Actually, you beat me to the question. I've been kinda wondering what most of the peeps on this board do...
I'd be surprised if someone on here was delivering pizzas, not that there's anything wrong with that. But, smart people are needed, (and companies are willing to pay!) and there's a lot of bad coders out there...
Anyway...
I did Unix Sysadmin and networking (FreeBSD, some Linux, and a bunch of different networking appliances) for too long. Moved to writing test frameworks (for testing backend software) in Python and C#. Now I do mobile stuff in Java and Objective C, backend services in Python using Twisted, and front end Web/HTML/CSS/JS.
I work as a software developer (surprise). Been doing that for about 7 years now; mostly within mobile, and mostly with lower-level stuff like native multimedia frameworks and whatnot.
I've been out of work for over a year now, but
you can see what I usually do. Not sure what I'm going to be doing in the future, as I tend to dislike technology in general at this point in time.
I'm a front-end web developer (HTML, CSS and JavaScript), with occasional design and illustration jobs. Used to code ActionScript a lot too, but since mobile platforms started to kill Flash I haven't done much of that lately. I also used to do back-end development, but my hate for forms and databases quickly drove me away from that.
Game developer. Currently working at Red 5 Studios on Firefall.
http://jonolick.com/games.html
Network Architect/Manager at a prop trading firm.
I was a game programmer. My last contract ended recently, and I've been taking some time off, so... currently unemployed.
I'm a teacher here in Brazil.
Mathematics.
I'm a developer of board-support packages, network stacks, USB stacks, and other middleware for all sorts of aircraft electronics, including flight management, navigation, passenger amenities, and ground-based landing guidance systems. Currently I'm working on four boards that are part of
this system. Been doing avionics for *exactly* ten years as-of today! Before that I was in telecom at various places doing board-support packages & etc.
No, I had nothing to do with the battery fires on 787s.
Perhaps morbidly, I'm currently reading "Crashers", a [fiction] book about Irish terrorists that bring down a jet and the NTSB investigation that ensues.
I used to do computer repairs (both hardware and software), windows server maintenance and customer support (phone, remote desktop, housecalls). But then all of a sudden my boss decided its time for him to pack up and move to Australia. I had been doing that stuff for good 5 years.
While I was doing all that I also repaired and helped to troubleshoot home electronics (TVs mainly but also lot of other stuff). There were (still are) 2 awesome men working in same building repairing everything electronical. Digital world is overwhelming for them, but made it whole lot less that for them. I am most likely going to take over their business when they retire in not so far future, I am the only person in this area that is also capable of doing things they do, and with great interest in it...
Now I work for Watermelon Corp and I design in-house tools, particularly music and sound related. I also do some hardware related tasks too. Awesome people all around.
In my spare time I mess with old computers, solder a lot and design digital computation devices and HiFi analog audio. I dream of doing that stuff for living but I lack any and all education on such stuff and paper means more than skill to most people. I am too dumb (when it comes to mathematics) and poor to go into an university to get those papers...
I'm now a cashier at a Lowes, I'm 19 and I've only had this job 5 months, it's my first. Hopefully can program my way in to a programming job because I'm working towards an AAS (Maybe higher?) in Electronics, but my real love is programming. C#, C++, and all other high level stuff I'd probably hate, I'd love to get in to somewhere working with mainly C and assembly, hopefully embedded. I'd like embedded systems the best, but we'll see...
Used to work in web browser dev. Taking some time off now, thinking of what I'd like to do next. Something more low-level would probably suit me, or game dev, but I've mostly heard bad things about working in that field.
ulfalizer wrote:
Used to work in web browser dev. Taking some time off now, thinking of what I'd like to do next. Something more low-level would probably suit me, or game dev, but I've mostly heard bad things about working in that field.
It has its ups and downs. The hours are not always the best, but if you love making games for the sake of it, and the company you work for is reasonable, its not all that bad.
Well, "love making games" needs to be qualified. You have to find the process of making games acceptable; there's a lot of things that come with that which drive people (who otherwise passionately want to make games) out of the industry. There's better and worse companies to work at, but even at a good one, there's a lot of aspects of commercial game development that really stress out most people. I am just ballparking this, but I think roughly half of the people who enter the industry leave after about a year.
For me, game dev was an okay fit. I don't actually get too stressed by the particular problems involved, but I have become quite aware that I am unusual in that regard.
If you want to make a game, indie dev has never been easier than it is now, and can be a great hobby. If you want to do it as a living, though, my honest opinion is that very few people are actually cut out for it, and the rest would be very unhappy in the games industry.
Examples of factors that drive people out of the industry:
- Constant compromise: there is never enough time/money/skill to do what you want to do.
- Lack of control: you will be told to do things the wrong way sometimes (often), and you won't have the authority to fight it.
- Skilled work, like programming, is often better paid outside the industry.
- Half of game projects will be cancelled before release, you're going to spend years of your life on failures.
- Constant layoffs. This is an endemic part of the industry, for various reasons.
- Long hours.
