My Choice

After a rather extensive and intense job search, I have finally taken a job.  Obviously, the worst possible scenario would have been not finding one at all.  But I was not quite prepared for the agony that finding too many of them turned out to be! It might be easy for a company to reject a candidate. I have been in countless meetings where that has happened. You go around the table and someone might point out how this person did not answer question X, or does not have enough experience with technology Y and so on.  The votes are counted, the verdict is in and two minutes later you are back at your desk finishing whatever was interrupted by this meeting.  From my point of view as a candidate, a lot more is going on.  I have been meeting people with the potential to become my next mentors, coworkers, best friends and beer buddies.  People who I might learn a lot of stuff from, potential brothers in arms (yeah, hardly any sisters in these companies).  Some of them read my blog, many gave me advice on my job search and much more.  Almost overwhelmingly they were all smart, interesting people with a lot of common interests and hobbies.  We talked about game programming, music, the experience of working in the software field and much more.  When it is time to choose, all of these potential relationships vanish.  Most likely forever.  I am really in a period of mourning now.  I did not expect to meet so many good people.  Pretty soon, they will all forget my name and I will theirs.  Such is life.

And there have been many lessons learned too.  I realize now more than ever how important it is that you show them who you really are. That includes your resume, web page, code samples and just about everywhere.  It is important to be liked by the right people, but it is even more important to be disliked by the wrong people as soon as possible.  If you care about being happy at work, that is, beyond the salary and position, you definitely do not want to end up working for incompatible people.  I care, and I believe it is crucial for me to work with like minded, fun loving, smart and dedicated people with a sense of mission.  The rigidity that is rampant in most corporations, big and small, is unbearable to me.  When I show them exactly who I am, that rigidity will manifest itself in rejection.  Such a thing happened with one of the companies I saw earlier on, which I liked in the interviews.  I found out after asking for feedback on what had happened.  I was very lucky.

But even if I was able to find great places to work and great people to work in multiple companies, in the end I chose one that had the clearest path to my independence.  I will be working (from home!) for a group of wacky MIT material science professors helping them with a research project that quite likely could lead to a great technological innovation that would affect people worldwide in a positive way.  This is definitely not a conventional job, and I will have to learn many new things and will be placed squarely outside of my comfort zone.  But I am tired of conventional jobs.  That is not what I am, and I feel this is being truer to myself. I even had to reject a big software architect role offer from a big company that included insane amounts of money.  From the way I was treated, I knew I could not be happy there.  But it was hard to say no.  Anyway, in the coming weeks I will try to figure out my new schedule, which will change, but not by that much.  On we go in the quest to find balance in my life.  A balance that includes work, family life and personal satisfaction.  And definitely a good amount of game programming!

Wanted

My little one's best friend got lost last Friday afternoon.  Percy Puppy (aka Oofie) was last seen somewhere between the library and the hair salon.  What followed was a frantic search through the house and surroundings.  When it was clear that our little stuffed friend never made it home, I headed to the library.  It was already dark, it was raining, and of course that powerful flashlight you keep in the car for emergencies never works when you need it, so I went around like a madman, with a little pen flashlight in hand, looking for our friend.  People did not appreciate seeing a brown guy looking around and under cars in the library parking lot.  I am not positive, but I suspect a couple of them actually called the police on me.  Oofie was nowhere to be seen, so I had to go back home empty handed.  My poor little one had to go to bed without her best friend in the world.  It really broke my heart.  Armed with a bunch of flyers with his picture, I left next morning and went back searching for it.  When I found it under a bunch of brown leaves on the grass, in the pouring rain, I was definitely the happiest daddy alive.  If you are not a parent of a child who is completely attached to a little stuffed animal, you will never understand the intensity of the little adventure described above.  The happy ending that seemed impossible the night before actually did happen.  It was a happy, happy day.

As for my job hunt, I can only hope that the ending will be as happy.  Already I have had two interviews, one on Friday and another one this Monday.  At the first one I was interviewed by a couple of really, really young guys (one of them still in college) who are already working on their first startup company.   This is their website: http://gtrot.com.  Man, I just wanted a time machine at that moment.  Monday I met the person who will now be overseeing this website http://www.ticketsforcharity.com and possibly other similar ones in the future. This is a for profit company that is trying to make money while making it easier for people to send a portion of the money they would spend anyway to a number of charities.  That is a very noble idea indeed.  After a couple of phone screenings this week, I have secured at least one more interview.  This will obviously be a long process.  I hope I find something good.  Who knows what will happen.  But hey, I found Oofie, so anything is possible!

