my wife and we tried to make an appointment with a psychiatrist. It never happened beca…

Hey, I’d love to hear more of your story if you’re willing to share.
Post reply on HN