- Programming, especially game programming, is very volatile and unpredictable because of its complexity (unexpected bugs, etc.), so is very hard to schedule/estimate. This leads to a large host of problems that affect everyone in the company.
Is having to relocate to an area with a high cost of living one of the things keeping people out of professional video game development?
Quote:
Used to work in web browser dev.
Opera? I did an interview at their Lkpg office back in 2006 (IIRC I did pretty awful, cos it was one of my first job interviews so I was kinda nervous
). I remember reading recently that they were cutting some departments.
tepples wrote:
Is having to relocate to an area with a high cost of living one of the things keeping people out of professional video game development?
In my experience (having worked at a game development company (but not as a game developer), and having had 3 separate roommates who worked in the game industry), it isn't. One of those roommates has moved to Japan (and many times throughout Japan), and the other two still reside here in Silicon Valley.
The game dev industry today operates still much like it did in the 80s: high stress environments due to deadlines and crummy managers, limited finances to actually improve the things that need improving (better artists, more play testers, better workstations or build clusters to make compiling take less time), and -- probably the most important of all -- just a general dislike of the games companies are working on.
The place I worked at consisted of dudes who enjoyed working on their own side projects or (in one case) a fun/neat commercial game -- but at the same time they had 3 other games being developed, all at the request of bigger conglomerates. The other 3 games were boring as hell, and every single division -- programming, art/graphics, sound/music, playtesting/usability, and some other group who I just describe as "general" (similar to usability) -- dreaded working on those 3 titles. Everyone was mopey, stressed out, and just hated those games in general. One short story involved the main sound engine coder/musician who absolutely hated working on the music engine for this one upcoming title -- it was flaky and a PITA to engineer because of what the game needed/wanted, so when he got stressed out he'd take a break for a few days (!) working on his own stuff like an Asteroid clone backed by tracks from a singer whose name I can't remember (quite a popular guy in past eras but pushed out really awful music, IMO) -- edit: Tom Jones -- and at overamped volumes.
What I'm trying to say here is that a game developers personal interest in something plays a humongous role in regards to the quality of work they do. In a way, they're a lot like romhackers -- you have one or two guys who are passionate about a specific game, and their morale remains high because they have a personal interest in what they're doing -- but if you involve folks who don't have that same driving force or interest, they get burnt out quickly and end up disliking what they're doing. Will they get the final product done? Yeah, probably, but it'll be one of those "okay it works, ship it" games rather than a title that really makes people go "wow, this is almost a work of art".
This is why there are so many independent gamedev companies in Japan who big guys (Nintendo, etc.) often "sub" their work out to -- those companies do the coding/etc. and once the title is done, the contract is over and they no longer have to deal with the game. In a manner of speaking, it means that there's always a light at the end of the tunnel no matter how bad the game (and the company can always refuse a bid). This approach also exists in North America but I tend to find most of the American companies consisting of guys who just basically bang on keys and churn out code that's crap and then say "give us the money, now go away". I see this with smaller European (especially eastern) outfits too.
tepples wrote:
Is having to relocate to an area with a high cost of living one of the things keeping people out of professional video game development?
I don't think that's a huge factor. The cost of living in California is fairly high (esp. San Francisco), but the lower paid jobs in the industry tend to be filled by locals who are already used to paying that high cost, and for the higher paid jobs I don't think it's as big an issue. There are also (fewer) companies in places where the cost of living is fairly low, like CD Projekt in Poland.
mic_ wrote:
Quote:
Used to work in web browser dev.
Opera? I did an interview at their Lkpg office back in 2006 (IIRC I did pretty awful, cos it was one of my first job interviews so I was kinda nervous
). I remember reading recently that they were cutting some departments.
Yup - having a ten minute walking distance to the office was a definite plus.
Didn't get laid off though. Great atmosphere and fun colleagues, but I felt it was time to move on, for various reasons.
koitsu wrote:
This approach also exists in North America but I tend to find most of the American companies consisting of guys who just basically bang on keys and churn out code that's crap and then say "give us the money, now go away". I see this with smaller European (especially eastern) outfits too.
I'll admit that this is something of a prejudice I have with the industry. Sometimes you have to churn out lots of code in a short time to meet a hard deadline, but many people I've met from the industry have been the perpetual "happy hacker" type, always patching over problems rather than really fixing them, to whom refactoring is an ugly word. I think this ends up wasting time in the end, and also causes quality problems.
Maybe I've just met the wrong devs.
ulfalizer wrote:
I'll admit that this is something of a prejudice I have with the industry. Sometimes you have to churn out lots of code in a short time to meet a hard deadline, but many people I've met from the industry have been the perpetual "happy hacker" type, always patching over problems rather than really fixing them, to whom refactoring is an ugly word. I think this ends up wasting time in the end, and also causes quality problems.
Maybe I've just met the wrong devs. :?
