what do you nerds do for living? - discuss career possibilities

[SNAAKE]

you may be asking why now? because now I am legally allowed to work in the US thats why lol. so what does everyone here do for living? right now I sell things on ebay and going to college but dont really know what I wanna do. possible interest.

graphic design - is this in demand? average wage? work is fun I know that. it gets annoying when its not your own project but I can hold my own and get things done.

computer repair guy - whats the correct term? I can build/fix computers and would consider as a job.

web design/flash and html - this is fun too. not sure about demand or wages.

software tester - this "sounds" very promising but also too good to be true. this school here trying to convince me that I after 3 months(2 days a week and 7 hour class each day) training I can become a professional software tester and make 80k year(hahahaha this dude is out of his mind). does it make any sense at all? I am willing to start with half that as I gain more experience.

game tester/developer - anyone here in the gaming industry? how the jesus do you get this business? I know you probably need associate or bachelors and experience with animation or whatever. is this worth going after??

[DaOld Man]

I am an electrician. I have been working as residential and industrial electrician for 32 years now (man I am old).
I have been in an aluminum rolling mill now for 22 years.
I work with PLCs, computers, and some fairly high tech toys.
I also do some "grunt" work, but that's mostly for the younger guys.
I have had about 5 college classes over the years, but went straight to work after high school.
I did have 2 years industrial electricity (trade school) in high school.
It took me a while to get to the pay grade I am at now, but it is over 60K. (with a moderate amount of overtime.)
I knew I wanted to work with electricity since the 4th grade.
I just wish someone had kicked my rearo and made me go to college after high school.
I would have made it to this point a lot faster with an engineers degree.

[hypernova]

I work in a manufacturing warehouse.  Been there for 10 years (shortly after high school.)  We play Wii on breaks.  I am taking classes for psychology at Miami University part time.

I think everyone should hold a blue collar job at some point in their life, just to see and understand how the average man works, and to gain an appreciation for a good work ethic.  You get that by working in non-union places, with older generations.

[saint]

I run a web site. I make tens of dollars a year.

[SNAAKE]

^ lol..

what do you REALLY do though?

[ahofle]

game tester/developer - anyone here in the gaming industry? how the jesus do you get this business? I know you probably need associate or bachelors and experience with animation or whatever. is this worth going after??

"tighten up the graphics"

 

[danny_galaga]

<---------

it's a living 

[csa3d]

you may be asking why now? because now I am legally allowed to work in the US thats why lol. so what does everyone here do for living? right now I sell things on ebay and going to college but dont really know what I wanna do. possible interest.

game tester/developer - anyone here in the gaming industry? how the jesus do you get this business? I know you probably need associate or bachelors and experience with animation or whatever. is this worth going after??

I am an animator in the games industry.  Have been doing that now for 8 years.  While you don't "need" a college degree to get into the industry, it's difficult to know all the things you are supposed to just know on your own.  Some do it that way, but many more seek higher education.  When I left high school, I looked into colleges with a 4 year degree in computer graphics and had animation as well.  Out of the tiny selection at the time, I choose to go to Ringling College in Florida.  There are many more schools that teach computer animation and even some specializing in Gaming Degrees.  Southern Methodist University has a program they call the "Guildhall", which is a pretty good way to go as well.  A word to the wise, don't look into that school that wants you to tighten up the graphics; it's laughable at best.  You want a school taught by folks who actually make games.

For the record, this career is a lot of fun, but it's a lot of hours and hard work to make it.  If you're married, make sure you research that and make sure your family is as committed as yourself.  We also don't sit around playing games all day and get paid.  It's still largely software development.

-csa

[drventure]

I'm a software dev, pretty exclusively commercial software.

I've always been quite partial to VB, so I've worked with msdos bascom, moving to PDS (back in the day) and then to VB1-6 and now mostly VB.NET. I've also done quite a bit of C/C++, x86 asm, and recently been dabbling in javascript, php, and flash.

I think that's why working on this cab has been so much fun, it'd good to do something +non-virtual+ for a change!

