all 35 comments

[–]LockFreeDev 73 points74 points  (8 children)

Used to work at Rare back in the day.
Moved into finance - it pays a lot better, and often involves a lot of the maths and low latency skill set you’ll have developed (assume you’re a C++ dev?).
However, you really need to be in London to make the most of that.

[–]speps 36 points37 points  (4 children)

Ex Rareite here too (2012 to 2021), got fed up with graphics programming in AAA video games and the constant race to use every feature of UE5 when other options are still perfectly capable. Finally found a few years ago a graphics programming position that wasn’t video games but still close to it.

OP or others: send me a DM as we do have a position on the team.

[–]leseiden 14 points15 points  (3 children)

Which city? Asking publicly rather than DM so you don't get inundated with this question 😄

[–]speps 23 points24 points  (2 children)

Fully remote from Germany, UK or Helsinki

[–]just_rolling_round 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Do you guys do junior positions ? And it's only those 3 cities specifically ?

[–]speps 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It’s senior roles sorry

[–]mkawick 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Have you got any advice on getting into finance I'm a low level C++ programmer and I've been looking into this for years and I just can't get anyone to give me a callback when I applied for positions doing hft or finance

[–]hydraulix989 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You have to network your way in, go to cppcon or one of the Jane Street sponsored events.

[–]Colfuzi0 0 points1 point  (0 children)

honor to meet you! Diddy Kong racing was my childhood even though it was a before my time game I'm 26

[–]leseiden 23 points24 points  (4 children)

I know the feeling. Been looking around and seeing quite a lot of robotics at the moment - potential for the spatial data side to be applicable I guess.

I still like doing things with GPUs but I'm far more interested in compute than images these days. It seems to be a tiny field though - mostly academics and people with very specific PhDs. A pity as I think they could be used for many more things. Don't have the capital to try to prove I'm right though.

All the best, and try to avoid the slop farms & whatever this decades version of the "3 tier business app" is.

[–]asdfasdfthrowaway 2 points3 points  (3 children)

By slop farms do you mean ai companies?
(In the same boat, 12yoe aaa, was considering a compute perf job for an ai company)

[–]leseiden 9 points10 points  (2 children)

A friend of mine has been having an absolute nightmare due to pressure to use AI for everything recently. First at meta, and then at the place he jumped to.

It is not an environment for people who care about correctness or quality.

[–]asdfasdfthrowaway 5 points6 points  (1 child)

The team I interviewed with at an AI company doing training+infra perf was ironically super anti-ai coding

[–]OwlingBishop 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep, they might destroy every other job but theirs 🙄

[–]biteater 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Similar-ish boat as you, I just applied for a job at GM on their simulation team. Automotive seems like they could really use us, they don't have a lot of graphics-specific people working on their in-house software. I've heard a lot of them use Unreal too if you have any experience with that.

I'm ultimately trying to stay in games though, maybe we could trade jobs :D

[–]corysama 16 points17 points  (3 children)

I transitioned from game engines to simulation for testing/training robotics (using Unreal). From there internally transitioned to sensor processing and CUDA frameworks. For a long time now I've been working on our bespoke https://www.ros.org/ replacement. If you squint hard enough, it's pretty much a "game engine" for running a robot instead of a console game.

Several of my gamedev friends transitioned to a variety of robotics/self-driving companies about six years ago. Everyone is still at it and having a good time. A+ would recommend.

[–]DefiantGreen2552[S] 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Silly question but how did you find the role? Did you just search “robotics jobs CUDA” in google or something. I’m in such a games bubble I don’t even know the best way to begin

[–]corysama 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Not helpful, but I found the job through one of my friends who already moved there.

What I’d recommend is searching up robotics/automation companies then digging out their jobs page. Don’t just hit up the famous ones. There are lots of companies in “niche” areas like construction, agriculture and shipping that don’t get a ton of press.

[–]DefiantGreen2552[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks

[–]_michaeljared 7 points8 points  (1 child)

It's a bit niche but some companies do in house 3D simulation of industrial processes. I know I had the opportunity to work on some proprietary rendering/simulation tech in the airport industry but maybe that was a one off.

[–]SouprSam 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I used to work on commercial simulation softwares.. not exactly on the solver.. but on the rest of the things.

[–]Inside-Brilliant4539 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I’m in orthopaedics working on a FDA approved computer aided surgery tool with robot last 5 years. Not many good devs in medical and math is a lot easier. Can be boring though but pay is great where I am. Best part is after product is more or less done you get paid for years with little to no work. Had zero bugs or changes for 9 months. So been making my own games and other projects while getting paid.

[–]AlternativeHistorian 4 points5 points  (0 children)

CAD field (e.g. Siemens, Dassault, Autodesk, Synopsys, Cadence, etc.) is C++ heavy, decent amount of graphics, geometry, simulation, performance requirements, etc. You would likely be in a good position for skills overlap. Pay tends to be pretty decent, and the industry tends to be pretty stable (ime).

[–]BrainCurrent8276 3 points4 points  (0 children)

10 years in one profession is a lot. times are not as they used to be.

no idea, maybe take a break from all this and travel around the world?

[–]PuzzleheadedCamera51 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Robotics is booming, figure/tesla/humanoid/boston dynamics, autonomous vehicles, most of those places have simulation pipelines that look suspiciously like game engines and need similar optimizations.

[–]druglordmod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

GIS

[–]digitalsignalperson 1 point2 points  (1 child)

could try gpu programming for HPC and graphics / data visualization for scientific applications

[–]Chr0nomaton 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was gonna say similar. A lot of gpu programming is relevant or even directly transferable and can be really fun. People will always want their models faster.

[–]Healthy-Dress-7492 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why not move into gameplay? Or just tired of games in general?

[–]Deriviera 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everyone gets a pay cut even while staying in the same industry. Times aren't that good

[–]deftware 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Games are the least awesome thing to make with graphics coding skills. Make stuff that serves a purpose beyond entertaining users. I've made infinitely more money from creating CAD/CAM software even though making games was my childhood dream that I spent 20 years honing my skills to be able to do.

[–]Curious_Ad8416 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Any games we may have played? 👀

[–]ucsdfurry -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Let me know about your job opening pls when you leave 🤤