Unlikely that you've met the wrong devs -- I see this kind of crap happening all the time (and I live in Silicon Valley), and not to make it racial or even nationalistic (not sure if that's the right word), but a lot of this occurs in eastern European countries and India. In fact, there was a Slashdot article about this situation (well, sort of -- if you read the comments you'll see lots of people touch base on this fact; great example -- the key word in that example is "retention").
It's shit like this that makes me feel like I'm a dying breed of engineer: I'm not ancient and there are many guys who know way, *way* more than I do (many of whom are my own idols), but in doing what I do for over 20 years (and the time frame in which I was learning matters greatly -- 1990 to present), there are certain things you just learn as guidelines that many younger folks don't live by because they haven't experienced it yet. Not saying "older is better" at all -- just saying those of us who have been on the battlefield for 20+ years tend to have scars and memories that those only there for 4-5 do not. For us "seasoned" UNIX guys, most of these are spot on (I do disagree with one of them however).
I can apply the same concept to gaming -- take a look at today's generation playing Super Mario World hacks. If you watch the guy play, you'll realise he definitely hasn't played SMW all the way through or gone through it a few times -- all while constantly complaining about the gameplay (the fact he can't figure out how the little red triangles with smilies work for running up walls just baffles my mind). There's just something about techno-involved youth today that scares me, and on a separate level, something about technology (especially today) that I do not like. That's why the HP Lovecraft quote on my home page is so applicable to me -- I'm a technophobe who works with technology.
Technophobe with tech. A+
koitsu wrote:
For us "seasoned" UNIX guys,
most of these are spot on (I do disagree with one of them however).
To the UNIX guy article
http://i.qkme.me/3tu1p3.jpg(seriously though, the guy has a bit of a superiority complex...even if he's not wrong per se)
Quote:
a lot of this occurs in eastern European countries and India
You can find poor developers within any ethnic/national group. If that group is really large (e.g. Indians), then the amount of poor developers from that group is going to be proportionately large.
I spent a few years at Sony as an on-site consultant, and in certain areas (e.g. kernel, device drivers, graphics, power save) you'd always find a substantial amount of consultants from former Soviet countries, like Ukraine, Belarus and Latvia. Many of them seemed quite capable. At the same time I've seen people of my own nationality (i.e. Swedes) who were incapable of writing syntactically correct code and/or failed to understand the semantics of the most trivial pieces of code. I've seen Indians, Japanese and Chinese alike upload changes with glaring memory leaks or segmentation faults waiting to happen. My biggest "WTF?" moment ever was actually when dealing with an American company, although I suspect that they had outsourced the development to someone abroad (it didn't say who the author was).
I work for a fortune 500 company in information systems. I develop in-house software to meet our business needs. Most of the time this means being the technical lead for a group of contractors, although I do write quite a bit of code myself (it saves a lot of budget).
My office is one of the most culturally diverse acres in the states. I work with people from dozens of countries from every continent (except Antarctica). The commonality I find is not nationality, it is that code quality increases as you have more skin in the game.
For me, I hope to work here until I retire a dried up, penniless husk of a man. So when I'm working on a product with an expected lifespan of 15 years, I want to make sure it's a quality product. I know I'm going to have to deal with this thing for the next 15 years. A contractor who's going to be done with it the moment the ink is dry doesn't have that same motivation to ensure the product is correct, stable, robust and maintainable. Their only motivation is to pass user acceptance testing.
We've implemented new workflows over the past few years that have really improved this however. The biggest change was that our IS division is now ran like an external software development house. Other divisions of the company pay us (in inter-corporate fun-money) for a product, and we as an external entity hire contractors to help us with the work (if it doesn't involve trade secrets that is). That way the development leadership are the ones signing off on the contractor's deliverables, not our business guys.
Before we did it this way our business was paying the contractors fees and the IS division had technical leadership roles (or development roles in the case of trade secret or competitive advantage projects). The contractors would delver crap code, the business would test the product and see that it basically did what they want, the IS guys would howl that the code was crap and un-maintainable, the business would sign off on the contract anyway and then proceed to complain for the lifetime of the product about defects and the inability of the IS department to deliver on feature requests.
As a final note, I write language compilers and 6502 assembly to keep my mind sharp. What I do for a living certainly does not fulfill that need, but that's not why I do it. I love my company. I have since well before I worked for them, and they treat me very well.
I am a master's student in Electrical Engineering at
EPFL, will be fully graduated next year.
Currently I am doing an internship where I have to do stuff like those who Tokumaru does.
tokumaru wrote:
I'm a front-end web developer (HTML, CSS and JavaScript),
I'll not reveal too much (after all my superiors could visit here
), but let's say it is not my preferred type of development. I'm looking toward working in real time embedded systems once I graduate (using micro-controllers, FPGA, real-time signal processing and this kind of stuff). Hopefully I'll find a job who will satisfy me next year when I'll graduate. I'm currently
way overqualified for the work I do at my internship (I do stuff I'd probably have enjoyed doing back when I was 15, but now I find it quite tasteless).