[HaRuMaN]

Aerospace engineer.   

[ChadTower]

For the record, this career is a lot of fun, but it's a lot of hours and hard work to make it.  If you're married, make sure you research that and make sure your family is as committed as yourself. 

Quoted, bolded, and italicized for total effin truth.  I majored in cmpsci to get into that field and veered away from it after seeing firsthand what it did to family life.  If you want any sort of life outside of your job game development may be the wrong field for you.  Look up the current class action lawsuits against EA for proof or really any book on the history of video game development.  The guys I spent time with were all averaging 80 hour weeks, often 10-15 days straight before a day off, and were all either not married (and had no woman) or were divorced.

Oh, and they were usually making 75% of what guys with equivalent skills in other app development areas make.

[dcchau]

i am working on my accounting information system degree right now. you may be interested in that. ideally its a slice of accounting and management information system.  you keep  business  records and  maintain its accounting system. This includes the purchase, sales, and other financial processes of the business. i am leading towards the security side.

[Paul Olson]

I am currently working on a Computer Engineering degree. My school offers a game emphasis for this major, and I am going to take it. I discussed it with my adviser and mentioned that I probably would not want to actually program games for a living, but I want to learn how so I can try to write small games on my own. He told me to go ahead, if I don't go into games professionally, no one will ever care about the emphasis area. I am leaning toward trying to develop new game controllers. My school is doing quite a bit of research in that - if you have heard of Blind Hero (guitar hero controller for the blind), it was made at school. I am hoping to find something that I really enjoy doing. I am finishing up my core and math classes this summer, so it should be all fun classes from here on; Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. My fall schedule seems like it will be a blast, albeit a ton of work. I am taking my 3rd c++ class, and this one will hopefully teach me enough to actually write something interesting. I am taking a microcontroller class, so I will learn a little 8051 and ARM assembly, and we will also be using and FPGA. on the EE side, I get to take my first circuits class. Probably my least favorite will be a networking class, but I hoping I will find it interesting because it is probably one of the better areas for a job. To round out my schedule, I have my first Game Dev class.

I switched to Computer Engineering last semester after discovering that I had no interest whatsoever in Civil Engineering. Try to find a career that you are interested in! I was in Civil because I thought it would be easier to find a job, but I was dreading school, let alone the next 30 years of work. Now that I am where I think I belong on the computer side, I am really looking forward to school and my future career. It is a lot harder, and sometimes I get the feeling that my brain is slowing a bit (I will be 40 almost 40 when I graduate in a couple of years), but I am really enjoying the challenge. Except for calculus, I struggled through all three semesters . I think calculus is pretty easy to understand, but the algebra I learned and loved in the 80s has largely been forgotten. That made it really rough to actually get to the calculus part.

I am definitely listening to all of the people warning of the time commitment in Game Dev, but I am keeping the option open. I am really leaning toward the hardware side, but I will know more by the end of the next semester since I will finally get into the topics deep enough to decide where my strengths and weaknesses are.

If you decide to go to school, which I would recommend - it may not be absolutely necessary, but it surely cannot hurt - do not expect to be an expert when you finish. You will definitely be entry level and will still have a ton to learn. There are just too many topics to cover, and it looks like all you can hope to get is an intro to each during a 4 year degree. I have taken 2 programming classes so far, and received As in both, but I still do not really know how to write a program. I can write the simple stuff we did in class, but as soon as I try to do something that would actually be useful in the real world, I realize how little I know. This is where the coders will start off with an advantage over the college grads, there is no substitute for experience. I think I am learning the fundamentals better though - at least I better be! Two semesters, and they will still not let us use the string or template libraries.

Good luck! Find something you enjoy. I go to school with quite a few people who have given up 6 figure incomes to try to find something they enjoy doing. You are going to spend a huge portion of your life on your career, as someone who has wasted a couple of decades doing jobs that I hated, I can say with certainty that it is not worth it.

