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Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

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Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#81

Post by j2kun »

fredgrott wrote: post #45
j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

You are not exactly outliner as I had calculated that it would take 11k copies to make a living assuming that you are selling a weekly newsletter to the same audience. There is also that myth-might-be-true thing of selling to developers book-wise means that you are targeting two groups those who cannot afford 2nd screens and those who can...i.e. print copy and electronic copies should be at different prices.

After the first year, I made my book's electronic version "pay what you want."

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#82

Post by __mharrison__ »

j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

As someone who has written half a dozen technical books, you are an outlier. Congrats on your success!

Would love to hear more about your launch tools.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#83

Post by __mharrison__ »

bitL wrote: post #48
j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

Regular publishers have a bit different approach: they contact like 5 potential authors at the same time, ask each to write a book, pay small advance payment (~5k) then wait 1 year and pick 1 book to publish. 1 author maybe gets paid something, 4 authors just wasted 1 year of their time.

I've never heard of this with technical publishers. Maybe "regular" publishing is different.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#84

Post by ido »

bloppe wrote: post #68
spondylosaurus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant no offense by the use of the word—rather that I think game devs should be able to enjoy the prestige and good pay/working conditions ;) If anything it's a jab at the companies who make record profits and still don't compensate their employees fairly, not the workers who take those jobs.

Unless there are significant anticompetitive forces in your industry, unfair compensation is simply not a stable state. Since the gaming industry is very large and many upstarts seem to find success, how can the prevailing wages be considered unfair? Everybody would have a profit motive to quit their employer and become a greedy exec themselves.

Probably a lot fewer upstarts find success than you imagine - it may seem like "a lot" but the rate of success is abysmal. It's hard to get accurate statistics because it's not obvious what to count, but from the attempts I've read it's somewhat over 90% of games that do not breakeven and has been this way since the early 90s at least (probably earlier but it's even harder to find data the further back you go).

The vast majority of startup game studios go bankrupt within a couple years of founding and the vast majority of solo indie devs only release one game.

There is no international industry-wide wage-suppression conspiracy, the supply-demand equilibrium is simply at a lower wage level than non-games tech.

It can be "unfair" in an intuitive and specific case while still being the result of market forces (is it fair that I'm paying rent to my former landlord's son? he did nothing to earn it except inherit this building)

EDIT: I realize you were not claiming it was a conspiracy, I just wanted to correct a common perspective by industry outsiders that see a lot of success stories and think "how hard can it be?" - the world is big and the "many cases" you are seeing a tiny % of the whole, which are overwhelmingly unsuccessful.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#85

Post by lytefm »

markdestouches wrote: post #27
hbrn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You should only write when you feel within you some completely new and important content, clear to you but unintelligible to others, and when the need to express this content gives you no peace. "

This moment will never come if you just sit and wait for it. Practice in writing is just as important as in coding. Unfortunately, as many great arts of the past, writing is dying due to the publics' interest shifting away from reading (reading fiction in particular) to something else.

> This moment will never come if you just sit and wait for it.

If you're literally just doing nothing, I'd agree.

But I haven't felt the urge to write anything creatively in over 8 years. Last year, I met someone (my muse?) who sparked this desire in me.

Nowadays I spend much of me free time writing songs, lyrics and I'm working on a draft for a novel.

It's not like I do that because I expect to make money from it - it's because I have to in order to feel al peace.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#86

Post by bryanrasmussen »

coldtea wrote: post #42
j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

Notice how they're always some FAANG guy in these kinds of discussions saying something like: "so you've earned 50K for a year work on writing that book? dude that's like $x/hour, I earn a $300K wage + 1 million in stocks per year, and they have a private cook and gymnast at the FAANGplex for me and everything".

is this perhaps the same guy who says "I think you should lose the copyright for those books you wrote after 10 years, so if you don't make any money on them before that sucks to be you!"

on edit: of course not particularly relevant to most tech books but still it is sort of a bad look that nearly everybody on HN is wild about.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#87

Post by safety1st »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #86
coldtea wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice how they're always some FAANG guy in these kinds of discussions saying something like: "so you've earned 50K for a year work on writing that book? dude that's like $x/hour, I earn a $300K wage + 1 million in stocks per year, and they have a private cook and gymnast at the FAANGplex for me and everything".

is this perhaps the same guy who says "I think you should lose the copyright for those books you wrote after 10 years, so if you don't make any money on them before that sucks to be you!" on edit: of course not particularly relevant to most tech books but still it is sort of a bad look that nearly everybody on HN is wild about.