I know I could probably use my NESdev experience as an argument and try to enter into the videogame industry, but I don't plan to do that for multiple reasons :
* Don't want to make games for someone else without having the opportunity to express myself
* No serious games made in my country and I don't want to move to another country
* No interest at all in "modern" games
I'd also mention that I'm a musician and I enjoy doing this as much as I do my job. I wanted to become a professional musician when I was little but now I'm glad I didn't take this route because while this is cool, the competition is incredibly high and doing any art at professional level sucks anyways for many reasons.
Went to college to make video games. Fell in love with Linux , and have been a sysadmin since '05. Worked for a company that treated it's employees poorly, and now I work for an awesome company, doing pretty much the same thing - but with more DEVOPS
I used to be in the Navy and was a nuclear reactor operator on a submarine. I was routinely reminded how much I hated life under the sea as I cleaned bilges, wasting my life away. So after 6 years of that hell, I got out and went back to school for electrical computer engineering. I now work for Micron as a ddr3 dram test engineer, and enjoy everyday as a civilian who comes home to my family and NES everyday.
Had a firmware programming job at a small company. Got tired of it and quit,
this is what occupies my time now.
Bregalad wrote:
I am a master's student in Electrical Engineering at
EPFL, will be fully graduated next year.
Huh. I know a EE PhD student at EPFL...
I have been a Service Tech for Shaw Cablesystems for about 5 years. Its pretty mindless work, but incredibly stress-free! Gives me lots of time to tinker with other projects and hobbies
loopy wrote:
Had a firmware programming job at a small company. Got tired of it and quit,
this is what occupies my time now.
Bregalad wrote:
I am a master's student in Electrical Engineering at
EPFL, will be fully graduated next year.
Huh. I know a EE PhD student at EPFL...
Nice, I like this sequel to JumboTron DS. I wish you had extensive work logs to read, though!
I'm a software engineer at Videon Central, Inc. working on embedded C/C++ middleware for blu ray players, both commercial and for in-flight entertainment. If you have a Samsung or LG blu ray player, you probably have Videon's software running in your living room! In addition to that Videon is breaking into the streaming media market with the android app: aVia Media Player. That's the main project I've been working on; all Java lately, and some SQL.
I agree with a lot that has been said about the games industry. I don't want to work in it because then I could not do what I really want to do, and would not have the freedom to take my time at it and make something high quality.
mikejmoffitt wrote:
loopy wrote:
Had a firmware programming job at a small company. Got tired of it and quit,
this is what occupies my time now.
Bregalad wrote:
I am a master's student in Electrical Engineering at
EPFL, will be fully graduated next year.
Huh. I know a EE PhD student at EPFL...
Nice, I like this sequel to JumboTron DS. I wish you had extensive work logs to read, though!
I think this sums it up pretty nicely:
http://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Video_Capture
I work at ARM in the Media Processing Division, analyzing performance and identifying possible optimizations for the Mali GPU products. Basically means dissecting lots of Android applications to find out how our driver software and GPU hardware handles them. Quite diverse work where investigations can span all the way from the GLES API calls to the HDL, which suits someone like me who's interested in both the software and hardware side of 3d graphics.
Bananmos wrote:
I work at ARM in the Media Processing Division, analyzing performance and identifying possible optimizations for the Mali GPU products. Basically means dissecting lots of Android applications to find out how our driver software and GPU hardware handles them. Quite diverse work where investigations can span all the way from the GLES API calls to the HDL, which suits someone like me who's interested in both the software and hardware side of 3d graphics.
Do you know Jakob Fries? Say hi from ulfalizer in that case.
Well Bananmos it sounds like you have a very awesome job. I wish I'd have something like that.
Currently I basically spends days doing almost nothing because I can do in 3h what they ask me to do in 2 days, and I am excessively overqualified for what I'm doing (that is, when I am doing something). This is so annoying. I'm looking forward for next month when I'll go back to campus and I will have weeks of 70 hours of work again. Will be a change that weeks of 7 hours of work + 33 hours of "worthless presence at work".
Bregalad wrote:
Will be a change that weeks of 7 hours of work + 33 hours of "worthless presence at work".
Man, you could program a lot of NES stuff in those 33 hours!
That depends on the employer's copyright assignment or work made for hire policy.
tepples wrote:
That depends on the employer's copyright assignment or work made for hire policy.
I'll just open Windows' notepad and type my 6502 code (it's not like anyone can even know what it is!), to hell with policies.
You could always write 99% of it at work, and if they make a big deal, don't give the 1% you do on your own that's needed to run the game. XD
That's not the problem, 3gengames, the problem is them being able to sue you for ownership of the things you made on their dime. It doesn't matter if what you made works or not, it may legally be theirs.
My point is that most of the time people don't even know what you're doing. If you have a programming job, nobody cares what type of gibberish is written in your text editor. Unless you work side by side with other (nosy) programmers that keep looking at your screen and asking you questions, but even then you can squeeze some 6502 every once in a while.
