| superchunk said: You have a degrees and programming experience. You don't like your job... find a new one. There are tons out there. I guarantee you it would take less than a week to find something FAR easier with more pay. I sit on my ass... make internal applications... never 'work' more than 40hrs a week... take fun long lunches... generally paid... have a great environment with very little stress... and I get paid over $80k a year. I have also worked commissioned sales, retail, selling meat out of a truck, construction, fast food, and of course app developement and now managing app development. I see tons of openings all over the world in my company and those it works with in relation to software. My point still stands with your arguement. The industry is what it is to make money in and entertianment market where minor slips really hit ROI. If you don't enjoy it or think your family is worth more... then find a new employer. EDIT: btw, I don't mean to be an a-hole. It just seems like you're making more excuses to remain stagnant in your career than progressing it to your max potential. If you could make more money for doing less work... why wouldn't you? Leave in between projects... that solves your biggest reason not to. |
Oh I could find another job is I wanted to, that isn't the problem (well, it would be a problem since I'm incredibly rusty programming wise), I just wouldn't be able to find another job easily in the gaming industry. That's the point I'm making.
You don't get into game development because it's all fun and games or for the money. I could easily make more than double what I do now with loads less stress but even on a bad day at the end of the day I'm happier than most people that have jobs like yours. I don't strive to make more money because I want to enjoy life and enjoy going to work. Excluding the death march and the occasional bad day, I do enjoy life and work.
It's really about how you measure success. My wife is a project manager for a large company that many people, here especially, know and hate. She works on the web development side and most everything there may like what they do or are good at it, but their constantly unhappy and constantly complain. They all make much more than me (my wife makes well more than double what I do even though I've been in my industry longer than she's been in hers) but they're never happy when they arrive at work in the morning and never happy when they leave.
Me, I make less money than they do but I arrive at work with a smile on my face and leave with a smile even on most bad days. It's not that my job isn't stressful or hard, it's just I like what I do. That's worth riding through the hard times.
That's success for me. 
-edit-
Also, you're right in saying leaving between and the beginning of projects is the best time. Nobody will fault anyone for that and it doesn't make sense to stay with a project from the beginning if you're working on something you don't believe in or aren't excited about.
