Seeking long term career advise.

[Remixt]

Hello folks. Computer Science Junior (Technically Senior, but I still have 2 years of school left.)

 

I've got a lot of life and work experience under my belt for my age(26), which has helped me quite a bit already.

 

A little bit on my background. If you don't care feel free to skip

I lived/worked on a farm from ages 7-14(1997-2004). I hated it more than anything I've hated in my life. I'm pretty sure its the reason I love technology/city life so much now.

 

I pretty much lived in World of Warcraft and DDR during High school, although I was part of a very successful school Marching/Concert band as a Sax player. (2005-2008)

 

1 month after graduation I attended DeVry university for about 3 months before I stopped going. This was a huge turning point in my life as I went about a year with no direction. I felt scammed and defeated. My grades weren't good enough to get into a real school because I slacked off in High School. I started dating my spouse in 2009, she helped me get back on my feet and I decided to join the Air Force so I could get some college credit and go to school for free. I had to lose 75 pounds so that took nearly a year. I got married in January of 2010, and I'm still married today! (2008-2010).

 

I was in the Air Force as a Guidance and Control Specialist for C-17 Aircraft for 4.5 years.(2010-2015) Basically anything electronic that has to do with flight (an example is Autopilot). I received a ton of awards, and I even developed my own piece of software for my unit called 'Total Recall' that initiates an automatic text message system when the entire unit needs to be contacted in the event of an emergency.

 

I've worked in technology (from sales to IT to programming) for over 11 years if you take my Air Force Career into account.(2006-present)

I'm currently a JDE developer for a large energy company, and they work with my school schedule.(2015-present)

 

Things that could use some improvement:

1. My GPA is pretty low. (2.79 cumulative).

 

2. I struggle a TON with math. I'm currently in Calculus 2 after 6 years of remedial math classes so woohoo. However, I'm almost positive I'll have to take it again.

 

3. I have an extreme amount of debt due to complications upon leaving the military. (They stopped paying me too soon and I had to live off of credit cards for almost a year.) I'm not drowning or anything, and my debt is slowly going down. However, there is absolutely no way I can afford to survive on student loans/VA benefits alone while I go to school.

 

 

Here is a list of things I'm trying to educate myself on.

 

1. What kind of Salary can I actually expect based on my experience upon graduation?(I currently make around 45k as a JDE developer in training.) I've looked on Glassdoor and honestly the salaries listed don't seem reliable, especially because my company lists me making way less than I do.

 

2. How the hell do I get a job in the game industry? I've been working my ass off sending in resumes to companies all over the country, making phone calls, contacting recruiters, ect. I've been doing this since my second year in the Air Force (so for almost 6 years now.) I've gotten tons of job offers and interviews in everything but at a game company. 

 

3. What do I actually WANT to do in the game industry? I thought for the longest time that I wanted to be whats generally called a game designer. However,  I'm not even sure. I don't have any art experience, and I don't really want to draw or "Design" anything. What I do want is to have a creative outlet, not a purely programming job. I want to work with a team to create something, not just get handed a list of things that need to be coded. Does that make sense?

 

4. What is it like working in software in the long term? Do most people stay at one company? Is there room from growth (in salary and scope of job)?

 

I am willing to discuss and answer any questions you folks might have. Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

[Cela1]

Sorry that I don't have any advise with regards to careers but it was a great read, thanks for sharing with us. Maybe there will be a part 2 sometime in the future .

[Qub3d]

Have you considered IS, or Information Systems? You can get pretty good work as a DBA. 

 

I would not recommend the game dev industry. For one, just because it involves games doesn't mean you'll be doing anything different than a guy at oracle would be. If anything, it just means you be doing normal dev work for cheaper and more hours because "you are doing what you love" or some other B.S. If you'd like specific stories, read this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/41k6w9/is_the_game_development_industry_as_bad_as_people/

 

I find that as I study CS and enter the field myself, there are a lot of interesting projects and companies out there. I also enjoy the concept of game design--I've dabbled in it myself a bit--but if you enjoy making games, you may find coding in general to be an engaging and rewarding vocation, regardless of what the code will do in the end.

 

I personally hated calc 2. I've been told by friends that it is probably the most difficult of the standard calculus courses, and that calc 3 is actually somewhat easier. I'm still pursuing CS, however, because the logic, boolean + discreet math clicks a lot better for me.

[Remixt]

43 minutes ago, AlexTheRose said:

Well.

 

I wouldn’t know anything about salaries so I can’t comment on that. However, I can comment a little on the whole video game industry questions you asked, and it might be wise of me to bring @christianled59 into the discussion about that as well; unlike me, he has had financial success in the industry.

 

For the industry, your best fit would probably be a job doing software development/oversight. Being the Lead Developer (a concept I’m sure you know about, if not you can read about it here) would also be good, but you’re right in that game design is probably not what you’re looking for. Companies that roll their own engines create scripting languages and simple things for the game designers to use, so they never touch code.

 

As far as designing a game goes, it takes a lot of work. However, you’ll probably be working on a team as a professional, so unlike @christianled59 and I you won’t be running your own business and won’t be responsible for the genesis of the game. For you, you can expect a game to take anywhere from 3 months to a year; for example, the core series Pokémon games were rolled out from start to finish in Japanese in about six months, while localisation took about another six months. Or at least that was the case during the days of the Game Boy Advance.

 

I'm perfectly fine with working hard, especially if I love the job!(One thing working on the farm instilled in me was working hard.) Yeah, I was thinking software development/engineer might be a good fit, but I don't want to get stuck in a boring 9-5 just implementing libraries or something. I guess it would be cool to work with a game engine and do some scripting, and even possibly create a game engine for a company from scratch. The only thing about game design I don't want to do is create an animation or something. It's not even that I would hate doing that, I just don't have a single artistic bone in my body. 

[Remixt]

Just now, AlexTheRose said:

As the project leader, I’ve sorted myself out as the engine architect, and will employ freelancers to do a lot of my dirty work. Provided I can get a part-time job to fund that, lol – Making a game engine is something that will be a team effort, especially if it’s 3D. You can’t make an engine in a reasonable amount of time unless it’s a basic system that isn’t very complex.

 

I feel you about the creative aspect of things, and like you I still want to express myself in that way but often lack the practical skills to do so. I don’t know how relevant it would be to you, but personally I took to writing a huge canon for my JRPG that I’ve been working on for about two years. Maybe you could find an outlet like that? All writing requires is English and a creative imagination, really.

I'm already an author(hobby)! You hit me "Write" on the nose. 

 

Yeah, the biggest Issue I've got is that I don't have any experience working for a game developer so I don't even know where I would fit best! Hopefully when I graduate someone will be willing to take me in based on my track record as an employee.

[YongKang]

To be honest with you, I met my current boss/ dear friend/ partner on Facebook. I added him by curiosity. Then, I tried his mobile game Little Rescue Machine which was quite fun and mind melting but I couldn't get it to work on my Iphone 4. I chat with him about the issue and then, the rest is history. Since english is not his first language, I help with with language and I wrote a script for him to make sure he won't lose sight of his goal while doing game development

If you're genuinely interested in game development, I suggest you going to conventions and make lots of connection because you have to keep in mind that a degree is only going to get you so far, connections however gonna get you opportunities that you will never get if you're in a regular corporate.