The key is to only code parts of the game (routines, for example), and not test them while at work (if you open an emulator you will certainly draw attention to you!). Leave the testing and debugging for when you get home. Another good thing you can do at work is write design documents, outline the program structure... normal people will actually think you're working if they happen to look at you.
Most of the time isn't really good enough in that situation. All it takes is one time the wrong person knowing what you're up to, and you could have a big problem on your hands. It's a pretty significant risk.
And, hey, maybe it's a risk worth taking. It depends on the situation-- tepples was just coming at it speculatively, I think, but the kind of stipulations you get in a lot of work contracts very often take explicit ownership of stuff like this, and depending on the company it could be a huge risk to try and do stuff like this on the clock. (Under a lot of contracts, it's a risk to do this kind of stuff at home too. Last time I was looking for a job, I turned down an otherwise decent offer because they wanted ownership of my creative output at home as well as at work. It may sound weird, but I know a ton of people that have accepted contracts like this.)
I believe this is a fairly good example of "cultural ignorance" per se, where person from country X has no familiarity with the realities of country Y. Bregalad presumably works in Switzerland, so what their laws are I have no idea, but I can tell you what the real world is like in the United States:
Most US businesses (medium or large, but same issue can apply regardless of size) work like this: if anyone -- **ANYONE** -- catches you doing that here and reports it or if someone concerns gets wind of what you're doing, you'll either be fired or reprimanded (severely). If you'd like to see a copy of what you sign when starting at a software company in the US, let me know and I can dig up some examples (or even scan some of my own agreements, with all surrounding context blacked out), but in most cases it states clearly that anything created by you during work hours is the ownership of that company. Violations of that, barring pre-agreed-upon exceptions (PRIOR to signing the agreement) -- ex. working on open-source and contributing patches back to the community -- can/will result in lawsuits.
Now, if you're inclined to say "so what?", let me explain to you what really happens in this situation commonly:
* You lose your job, so you no longer have income. You are usually eligible for unemployment, but in the US unemployment is often too small/low to live off of reliably or for very long. The way the system works, the previous employer can also refuse to agree to pay unemployment, and then you get to go to court to appeal that situation (this is separate from the below legal stuff),
* The next job you apply at will ask you "why aren't you with Company X any more?" and you will either have to lie to them (and risk being fired and/or sued if they find out you lied -- there are many examples of this happening, even some recently at the CEO level where someone lied about their credentials), or you have to tell them "I was fired for fucking around on company time". So by doing this you risk people not hiring you for the rest of your life, hoping someone cuts you some slack / gives you a break (I've heard of some people actually pleading with interviewers as well, especially if they've been out of work for a while given these circumstances, e.g. "Look I know what I did was wrong at the old job, but I REALLY need this job, please..."),
* You get sued by the company who you worked for, and depending on "how" they choose to react within the legal system, you may end up with police at your door one day (not kidding), and if you get hauled off to the local jail, you're also going to need a very large sum of money for bail (judges will likely consider you a flight risk given the nature of the situation; US$5000 is not uncommon),
* You begin to undergo constant anxieties (often mental stress-related problems (i.e. health problems)) due to the amount of pressure of the lawsuit; you think about the case every day, worried sick until it's over -- you even reach a point where you're thinking "I don't even care any more, I'll just plead no contest, I just want this to end". It is not a "zzz boring" thing, it weighs on you constantly, you fear answering the phone or answering the door sometimes. This goes on for months, and in many cases a year or more (US legal system is slow),
* If you lose the case, the complexities/problems there are almost limitless,
* If you win the court case, you're financially fucked for decades from all the lawyer fees.
Think I'm overdramatising? I've actually been to court vs. the state of California (this was back in 1996 or so). I will not discuss the nature of the case or the situation -- my point is that I speak from experience. This is what a person risks by doing that. Of course, there's the chance the employer will say "lol whatever" and turn a blind eye, but if you signed what you signed, legally they can screw you.
TL;DR -- Keep work at work, keep home (e.g. hobbies) at home.
There are several jobs where one is expected to be available in front of a PC for a particular period of time so that others can ask him questions or to fix something, but only has actual work to do for a short part of that time. Examples include front desk receptionist during the graveyard shift or (in this case) an underemployed engineer. In that case, it might be worth it to ask the boss for official permission to work on personal projects on a personal laptop during this downtime, so that copyright ownership is made perfectly clear. Or is there some prevailing corporate best practice to always deny such requests? In that case, polish your resume, give your notice, and be prepared to tell the next interviewer "I wasn't being appropriately challenged in my previous position."
Quote:
Man, you could program a lot of NES stuff in those 33 hours!
[...]
The key is to only code parts of the game (routines, for example), and not test them while at work (if you open an emulator you will certainly draw attention to you!).
That's the problem. It's not very convenient to write code without being able to test it. However I've drawn some tile planning sheets with OpenOffice Calc during the worktime
Also I was probably exageratting when I said 7/33 hours. It's probably closer to 20/20 in reality, but because the time doing nothing feels longer, it feels like I'm doing nothing most of the time.
