First, a little background.
I will be 29 years old this month. I have been married to a woman my exact same age (29) for about three years. Don't know how relevant that is to what I'm about to say, but if it helps, there ya go.
I received my Bachelor's in Computer Science in 1996. All my life I have wanted to be a computer game programmer, and indeed it was the entire reason I got a degree in Computer Science. I was unable to land a job in the gaming field right out of school, as game companies prefer their new hires to be a little less clueless than a college grad. Not confident with my aptitudes scholastically (B+ GPA, but I am often overly hard on myself), and insistent upon making money, I went looking for a regular job in the computing industry and a programmer.
After a year or so at a company I really didn't like, I jumped ship as soon as the company was sold to a larger company. A week AFTER I jumped ship, the company was dismantled and the office I'd worked at closed. My next position was as a server-side web programmer with a small local company. I reported directly to the CEO, and I flourished. I was, it turned out, a pretty damn good web programmer, and figured I'd found my second "calling" beyond game programming. I was well-paid, in charge of a team of coders, and all was well.
That is, except for my boss. He was a raving asshole who thought nothing of giving you a $10K raise every three months and questioning your competency and dedication the day after, usually by yelling, using four-letter words, and insinuating that you didn't give a damn. I should also mention that very few of my co-workers were even remotely competent and I was often being burned for problems brought on by THEIR mistakes. My suggestions and solutions went unheeded for close to the two years I was there before I'd finally had enough of the long hours and abuse and quit.
My next job was a very short one. It lasted a month with a company that refused to hire me on anything but a month-by-month basis, paid me peanuts, and then told me they didn't sense any enthusiasm on my part. All of my requests for better working conditions went un-heeded (I was shuffled three times to differing machines, asked to do things I had no training to do, given no help, and was forced to program on a laptop for over a month). I went home for lunch and never went back.
My final position was at a combination software-training company where I alternately prototyped web server and site solutions and taught programming classes to adult students. I worked 70 hours a week for half of what I was used to making, but because job offers were slim and I didn't have an advanced degree, I was just happy to be employed. I discovered that I enjoyed teaching, was good at it, and because of the fact that I was doing two things I loved (programming and teaching) I pretty much ignored the grinding, endless week (I worked 9am to 11pm daily, and Saturdays from 8 to 6) and the other annoyances of the job, determined to not quit out of frustration yet again. I had to be employed, I had to support my family, no excuses this time.
It was during this time my wife and I purchased our current house. I've been living in this same house my entire life, mostly figuring the only way I'd move would be to get a game programming job and be forced to move out west, where the industry was. That day never came, and eventually the interest rates on mortgages were so low we'd be crazy NOT to buy it, especially since I was renting the place from my dad anyway. May as well be putting the money toward owning ourselves.
Then, the paychecks stopped.
THEY said they were delayed, and would be there any day now. The main office had been forcefully renovated by Osama's flight crew on September 11th and while no one was hurt, nor any data lost, most of the company quit rather than commute to New Jersey and the company strained.
For a while I didn't mind, but eventually I got really bugged at stressful, 70-hour weeks, a workload that required even more time than that to accomplish that didn't even reward me with my miniscule pay. When I hadn't been paid for two months, I informed my boss that I would not be returning to work until I was paid in full.
The checks magically appeared that day. It was a small victory, as three weeks later I was informed that the company could no longer afford me, and I was laid off on the 21st of February, 2002. I am still trying to get my wages for my last month of work, and have filed a complaint with the Department of Labor.
I have been unemployed ever since, rarely receiving even a callback from an interview, even though I have a load of marketable skills, software design experience, and have led a team of programmers in the past in designing a company's flagship product (at the time, anyway).
However, in July, I was offered a position as adjunct (part-time) faculty at a local college, teaching a course in computer game programming. Could it get any cooler than that? The pay is not going to be so good, and it's only one day a week, but there have been discussions of an expanded program which, I assume, I would head up having done a good job with the initial course. It may even lead to a full-time teaching position, which I'd love.
In addition, due to my lack of achieving, well, anything, lately, I have decided to go back to school and get my Masters Degree, which would, I hope, help me get an edge on finding a day job while I teach my class at night.
This is where it gets bad.
As you can imagine, my wife is gainfully employed. She works for a very successful friend of her family's, in actuality a husband-and-wife team, each of whom owns their own shipping company(!). She was originally hired as the company bookkeeper but has quickly become the indispensable right-hand woman of the wife, the second-in-command of the company. I have never felt she was paid enough for her importance, as the company would collapse without her. Of this, I am sure. However, her boss has recently been giving her steadily larger raises so the acknowledgement is coming.