[Hockeyboy]

I work at Intel Corporation, inside a cleanroom, where we put on the final three circuit layers of today's high-tech CPUs, including the Core 2 Duo line, the Core 2 Quad, and the newer Core i7 family. To get a job like this you need a minimum of 2 years of college with a technical degree or military electronics experience, be able to multi-task, and be open to lots and lots of changes that happen from hour to hour. We are much like an assembly line at a car manufacturing plant but our tools have all kinds of quirks and inherent problems that we are always trying to correct.

Oh, and Intel, along with other companies that do this, usually work 12-hour shifts on a compressed work week, meaning you work 3 days one week with 4 days off, then 4 days the next week with 3 days off.

And, yes, I get to see the next generation of product before it's announced in the press, but we're not allowed to tell anyone what we are about to introduce. 

[CheffoJeffo]

Officially, I'm the CTO ... but that role consumes a relatively small portion of my time. I do a lot of coding for prototypes and system design work, which subsequently gets fed to the official coding team if it requires refinement or extension. So, I more of a rogue codemonkey than anything else.

Originally, I was trained in Statistics and Actuarial Science but made a choice to change 10 years ago when it looked like I would have to work 70 hour weeks and travel 4-5 days a week in order to progress while continuing to do "cool" work. So, now I put in 70 hour weeks and 4-5 days of travel a year. The upside is that my schedule is completely flexible (I telecommute), I get to keep the lion's share of the profits (depending on how much I have to pay the coding team to clean up after me) and can mold my hours around time spent with the kids and the occasional good night's sleep.

Having said that, I'm not sure I have any career advice that is worth anything in the general sense -- I got into an industry, pushed my way into as many facets of the industry as I could (talked to people, asked to observe executive meetings, volunteered for industry committees, wrote articles for industry publications), looked for weaknesses, saw an opportunity and took a chance. I'd do it again (am doing it now), but none of that has anything to do with credentials, education or getting that first job.

Good luck in whatever you choose.

[RayB]

Snake, do what you really enjoy [that you can get paid for]. In the end, that's all that matters, assuming you're not short-changing yourself. You seem all over the map, considering artistic and logic/programming options. Which is it buddy? 

[HaRuMaN]

JACK-of-All-tradeS-maSter-of-none

[Franco B]

Aerospace engineer.  

+1

[HaRuMaN]

Aerospace engineer.  

+1

Oh, you too?  Cool.  What do you do?  I'm in commercial propulsion.

[JeepMonkey]

I am basically an Electrical Engineer that gets some electrician experience.  I design electrical systems sometimes, but my main tasks are programming and field testing industrial controllers (PLCs) and GUI packages for power plants.  If you think a mame cab has a lot of inputs and outputs, try a project with over 2000.

[AtomSmasher]

For the record, this career is a lot of fun, but it's a lot of hours and hard work to make it.  If you're married, make sure you research that and make sure your family is as committed as yourself. 

Quoted, bolded, and italicized for total effin truth.  I majored in cmpsci to get into that field and veered away from it after seeing firsthand what it did to family life.  If you want any sort of life outside of your job game development may be the wrong field for you.  Look up the current class action lawsuits against EA for proof or really any book on the history of video game development.  The guys I spent time with were all averaging 80 hour weeks, often 10-15 days straight before a day off, and were all either not married (and had no woman) or were divorced.

Oh, and they were usually making 75% of what guys with equivalent skills in other app development areas make.

I'm now 4-5 months into a game developement job and that info is basically correct, except that its usually only the last few months of a project that have crazy hours.  We're now a month away from when my first game is finished, and it's only been about a month of absurd hours (which is why you rarely see me on these boards anymore).  However, before the crunch, it was a fairly standard 40-50 hour work week, although I'm sure this depends on which game company you work for.  Currently I'm working 6 days a week, 10-14 hour days, but at the end I'll have a game I can be proud of, which makes it all worth it.

Basically, if you're not passionate about gaming, then don't bother trying to get into this field. 
On a side note, I get one day off tommorrow to go to my first E3 *jumps up and down like a giddy schoolgirl*

[Kevin Mullins]

Aerospace engineer.  