Quote:
if anyone -- **ANYONE** -- catches you doing that here and reports it or if someone concerns gets wind of what you're doing, you'll either be fired or reprimanded (severely)
It's hard to explain think they don't even care enough about me to "catch" me or whatever. Trust me if they actually cared about me I'd have work to do and I wouldn't have this problem.
Quote:
I was fired for fucking around on company time
Well I'm here and they don't give me enough work. Is it my fault ? Trust me, I really WISH they'd give me enough work. But when I know I have 2 days to do a very small task which is ridiculously easy, I'm not *quite* motivated.
I was hired in a very small company (7 people counting myself) because I was under the impression that there was not this problem with smaller company. But man I was VERY wrong.
Quote:
TL;DR -- Keep work at work, keep home (e.g. hobbies) at home.
I agree with this 100%. At the very worst, I'd rather go home early than working on something else at work.
koitsu wrote:
*horror story*
If I was an employer I'd really have to hate someone's guts to put them through this over something as trivial as goofing off for a while when there's no work available. But maybe being a psychopathic asshole is a larger part of US corporate culture.
Quote:
If I was an employer I'd really have to hate someone's guts to put them through this over something as trivial as goofing off for a while when there's no work available.
Agreed. I can see the problem if an employee was releasing software that was based on secret information that he/she had gathered through his/her employment; or if the software is competing with a product of the employer.
No one I've ever met throughout my career works
all the time while at work. What they do when they're not working depends on what's available to them: perhaps they take 15 minute coffee breaks, or talk about sports/cars/movies/kids/whatever, or browse non work-related websites, or make private phone calls, or play games. If they rather draw some graphics, compose music, or write code, then I don't see what there is to be upset about. But I guess it comes down to where you're working and what kind of managers you've got.
In my last job I sometimes had whole days of nothing to do. I ended up doing PCB design during that time for my own needs. The boss was on the other side of the planet and I was in charge of the office. I mostly finished 2 largeass designs which I have now discarded in favor for more efficient and modern design...
First iteration -
http://www.tmeeco.eu/Fileden/MelodieMai ... ntdone.pngSecond Iteration -
http://www.tmeeco.eu/BitShit/MelodieIsBigHaha.pngCurrent Iteration -
http://www.tmeeco.eu/BitShit/LastBitOfProgress.pngI love PCB design haha
TmEE wrote:
The boss was on the other side of the planet and I was in charge of the office.
I have a similar situation. But working on NES stuff in the office I always feel like I need to hide my monitor
. Not sure why...nobody that surfs ESPN or other non-work-related websites seems to feel that way. I submitted a request to IT to unblock this forum for "work-related technical reasons" which I didn't think was *too* much a stretch since it has to do with computers, assembly language, low level hardware details, etc. At least now I can read something that interests me at work, since I have less-than-zero interest in sports news websites. Yes...I'm that geek.
I suppose i may be the closest to a pizza delivery driver here, haha. Not quite that bad, but you all seem to have big boy jobs that would make me lose my mind!
I have two part time jobs, one for the luvs, the other for the bills.
First is at a Comic Shop. I LOVE it. I've always loved comics, and for a time (i still do) was actively trying to write them. (Unable to draw a straight line with a ruler, or pay a decent artist a fee was a hinderance.) In any regards, my interest in that lead me to read alot about how the industry works, the viewpoints and needs of creators, publishers, distributors and retailers. As such I became really good friends with the owner, and as soon as I got back into playing Magic the Gathering he had convinced me to run the tournaments and with that it just kinda slowly took over. I started doing the orders for magic, then board games. I started putting in more hours, instituted a POS system, and have helped the owner with comic orders (He's a generation older than me, so he's kinda out of touch with what's "hot" today). I've basically become his 2nd hand, going to retailer summits at conventions and helping him institute pop culture signings (We recently had Jeremy Bulloch who played Boba Fett, and are getting Ray Parks who played Darth Maul, and hopefully getting Christopher Llyod who played Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Pretty cool, since we're a not super large town in Iowa!) As you can probably tell it's exciting and I love it, but it pays crap
(Comic shops, despite the popularity of the movies, are not super profitable. We have to compete with places like amazon and their profit margins are too low to get buy. This is further compounded by the fact that our stock is not returnable and theirs is. I could go into more depth, but that's probably the biggest issue.)
My 2nd job is doing desktop support at an aerial mapping company. I got it through total nepotism, haha. My friend worked there and he's a Linix/Server guy and they needed someone part time to help out with desktop support for Windows since that's the whole office and it was consuming too much of his time. I had actually gone to college for IT with these certified Cisco courses. It was fun, but it became clear after the first year that i really didn't want to do what they were aiming for, managing servers and databases all day. I took a programming class and it drove me mad, haha. No offense guys, I'm in total awe of your power, but it's too structured for me, if that's even the right word. Anyways, i really loved working with hardware though, had been building computers from spare parts since i was in the 5th grade at home. I finished up the courses and thought i would get a job fixing computers but that didn't happen. So there i was a decade later and took a job doing what i didn't want to do! It hasn't been too bad. I don't deal with the server stuff, mostly just fixing blue screens, and driver problems, other basic user stuff. I did however about a year ago get the opportunity to fix some monitors! I had to learn to solder, and replace caps and it was tons of fun! since then I've fixed a dozen or so tv's or monitors for friends and family and it's lead me here!