I feel that we need to focus on my wife's career at the moment; she would never be fired and her boss, while often overworking her, is very generous with the perks, paying for her trips home, giving her computer equipment, that sort of thing. My video game career is, I have decided, borderline impossible to get into now without investing in the teaching; I lack the necessarily capital and manpower to open a startup and develop a product, and the game business is so hit-and-miss I would never be able to convince any venture capitalists to invest because I couldn't prove a market with a good business plan. I also suck at business. I'm an engineer. I also can't join existing game companies without the clout of teaching experience because I have no industry experience doing games. My only hope right now, and in the near future, is to gamble on the teaching career and get my Graduate degree, while my wife supports us through her job.
This is where it gets problematic.
Recently, my wife's boss decided, as she has done so many times before but never acted on, to close up shop where we currently live and move out west to be closer to one of her warehouses. My wife dismissed this choice as she has never actually made good on it.
Last night, she did. She informed my wife to inform me to start applying to jobs in the state she will be moving to.
Here is the situation I am currently in.
Due to my failures in my career, I cannot rely on my own ability to support my family; I am currently wondering if I will ever find a job I like, suffering from wondering if I've just wound up at lousy companies or my industry is just like this and I can't cope because I expect too much. My wife is currently supporting us. Due to her own lack of an advanced degree (accountants make piddling sums of money unless they're a CPA, which she is not, and she obtained her degree in China so it does not hold the same weight here as it would there), should she quit this job because her boss is moving shop, she would also find it very difficult to be re-hired.
Her boss is actually planning the move because she wishes to open a brand-new company. She has existing clients and established business relationships, so the startup basically cannot fail. Here's the kicker, though. She's offered my wife a partnership in the business.
My wife's boss is incredibly well-off by American standards, and filthy stinking rich by Chinese standards. If my wife was a partner, it's pretty much guaranteed easy money in a big way.
However, let's not forget that I've just been offered a dream job which could be a gateway to big things myself! If I move, I'll have to give up teaching at the college. I also don't really want to move, seeing as how we just bought the house I grew up in, and all my friends are here. There's also the uncertainty of starting a new business; if my wife's boss fails in her venture for any reason we'll be stranded with no family, no home, and no opportunities to fall back on in an area I've never even visited before.
What would you do in this situation? This is probably the biggest bind I've ever been in; neither solution offers any good things without enormous trade-offs in return, trade-offs I am basically very unwilling to make... and each choice has the potential to fail miserably. They're BOTH gambles. I've also never had to make such a life-altering decision before, and I'm anxious to make the right one.
Thanks for listening,
Phin
I will be 29 years old this month. I have been married to a woman my exact same age (29) for about three years. Don't know how relevant that is to what I'm about to say, but if it helps, there ya go.
I received my Bachelor's in Computer Science in 1996. All my life I have wanted to be a computer game programmer, and indeed it was the entire reason I got a degree in Computer Science. I was unable to land a job in the gaming field right out of school, as game companies prefer their new hires to be a little less clueless than a college grad. Not confident with my aptitudes scholastically (B+ GPA, but I am often overly hard on myself), and insistent upon making money, I went looking for a regular job in the computing industry and a programmer.
After a year or so at a company I really didn't like, I jumped ship as soon as the company was sold to a larger company. A week AFTER I jumped ship, the company was dismantled and the office I'd worked at closed. My next position was as a server-side web programmer with a small local company. I reported directly to the CEO, and I flourished. I was, it turned out, a pretty damn good web programmer, and figured I'd found my second "calling" beyond game programming. I was well-paid, in charge of a team of coders, and all was well.
That is, except for my boss. He was a raving asshole who thought nothing of giving you a $10K raise every three months and questioning your competency and dedication the day after, usually by yelling, using four-letter words, and insinuating that you didn't give a damn. I should also mention that very few of my co-workers were even remotely competent and I was often being burned for problems brought on by THEIR mistakes. My suggestions and solutions went unheeded for close to the two years I was there before I'd finally had enough of the long hours and abuse and quit.
My next job was a very short one. It lasted a month with a company that refused to hire me on anything but a month-by-month basis, paid me peanuts, and then told me they didn't sense any enthusiasm on my part. All of my requests for better working conditions went un-heeded (I was shuffled three times to differing machines, asked to do things I had no training to do, given no help, and was forced to program on a laptop for over a month). I went home for lunch and never went back.
My final position was at a combination software-training company where I alternately prototyped web server and site solutions and taught programming classes to adult students. I worked 70 hours a week for half of what I was used to making, but because job offers were slim and I didn't have an advanced degree, I was just happy to be employed. I discovered that I enjoyed teaching, was good at it, and because of the fact that I was doing two things I loved (programming and teaching) I pretty much ignored the grinding, endless week (I worked 9am to 11pm daily, and Saturdays from 8 to 6) and the other annoyances of the job, determined to not quit out of frustration yet again. I had to be employed, I had to support my family, no excuses this time.