+1

Oh, you too?  Cool.  What do you do?  I'm in commercial propulsion.

Sorry, but that just tickled me.   

"Aerospace Engineer" being one of them soooooo broad titles that such questions need to be asked. No offense mind ya, I have an Aviation background.....but there too have seen one end of the spectrum to the other.

[YoGaBaR]

I have a BBA in MIS. I work a LUMBER YARD not a mill. I handle wood all day . Also get to drive a forklift and a big flat bed truck. I know it sounds gloryous, but, I agree physical labor keeps a man honest. I would like to think I get paid than a person at McD's but I wonder sometimes. I do get to work outside and meet different people all the time. Its the summer months so we are getting busy might have an opening if you are interested .
PS
Its a way better job than an aerospace engineer.

[RayB]

I'm now 4-5 months into a game developement job and that info is basically correct, except that its usually only the last few months of a project that have crazy hours.  We're now a month away from when my first game is finished, and it's only been about a month of absurd hours (which is why you rarely see me on these boards anymore).  However, before the crunch, it was a fairly standard 40-50 hour work week, although I'm sure this depends on which game company you work for.  Currently I'm working 6 days a week, 10-14 hour days, but at the end I'll have a game I can be proud of, which makes it all worth it.

Here's the thing. You THINK you only have a few months of crunch, until the end nears and it becomes more and more obvious that the schedule is shot and it won't happen. So then you guys are still "crunching" past that point for months, maybe even stretching into a year or more.

I also laugh at your "fairly standard 40-50 hour work week". You do realize fairly standard is 35-40 hrs.  Think about this, if you make $50,000 a yr, working 35 hrs a week, it's like $27.47/hr.  Whereas working 50 hrs per week, you're making $19.23 /hr.

Anyways, enjoy it while you can. I wouldn't go back to that kind of torture.  

[mccoy178]

I'm a shop teacher and I can't believe I get paid to do it.  It is the most wonderful job I have ever had.  I agree about doing some blue collar work before doing anything else.  Some of my coworkers make me wonder................

[wachin]

My brother worked for Atari/ Infogrames as a full time game tester.  It was mainly playing the games looking for bugs.  It was a pretty basic entry level job and from his stories, it wasn't as glamourous as one would think.  8 hours a day playing video games that you have to play makes you lose the desire to play the games you want to play.  Plus he didn't really play games through.  They were given codes to access specific levels/ stages for whatever was slated to be tested that day.

The busiest season were the months leading up to Christmas as that was the big push for releases.  And it got tiring for him to be playing crappy video game conversions of board games.  Every so often he would play a big name game, but then again it was always only a portion of the game.  Come to think of it, I can't even recall what those games were.  Plus the pay was barely above minimum wage... but then again, he was getting paid to play video games!

[HaRuMaN]

Aerospace engineer.  

+1

Oh, you too?  Cool.  What do you do?  I'm in commercial propulsion.

Sorry, but that just tickled me.   

"Aerospace Engineer" being one of them soooooo broad titles that such questions need to be asked. No offense mind ya, I have an Aviation background.....but there too have seen one end of the spectrum to the other.

Hehe, yeah, it is broad.  I'm in system modeling and analysis- starting and operability.

[AtomSmasher]

I'm now 4-5 months into a game developement job and that info is basically correct, except that its usually only the last few months of a project that have crazy hours.  We're now a month away from when my first game is finished, and it's only been about a month of absurd hours (which is why you rarely see me on these boards anymore).  However, before the crunch, it was a fairly standard 40-50 hour work week, although I'm sure this depends on which game company you work for.  Currently I'm working 6 days a week, 10-14 hour days, but at the end I'll have a game I can be proud of, which makes it all worth it.

Here's the thing. You THINK you only have a few months of crunch, until the end nears and it becomes more and more obvious that the schedule is shot and it won't happen. So then you guys are still "crunching" past that point for months, maybe even stretching into a year or more.