Now as for the topic of doing hobby stuff at work, in my experience it can largely be affected by How well you and your boss know each other, and how well he understands what it is you are actually doing. Most Managers have a mind set of needing to cut money where ever they can, even if it's not necessary. They DON'T want to pay someone create a product on company dime that won't profit them. Also if they don't understand what you are doing, they could easily fear that it's malicious.
Wow, your life should be really full with 2 jobs ! I bet even at part time, 2 jobs are a lot more investing than a single full time one.
And besides, I do not have the problem where I have nothing to do at work any longer (at least not so much as before), so everything's fine now.
yeah, about 48 hours a week at least. The only day off i get is Saturday. In September there are tons of tournaments so i'll probably end up putting in about 55-60 hours!!! Good thing it's fun
me ive worked in many jobs most recent sadly walmart again... but im former military for the apache helicopter and now in reserves waiting on MOS school for over a year now for being a PC tech
tho i must say its more fun being a geek then a mechanic as working on helicopters in freezing snow and ice and launching them gets chillingly un'fun after awhile lol... least i got to be in South Korea for that
I have been working for a IT company called CongXing since 7-2-2013.
My job content is writing perl scripts for ETL scheduling, which based on a old tool called ETL AUTOMATION.
In fact, my most preferred programming language is C/C++.So far, I most desired company is HuaWei.
I graduated in 6-30-2013.
I started working at FC/NES emulation in 3-xx-2012.
rainwarrior wrote:
Most of the time isn't really good enough in that situation. All it takes is one time the wrong person knowing what you're up to, and you could have a big problem on your hands. It's a pretty significant risk.
And, hey, maybe it's a risk worth taking. It depends on the situation-- tepples was just coming at it speculatively, I think, but the kind of stipulations you get in a lot of work contracts very often take explicit ownership of stuff like this, and depending on the company it could be a huge risk to try and do stuff like this on the clock. (Under a lot of contracts, it's a risk to do this kind of stuff at home too. Last time I was looking for a job, I turned down an otherwise decent offer because they wanted ownership of my creative output at home as well as at work. It may sound weird, but I know a ton of people that have accepted contracts like this.)
I'm pretty sure thats not legally enforceable. Not that you wouldn't have to take it to court to prove it, but still - just because its in a contract doesn't mean its enforceable. For example, in california I'm 100% sure that is totally illegal for them to do whether you signed it or not.
What makes you 100% sure of this?
You're missing the point. Coming from someone who has been through lengthy legal ordeals before, it's just best not to have court dates, attorneys (and their fees) and the mental stress associated with managing your life around such legal obstacles.
You could hire a lawyer to defend yourself who MIGHT just have the legal know-how to protect you with the right state legal statutes, and you might have a judge that is willing to look past the fact that you willingly signed a document stating that your creative output from home and work belongs to your employer, but again the chances are slim in both situations.
Sometimes lawyers don't show up and may even include stipulations in the contract that you signed with them that whether or not they show up their fees are not refundable. (Hasn't happened to me, but when I was shopping around I saw some contracts like that...)
Remember that you can amend contracts with people before you sign them. You aren't obligated to sign anything or say anything to anyone that you do not wish to sign or say. But if you do, you may be facing undesired consequences. In this case, you may be out of a job, paycheck deductions, lawyer fees, and paying for other types of things to combat and relieve stress; adding up to a few thousands of dollars.
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As for what I do professionally, I work with aggressive, autistic and MR youth in a residential setting as a counselor of applied behavior analysis. I'm in school studying religious studies and counseling to be an interfaith chaplain in a prison, nursing home, or mental hospital.
Yeah, your totally right. Best to just not put yourself in that position in the first place if you can avoid it. However, doing dev at home, in a non-competing fashion from your employer, for your own purposes as long as you use your own computer with your own power and at your own house I would just do it anyway, or maybe switch jobs then do it anyway. I wouldn't put up with something like that.
I used to work in the IT field, but I eventually got bored and sick of the whole thing (1996-2003). Since then, I've worked only non-technical/technology kind of jobs. The past 4 years, I've been doing this:
Kind of... mural-ish things, if you will. They're just silhouettes, but they can be really big (60ft wide be 12ft tall). It's all free hand, but I'm not allowed to make up what I want. I'm given a pic for reference, as to what to paint on the wall. Though I tend to take liberties, cause I get bored. It's all done by hand; I sketch it all out with a small brush first - then start adding in details. Sometimes, the pics are huge repeating patterns. That's a bit more difficult to get right, by hand. But I have a system down for it. I've been doing this for stores, and it can up to a month to complete a store (about 100-120 hours).