Is knocking down straw men a regular thing for you?

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#88

Post by emodendroket »

munificent wrote: post #54
spondylosaurus wrote: post #32

I have some thoughts on this as a career writer who’s friends with plenty of other career writers—but most of those friends write the kind of content discussed here, whereas I'm a technical writer who works on software documentation (hence why I'm on HN :P). Technical writers do pretty well; we don’t make as much as engineers, but the pay is nothing to sneeze at. My friends who write blog posts, industry reports, and…

> the allure of what you do makes it less likely that you’ll jump ship to something less exciting but more lucrative (similar to how game industry devs tend to make less than regular software engineers, from what I’ve heard—you can exploit people’s enthusiasm), I used to be a game developer and you're exactly right. People tend to frame this observation in a negative way, but I hate that mindset because it portrays e…

I think where it gets to be frustrating is fields where even the "dull" side of it is hollowed out. My original career plan was Japanese translation. I wasn't nursing any fantasies of doing literary translation or games or anything else fun but even then the pay sucked the few times I managed to get work and I decided computers seemed like a better option.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#89

Post by nvarsj »

emodendroket wrote: post #88
munificent wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the allure of what you do makes it less likely that you’ll jump ship to something less exciting but more lucrative (similar to how game industry devs tend to make less than regular software engineers, from what I’ve heard—you can exploit people’s enthusiasm), I used to be a game developer and you're exactly right. People tend to frame this observation in a negative way, but I hate that mindset because it portrays e…

I think where it gets to be frustrating is fields where even the "dull" side of it is hollowed out. My original career plan was Japanese translation. I wasn't nursing any fantasies of doing literary translation or games or anything else fun but even then the pay sucked the few times I managed to get work and I decided computers seemed like a better option.

I've actually been planning a career shift in 5-10 years doing Japanese translation, so it's interesting to read your comment. I have no delusions about getting paid a lot or only working on creative stuff, but it's still something I'd like to do. From everything I've read there is a lot of demand for JP->EN translators, and you can make a living off of it, which is all I need. What's your thoughts on the industry nowadays? Have you thought about going back at some point?

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#90

Post by emodendroket »

nvarsj wrote: post #89
emodendroket wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think where it gets to be frustrating is fields where even the "dull" side of it is hollowed out. My original career plan was Japanese translation. I wasn't nursing any fantasies of doing literary translation or games or anything else fun but even then the pay sucked the few times I managed to get work and I decided computers seemed like a better option.

I've actually been planning a career shift in 5-10 years doing Japanese translation, so it's interesting to read your comment. I have no delusions about getting paid a lot or only working on creative stuff, but it's still something I'd like to do. From everything I've read there is a lot of demand for JP->EN translators, and you can make a living off of it, which is all I need. What's your thoughts on the industry no…

I graduated in 2010, which was probably not the best time, and I had a hard time breaking in when many experienced people wanted jobs too. I also observed a couple trends that I think made it challenging:

1. Machine translation is not a replacement for a human translator... but it's good enough to muddle through for some people that they'd rather not pay. If not, a lot of times they'd rather pay someone to edit MT than for a scratch translation. I've never done this, but to hear others tell it, it's not that much less work but it pays worse.

2. Sites like Gengo and Fiverr have popped up ensuring you're competing with people who are desperate or not doing it as their main job. I did work for Gengo and a surprising amount of work from prestigious companies or requiring a lot of nuance (contract translations, for instance) came through on the basic tier. That was interesting to work on but if people are feeding that stuff into a service like that, it speaks to how little they value good translation work. Unfortunately there weren't enough jobs that this was even slightly consistent so it wasn't a great way to make money even at their low, gig-work rates.

I have zero interest in going back. If you're interested to hear more from people who are still doing it, this community seems to be somewhat active with real, working translators: https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslationStudies/

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