I also laugh at your "fairly standard 40-50 hour work week". You do realize fairly standard is 35-40 hrs.  Think about this, if you make $50,000 a yr, working 35 hrs a week, it's like $27.47/hr.  Whereas working 50 hrs per week, you're making $19.23 /hr.

Anyways, enjoy it while you can. I wouldn't go back to that kind of torture.  

When the entire schedule for the game is 7 months, it's a little unlikely that it will go more then a year over schedule and it looks like we won't be going over schedule at all on our project.  Besides, we currently have 4 games in our company nearing completion and the game I'm working on is the only one where the publisher decided to make drastic changes at the last minute causing us to work massive hours.  None of the other projects are working weekends, but since this is going to be our first Wii title, we want to go the extra mile and make sure its good and the publisher is happy.

And I worked 40-50 hours a week when I was doing real estate appraisals, so that is a normal week for me    The first 2-3 months working here I actually only did work 40 hours a week, it was only as the project milestones became bigger that the hours started creeping up.  Anyways, I did real estate appraisal for 5 years and made much better money doing that then I am now, but now I'm doing something that I actually want to do, which makes a world of a difference.

I remember reading that the average video game programmer leaves the gaming industry within 5 years, which I can understand, but as of right now I'm still loving the job, crazy hours and all, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see if I still love it 5 years from now 

[danny_galaga]

Aerospace engineer.  

+1

Oh, you too?  Cool.  What do you do?  I'm in commercial propulsion.

Sorry, but that just tickled me.   

"Aerospace Engineer" being one of them soooooo broad titles that such questions need to be asked. No offense mind ya, I have an Aviation background.....but there too have seen one end of the spectrum to the other.

Hehe, yeah, it is broad.  I'm in system modeling and analysis- starting and operability.

i STILL don;t know what you do 

[HaRuMaN]

Aerospace engineer.  

+1

Oh, you too?  Cool.  What do you do?  I'm in commercial propulsion.

Sorry, but that just tickled me.   

"Aerospace Engineer" being one of them soooooo broad titles that such questions need to be asked. No offense mind ya, I have an Aviation background.....but there too have seen one end of the spectrum to the other.

Hehe, yeah, it is broad.  I'm in system modeling and analysis- starting and operability.

i STILL don;t know what you do 

It's ok, neither do I, really...  I just make it up as I go along...   

Mostly, I'm a computer geek.  I model turbofan engines based on their thermo qualities, and then simulate their operation across the flight envelope, and look for potential problems.

[ChadTower]

Here's the thing. You THINK you only have a few months of crunch, until the end nears and it becomes more and more obvious that the schedule is shot and it won't happen. So then you guys are still "crunching" past that point for months, maybe even stretching into a year or more.

Truth.

I also laugh at your "fairly standard 40-50 hour work week". You do realize fairly standard is 35-40 hrs.  

I have worked in software dev for companies as large as Cisco and as small as 30 people.  Standard in this field is anywhere from 40-50. 

Think about this, if you make $50,000 a yr, working 35 hrs a week, it's like $27.47/hr.  Whereas working 50 hrs per week, you're making $19.23 /hr.

Actually, a salaried person counts on the company's books for about (salary + 25-45% depending on benefits).  Even just a person carrying a family health plan is often making $1000+/month more than is in their check.  Throw in 401k match, various company paid insurance coverages, smaller services available to the employee (used or not), tuition reimbursements/others, and that person is compensated with a good amount more than what they put down on their taxes.  The further up the chain you go the higher that additional amount becomes.  Those things have to be included in any hourly rate conversion.  It is defintiely not as simple as salary / hours worked.

[HaRuMaN]

Mostly, I'm a computer geek.  I model turbofan engines based on their thermo qualities, and then simulate their operation across the flight envelope, and look for potential problems.

Please oh please don't tell me you work on "space shuttle landing simulators".  I have met 3 people from three different states that all claim they work on that.

Lol, no.  Commercial business jet engines.  Around ~7,000 lbs thrust.

