What happened to my career after 2010? (2021) • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by claytonjy » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #24

The other day I was having drinks with friends, and a buddy of mine brings up medication. I am always advocating for taking responsibility for your mental health, finding a therapist, and getting on medication if you need it. So we had a chat, and I discovered something: Half the table was on Prozac. Some of the men, and basically all of the women. Apparently Prozac helps a TON with PMS. Another thing happened: I was…

I've had similar realizations lately among my friends (early 30s). Especially since the pandemic, basically everyone is on one or more brain pills and most people have tried several.

In contrast to your story, I have yet to meet someone who reacts well to Prozac. It seems to be the first thing a GP prescribes, but nobody stays on it. Lots of sexual dysfunction and weight gain, minimal positive effects.

I was also put on it but did not stay long due to side effects and no improvement in other symptoms. I have been viewing it as a running joke in the industry, but I'm glad to hear it does in fact work for some people.

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

#32

Post by jeffwask » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

A CPAP machine changed my life. I had undiagnosed sleep apnia for most of my adult life and just assumed being constantly tired was the way. Until 5 years ago, when I had a sleep study and started using a CPAP. I had avoided the problem it for so long because I didn't want to go sleep in some lab and how does someone sleep with a giant mask on their face every night. Just excuses despite multiple people telling me I would stop breathing when I slept and a habit of just falling a sleep when I stopped moving.

The answers were: you don't need to sleep in a lab anymore most places have take home units and you get used to it quick because sleeping 8 hours and just waking up refreshed and really is worth anything.

I can't preach any louder about getting a sleep study. It changed mine and my wife's lives for the better.

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

#33

Post by ghaff » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #28

kingcharles wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hope, as with the original article author, that you find a way to rediscover your childhood passion in a form that works for you today. It's not hard to understand what happened to our generation as teenage geeky culture turned into a multi-billion global business in less than a decade. A ton of brilliant programmers got left behind and left out. Not just because there's only room for a few John Carmacks or Tim Swe…

It's also not unusual that even someone absolutely in the top 1% of the industry by one or more measures when relatively young just doesn't recapture the magic as companies change, consumer tastes change, etc. And even if they stay in the industry and talk at GDC and so forth, it's just not the same thing.

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

#34

Post by LAC-Tech » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #28

kingcharles wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hope, as with the original article author, that you find a way to rediscover your childhood passion in a form that works for you today. It's not hard to understand what happened to our generation as teenage geeky culture turned into a multi-billion global business in less than a decade. A ton of brilliant programmers got left behind and left out. Not just because there's only room for a few John Carmacks or Tim Swe…

Coincident with formulation and industrialisation came specialisation and a great deal of deskilling. I knew guys in the late 90s who built their own 3D engines, knew quaternion geometry, how to mix, reverberate and filter multi-channel audio in C++. Now you just grab and Unreal or Unity engine, plug in and go. In some tragic ways, the smarter those hackers were the quicker they found themselves on the margins, or out on the scrap heap.

What's weird to me is that I feel like we're in a gaming dark age. How can that be if gaming engines make everything so much easier?

The single player game I probably played the most last year was MicroMages, a game written in 2019 for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. Somehow it was more captivating to me than say, GTA Online.

Some of my other fondest memories of games were very, very obscure games with text graphics that aren't even well known among people who play games with text graphics. All made by lone hackers.

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

#35

Post by abhaynayar » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

Coincidentally, even I am thinking of making a switch from security to ML. I have just started my security career, but I already feel dissatisfied with not building stuff (and instead writing reports / doing analysis).

I used to have an aversion to ML due to the hype, but when I dove a bit deeper in practice, I really liked it. Have now done several deeplearning.ai courses and building some stuff on my own.

Looking into ML engineering / infrastructure work in the long term. Hard to switch domains given how saturated ML is, but if anyone has any leads, do contact me through my HN bio.

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

#36

Post by derekdahmer » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

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…

I believe the first and second 20% but you’re saying 80% of completed games are never released? I’m curious why this would be the case if the bulk of the cost is already sunk.

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

#37

Post by jstarfish » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

going_ham wrote: post #2

This feeling hits home! This may sound very cliche, but one conversation with my dad changed my entire view of life. In that conversation when I questioned him how he was so happy, he replied that he had never expected anything out of life. The author also seems to find happiness out of the least expected things! He just tried things because he felt like it. Without expecting anything from it. It sounds selfish when…

"Pessimists are seldom disappointed."

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

#38

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 10:19 PM UTC

derekdahmer wrote: post #36

nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

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…

I believe the first and second 20% but you’re saying 80% of completed games are never released? I’m curious why this would be the case if the bulk of the cost is already sunk.

I think it depends on what you think "games" means. If you think it means AAA titles, then no, 80% of AAA titles don't fail at the last step.

80% of all games created, including all the absolute garbage, fail. At least, that's how I read it.

It's like when they say "90% of new businesses fail." Sure, but most of those were bad ideas in the first place.

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

#39

Post by AlwaysRock » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

kingcharles wrote: post #12

nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

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've heard Robolox is a nice place to work and every other gaming company is a little better than it was in the past because they have to be.

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

#40

Post by hindsightbias » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 11:00 PM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #24

The other day I was having drinks with friends, and a buddy of mine brings up medication. I am always advocating for taking responsibility for your mental health, finding a therapist, and getting on medication if you need it. So we had a chat, and I discovered something: Half the table was on Prozac. Some of the men, and basically all of the women. Apparently Prozac helps a TON with PMS. Another thing happened: I was…

After a year or two driving around a new town and being frustrated with drivers driving 10 mph or more under the speed limit, I heard an npr report that 1 in 5 drivers was on an ssri. Probably another 20% on pot.

Correlation or causation of my anxiety, idk.