Though, I've been trying my hardest to go back to school. To try and get a job in coding (having no degree or direct work related experience, I can't get passed the interview process of companies). Money is tight, so things don't come together so easily (my plans). But such is life
I like that man. Nice Stuff
In my job, I'm a technician. It's with a small company, so I wear other hats too, as needed. But I mostly focus on production, burn-in and functional tests of boards, calibration, quality control, board mods and upgrades (including preventive maintenance), and evaluate/repair boards that have been in the field. It's critical equipment for all types of medical research, among other stuff. So I can take it seriously, and have fun because I like working with electronics and learning. Been doing that full-time for about 4 years.
Before that, I worked for a small chemical company. Blending product, packaging it, and I had a CDL with hazmat endorsement (everything we handled was either extremely corrosive, or extremely flammable, heheh), so I was the delivery driver as well. I got pretty good at pushing around 55-gallon drums. There was also some distribution involved that had me traveling to towns all over northern Indiana, n. Ohio, and s. Michigan. That was fun, some of it was during the days of using old fashioned paper maps, too.
I graduated high school 2 years ago. Had a good but temporary job at a utility company. Got laid off. I'm gonna go to college for computer science. Not sure where I'm gonna go yet, though.
I'm currently a developer of in-house software for a major retailer (I don't think I can say who it is). It's software for a specific division (so not the whole company), so the audience isn't thousands of people. It's mostly VB.Net programming and database stuff. I actually really enjoy my job. It's relatively easy programming for me, but I also get to be creative in how I design forms/tools for people to use. I got the job after getting my AAS in Software Development, and have been working for almost 2 years.
Quote:
I used to work in the IT field, but I eventually got bored and sick of the whole thing (1996-2003). Since then, I've worked only non-technical/technology kind of jobs
It's fun you got sick of computers. I sort of understand how you felt. I admire that you had both the ability and will to move to a non-computer related job, despite being paid probably (?) much less for it.
By the way your mural art is very nice ! Especially the grape one, I like it, it is sober and of very good taste. I'd love to one have of these but my house is mostly wooden so it's probably not going to fit very well.
It has it's up sides and down sides. Before the recession, pay wasn't too bad (though nothing like the IT job I had). Pay hasn't changed so much now, as so much to the lesser amount of work that I get nowadays. I scaled back my living style/expenses, originally, when I left the IT field. I prioritized what I wanted for myself and what I wanted out of life, and was able to live reasonably well. Though while I've sacrificed any long term benefit and definitely my retirement, the amount of stress was ~near~ 0. A fair trade IMO. I made a gamble; even if I lived to be old(er) - would I be happy with my life? More or less, I traded the future - for the 'now', while I was still young enough to enjoy it.
I was able to put more time in my high tech hobbies, as well. I was able to spend more time with my sons, raise them, actually be there mentally when I was at home/off work. I ~loved~ being stress free and the fact that I didn't have to take my 'job' home with me, every night. Some times work was physically exhausting, but that's nothing compared to being mentally exhausted. When you come home after a hard day's work, you can actually relax - and recovery time is short. I could never do that before, with mental stress - not really. But it seems now, some of my priorities/needs in life have changed since then. Going back to school and getting back into a technical field (or any specialized field), is what I need to do now.
Luckily I've found a job in IT where I'm not on-call, and I don't take my work home with me. It's relatively stress-free. The only thing that really causes stress is the threat of being laid off when the company decides that to make more money this year, they'll cut down on payroll. But I suppose that's a possibility wherever you go (unless you're self-employed).
I plan on moving on to non-IT things some day. My plan has been to start venturing into those things on the side after my day job. Once I can start making money off of those things, and that income exceeds my regular job, I'll cut the wire, possibly. I've written a novel that is in the revision stages, and I'd like to get that done and see about publishing it. I don't expect for that to make more money than my day job, but you never know. There are other creative projects in the works that could be profitable, but are not even mostly complete.
tomaitheous wrote:
I used to work in the IT field, but I eventually got bored and sick of the whole thing (1996-2003). Since then, I've worked only non-technical/technology kind of jobs. The past 4 years, I've been doing this:
Maybe it's a "the grass is always greener" thing, but that seems like a pretty nice and relaxing job overall. Could go through a few audio books while working on a mural.
Unfortunately I lack any non-technical skills that people would be willing to pay for, so I'm kinda stuck in one field
. Fortunately I'm not that tired of it yet.
tomaitheous wrote:
Though, I've been trying my hardest to go back to school. To try and get a job in coding (having no degree or direct work related experience, I can't get passed the interview process of companies). Money is tight, so things don't come together so easily (my plans). But such is life
Try to get some personal projects up on the web perhaps. Not sure if the situation is radically different in the US, but here (Sweden) I think at least a sizeable portion of software companies would excuse the lack of a degree if they saw something they liked. The problem is getting past HR...
I'm currently on the job hunt too. Might have a position soon if I do well on the interviews, but then there's still the whole finding an apartment and moving before running out of money PITA to deal with. Lots of stress...