[ChadTower]

Lol, no.  Commercial business jet engines.  Around ~7,000 lbs thrust.

GE?  There's a plant locally that has been making those for quite some time.  I believe they aren't military.

[HaRuMaN]

Lol, no.  Commercial business jet engines.  Around ~7,000 lbs thrust.

GE?  There's a plant locally that has been making those for quite some time.  I believe they aren't military.

Nope, Honeywell

[Samstag]

Mostly, I'm a computer geek.  I model turbofan engines based on their thermo qualities, and then simulate their operation across the flight envelope, and look for potential problems.

Please oh please don't tell me you work on "space shuttle landing simulators".  I have met 3 people from three different states that all claim they work on that.

I work on a Gulfstream II sim that was once used to train a shuttle pilot.  Does that count?  NASA converted a G2 so half the cockpit was instrumented like the shuttle.  He had to get a G2 type rating first and got it in my sim.  Bonus trivia:  John Travolta comes in (usually) once a year to get recertified on the same sim.

I've worked with a guy who worked on a shuttle takeoff sim, for reals.

I guess I'm an aerospace engineer.  My title is Senior Embedded Systems Engineer but I'm more of a general hardware/software flight sim troubleshooter.

[Samstag]

Does John ever ask to fly a DC-3 simulator that uses rockets instead of jet engines?

I'm not aware of any DC-3 sims in existance, so I'd say that's a no.  If he wanted to do that, I'm sure we'd have built it for him by now.  But I'm not privy to his private kinks.  We get his repeat business because we keep him carefully shielded from the unwashed masses (ie: me).

[RayB]

Those things have to be included in any hourly rate conversion.  It is defintiely not as simple as salary / hours worked.

They do if you want to know actual figures. They don't if you're just making the point that there's a big disparity between what you think you earn and actually earn when a salaried job demands long hours.

[Fordman]

My Screename says it all, Ford! I work at the best non-Tax dollar supported Auto company in the United States! I make planetary gear sets (1000 per 8 hour shift, 5 gears per set, so I mill 5000 gears, deburr, wash, gear check for size, tooth height-width ratio), install the gears into the carriers, press fit a pinion to keep the gears in place and allow the gears to spin. Run the competed sets through a quality control test stand (test the gear spin, make sure the pins were pressed in at the correct depth) , then pack into shipping dunnage to be sent to Livonia, Michigan. Sounds like alot because it is a lot. Running 11 machines in my machine center. 

Yes, I am also a PROUD member of the UAW and no, we are not lazy! If we were, then our plant would have closed 2 years ago. I resent the fact that people believe that a Union worker in the U.S. is lazy. Most European and Asian manufacturing workers are Union and they dont get the flack that U.S. & Canadian workers do for belonging to a Union. 

I also love this MAME and jukebox homebrew hobby. It keeps me entertained and me spending money on positive things and not on stupid stuff!

When buying an Auto in the U.S.A. or Canada, buy a better than toyota-honda quality Ford!

 

Fordman

[boykster]

I work in Bioinformatics - it's a blend of molecular biology and software development.  In my current position I run the bioinformatics pipeline for a company that sells a gene expression analysis instrument - similar to a microarray platform but with more flexibility.

Looking for a job?  I have an open position in the greater seattle area for a skilled molecular biologist who has a knack for sequence data, or a software dev who is familiar with genomic / sequence data and custom oligo design.  Anybody interested, send me a PM! 

[AtomSmasher]

Since this is related to what I posted earlier, I figured I would post it here.  I just got back from my first E3 and holy crap was it awesome.  At first I was bummed that I could only go one day, but one day really is enough to see everything you want to see.  Also, it sucked that the power went out after the first hour of Wiebe's Donkey Kong record attempt.  If you watched the first hour of the G4's live coverage, then you might of seen me in the background, just to the left of the sitdown area.  Anyways, after this event I know this is the right industry for me, even though this feeling may disappear after a few years, I at least feel that way for now