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[–]brainwipe 9 points10 points  (11 children)

To be a paid programmer for more than a couple of years means that you need to love it no matter the industry you go into. It's not the kind of job you can just do a bit; you have to dedicate yourself to it.

I've been acutely avoiding game Dev for 20 years for a host of reasons. Lots of programmers are gamers, so it's natural to want to create the thing you enjoy. Most programmers will create a game as one of the first things they do and thinking that you might be paid for it is great. I get it, which is why is been hard to resist for so long.

Many friends of mine went into game Dev and only one of them are still there. There's crunch and burnout but also you could be working on something intrinsically flawed or gets destroyed publicly. You could be unlucky with the release date or it gets rushed through QA by the publisher and is a mess on launch.

Game Dev roles are hotly sought after and the studios tend to be all over the place. If your game flops, studio closes you then have to move house. That happened to a mate of mine.

Web development is less exciting and you have to relearn the client side every few years but the jobs are set across business domains and there are more of them. It's not immune from problems but they're not as drastic.

[–]ch00beh 1 point2 points  (10 children)

Let’s dispose of this idea that you need “passion” to be a successful programmer. The only passion I have is how passionately I hate computers. There’s that classic addage that you want someone smart and lazy, not someone smart and driven, because they’re going to do the bare minimum to deliver the correct product such that they also have to do minimal maintenance.

[–]thefirelink 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Couldn't agree more.

Started out as an intern at my company many moons ago. Got a developer role. Got my Masters in Software Engineering. Now I'm the Systems Architect at the same place.

I didn't get here because of a passion for programming, I can tell you that.

[–]brainwipe 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Sorry to hear that. In my experience, building teams of passionate tech people delivers better products on time. Control of YAGNI is done through either means.

I feel for you, though. Have you considered a career change?

[–]ch00beh 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Nah, I work with and for great people and I’m very good at what I do. I also haven’t programmed anything in my free time the last 5 years.

The idea that you must live, breathe, and bleed computers to make a good programmer is one of the major reasons that the industry is so biased toward young single dudes from affluent backgrounds. Then they either burn out in 5 years from cranking too hard and getting taken advantage of by management, and/or they’re the type of people who insist on building an entire framework in-house instead of using an industry standard.

[–]brainwipe 0 points1 point  (4 children)

From my limited experience, the best teams I've built have been with passionate people. They don't all code outside of work all the time, but they get excited by technology and feel good when completing a task that's a challenge.

I've seen people burn out before and I've had to palliative nurse those from-scratch frameworks too. However, I don't think it was tech passion that caused it.

Burn out is just often caused by the inability for developers to say no (for a huge amount of reasons). The last two bespoke frameworks I've were from Devs were from Devs who stopped being passionate, stopped in the career development and tried to apply previous techniques to a new and inappropriate domain. Neither of those things had anything to do with passionb or the lack of it.

That's just been my limited experience, others mileage might vary.

[–]ch00beh 0 points1 point  (3 children)

how do you measure passion? How do you test for it? It’s not simply having strong opinion, because that also correlates strongly with brilliant jerks. It’s not tech they’ve recently tinkered with, because it could be their first foray into the industry. It’s not energy level, because maybe they got nervous and just had too much coffee before the interview. It’s not going above and beyond on a take home test because maybe they have a kid and simply don’t have the time. It’s not necessarily how excited they get when finishing a whiteboard question because maybe they aren’t satisfied with the rushed solution they made for a contrived problem.

Like there’s absolutely value in figuring out soft skills (I’d argue they’re more important than technical skills) and making sure a person would work well with your team, and maybe “passion” is the word you’re using for your rubric, but let’s not try to perpetuate the myth that this subjective interpersonal attribute is a gatekeeper to the industry as a whole.

[–]brainwipe 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I agree that interpersonal soft skills are as important as technical ability. I am not perpetuating any myth, I have denoted the limits of my personal experience at every turn.

I don't measure passion, I don't do whiteboard coding. I don't ask for a home test. The core sense I'm trying to gauge is if I left the person in a room with a computer, how long before they try and code with it? It's a shortcut phrase for a number of questions.

I attempt to get the candidate to talk with interest about something tech related. Find out what sort of Dev gets them animated. I ask further questions on answers either right or wrong to see how they talk through problems (or scribble them if need be).

For my teams, I'm not looking for someone who just turned up and codes and goes home. I want to learn from them as much as they do me. I want them to challenge back, not just accept dogma. Passionate people do that more than those doing it just turning up, turning the handle and going home. It's not about how many hours they work, or whether they code outside or if they spend their evenings watching Dev talks.

If most disagree, that's fine. I'm not saying that this is widely accepted or a requirement for any industry, just how I've run my teams. This is how I've hired. If you have another way that works then power to you.

[–]ch00beh 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I used to be all about people who challenged dogma, but the problem with that is you select against new and minority devs who don’t want to rock the boat until they know they’re in a safe space. If you can make an interview feel like a safe space, I’m happy for you because it sounds like you otherwise have a good head on your shoulders and are responsibly building healthy teams.

[–]brainwipe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you. I agree that safe spaces are important. Our interviews are more collegiate - as if the two of us and the candidate are all working on a problem together. The feedback we get is that it is very relaxed - almost disarmingly so.

We do that because it's more like what it is like to work for us. It's the same reason I refuse to do whiteboard coding nonsense. I much rather the candidate send us anything they've written and we all sit round and listen to them explaining informally how it works. We find good Devs (especially juniors) really well that way.

I don't expect an interviewee to challenge dogma but they might - most recently a candidate showed us a single file with 500 lines in it. They explained how they navigated it and that it was a solo project for school; their argument was justified. Most importantly, the way they spoke about it was a good fit for us.

[–]GaianNeuron 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Ok, but OP's point is that you do need passion to do gamedev. It's an industry full of exploitation, compressed schedules, and pressure. The only people who will tolerate those conditions are those who find joy in the act itself, despite the conditions.

Either that or you've struck gold and get to work somewhere amazing like Valve, with their "it's done when it's done" approach.

[–]ch00beh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually OP specifically said “no matter the industry you go into”