It was during this time my wife and I purchased our current house. I've been living in this same house my entire life, mostly figuring the only way I'd move would be to get a game programming job and be forced to move out west, where the industry was. That day never came, and eventually the interest rates on mortgages were so low we'd be crazy NOT to buy it, especially since I was renting the place from my dad anyway. May as well be putting the money toward owning ourselves.
Then, the paychecks stopped.
THEY said they were delayed, and would be there any day now. The main office had been forcefully renovated by Osama's flight crew on September 11th and while no one was hurt, nor any data lost, most of the company quit rather than commute to New Jersey and the company strained.
For a while I didn't mind, but eventually I got really bugged at stressful, 70-hour weeks, a workload that required even more time than that to accomplish that didn't even reward me with my miniscule pay. When I hadn't been paid for two months, I informed my boss that I would not be returning to work until I was paid in full.
The checks magically appeared that day. It was a small victory, as three weeks later I was informed that the company could no longer afford me, and I was laid off on the 21st of February, 2002. I am still trying to get my wages for my last month of work, and have filed a complaint with the Department of Labor.
I have been unemployed ever since, rarely receiving even a callback from an interview, even though I have a load of marketable skills, software design experience, and have led a team of programmers in the past in designing a company's flagship product (at the time, anyway).
However, in July, I was offered a position as adjunct (part-time) faculty at a local college, teaching a course in computer game programming. Could it get any cooler than that? The pay is not going to be so good, and it's only one day a week, but there have been discussions of an expanded program which, I assume, I would head up having done a good job with the initial course. It may even lead to a full-time teaching position, which I'd love.
In addition, due to my lack of achieving, well, anything, lately, I have decided to go back to school and get my Masters Degree, which would, I hope, help me get an edge on finding a day job while I teach my class at night.
This is where it gets bad.
As you can imagine, my wife is gainfully employed. She works for a very successful friend of her family's, in actuality a husband-and-wife team, each of whom owns their own shipping company(!). She was originally hired as the company bookkeeper but has quickly become the indispensable right-hand woman of the wife, the second-in-command of the company. I have never felt she was paid enough for her importance, as the company would collapse without her. Of this, I am sure. However, her boss has recently been giving her steadily larger raises so the acknowledgement is coming.
I feel that we need to focus on my wife's career at the moment; she would never be fired and her boss, while often overworking her, is very generous with the perks, paying for her trips home, giving her computer equipment, that sort of thing. My video game career is, I have decided, borderline impossible to get into now without investing in the teaching; I lack the necessarily capital and manpower to open a startup and develop a product, and the game business is so hit-and-miss I would never be able to convince any venture capitalists to invest because I couldn't prove a market with a good business plan. I also suck at business. I'm an engineer. I also can't join existing game companies without the clout of teaching experience because I have no industry experience doing games. My only hope right now, and in the near future, is to gamble on the teaching career and get my Graduate degree, while my wife supports us through her job.
This is where it gets problematic.
Recently, my wife's boss decided, as she has done so many times before but never acted on, to close up shop where we currently live and move out west to be closer to one of her warehouses. My wife dismissed this choice as she has never actually made good on it.
Last night, she did. She informed my wife to inform me to start applying to jobs in the state she will be moving to.
Here is the situation I am currently in.
Due to my failures in my career, I cannot rely on my own ability to support my family; I am currently wondering if I will ever find a job I like, suffering from wondering if I've just wound up at lousy companies or my industry is just like this and I can't cope because I expect too much. My wife is currently supporting us. Due to her own lack of an advanced degree (accountants make piddling sums of money unless they're a CPA, which she is not, and she obtained her degree in China so it does not hold the same weight here as it would there), should she quit this job because her boss is moving shop, she would also find it very difficult to be re-hired.
Her boss is actually planning the move because she wishes to open a brand-new company. She has existing clients and established business relationships, so the startup basically cannot fail. Here's the kicker, though. She's offered my wife a partnership in the business.
My wife's boss is incredibly well-off by American standards, and filthy stinking rich by Chinese standards. If my wife was a partner, it's pretty much guaranteed easy money in a big way.
However, let's not forget that I've just been offered a dream job which could be a gateway to big things myself! If I move, I'll have to give up teaching at the college. I also don't really want to move, seeing as how we just bought the house I grew up in, and all my friends are here. There's also the uncertainty of starting a new business; if my wife's boss fails in her venture for any reason we'll be stranded with no family, no home, and no opportunities to fall back on in an area I've never even visited before.
What would you do in this situation? This is probably the biggest bind I've ever been in; neither solution offers any good things without enormous trade-offs in return, trade-offs I am basically very unwilling to make... and each choice has the potential to fail miserably. They're BOTH gambles. I've also never had to make such a life-altering decision before, and I'm anxious to make the right one.
Thanks for listening,
Phin
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