Job Hunting

I am officially in full job hunting mode.  Just like everybody else, I regularly scan the Craigslist job listings and I just sent my information to a recruiter.  And I am trying not to be too discriminating.  If I find a good part-time position, I'll work on games part time.  If I find a full-time position, I'll work on open source games as a hobby. If finding a job eludes me, I'll work on cool stuff of my own full-time. Sweet! Oh, wait. I need a salary.  The lucky thing is that the few jobs out there are so absolutely impossible to get that I am guaranteed to work on something interesting if I make it.  Yes, that is a good thing. That is just how delusional I am :). To round it up, I am researching how to start my own business.  Pursuing the American Dream is a beautiful idea, but it looks 90 degrees uphill from here.  Still, I believe that anything is possible. What will be, will be. I keep repeating in my head what has become my new mantra: Try your best, then leave it to fate and stop worrying.

There does not seem to be enough work for me to do in my part-time gig with my old company, so I am mostly spending my time getting my job search organized and working on a couple of web site ideas that I have had for a while, trying to make them finally a reality and get some experience with technologies that I have not used at work.  Non computer geek types may find this hard to believe, but writing code is a great therapy for people like me.  It cures anything.   The trick is getting organized enough to finish your project or current task, which is hard when you have too many goals and too many ideas fighting for your brain time.  But once something is finished and works... ahhhhhh!!!! Best feeling. Ever.  Add a good dose of learning new, interesting things, and you reach pure bliss.  Since I am not sure what direction I will be following, focusing is getting tricky.  I need to work on that.  More than ever, wish me luck! Please!

Part-Time Life
I just started another contract with my old company, barely a week after they rather abruptly told me they would not be renewing it. So I am back to the part-time routine, but this time I need to do some things in a better way. For the past month and a half I have spent most of the time working from home, and the rest of the time learning some interesting technologies I had not touched before, hoping that this would help me prepare for a life of future of part-time grind work, part-time sweet, fun, rewarding game development. But I still have to perfect this and find the right balance. And some things have changed around the house. My 5 year old little angel is now going to school, which starts at the ungodly hour of 8am in the morning. That means that we now have to get up at 6am every weekday, which is not, by any means, something I have ever experienced before in my life. To make things more interesting, we also have a new addition to the family: Bluebell the cat. She is the pet that I promised to get for my five year old when daddy got a job, but since that ain't happening anytime soon, well... That little critter may be cute, but she is more than a handful. Instinctively realizing that I am the only non-cat person in the household, she makes sure to spend most of her time in my vicinity. And by vicinity I mean that the freaking thing is hanging out on my lap (and laptop) while I work, under my feet when I walk and on my head when I sleep, or rather when I try to sleep. Yes, she sleeps ON me. And her sandpaper tongue and purring wake me up at least once every morning before 5am. My wife believes that underneath my outward disdain for the little monster lies a soft spot in my heart for it. Baby, do not fool yourself: the answer is no, no, no.

My schedule right now:

6:00am	Get my butt off the bed, throw some water on my face
6:15am	Prepare breakfast
6:30am	Get the girls up
6:45am	Breakfast
7:15am	Clean the kitchen
7:45am	Shower and transform into a human being
8:15am	Work
12:15pm	Lunchtime
12:45pm	Clean the kitchen... again
1:15pm	Work
5:15pm	Start dinnertime routine
6:00pm	Clean the kitchen, prepare bath
6:30pm	Give the girls a bath, blow lots of bubbles
7:00pm	Book reading time
7:30pm	Put the girls to bed
7:45pm	Workout! Interleaved with cleaning the kitchen
8:20pm	Game development! :)
10:00pm	Get ready for bedtime :(
10:30pm	Lights out

If you look closely, you will notice the absence of any downtime or fun activities. Also absent is any time spent with my wife. Oops. I am only working up to 24 hours a week, which means sometimes those work hours during the day can be put to better use. Still, how on earth will I make this work? And how will I find a long-term part-time position? I need to solve this puzzle or it will be game over soon.

Uncertainty
It amazes me how used to uncertainty I have become lately. It is a far cry from the person I was just a year ago. Here I am, pursuing my dream and without a job (my part-time gig with my old company just ended), with almost no money left and without a hint of what lays ahead. Working part-time with my old company was actually a very interesting experience. Although it was a bit frustrating at first, soon I actually learned to let go of the mindset that made it so hard to work there before. Learning how to treat a job like just a job and not be so emotionally involved is definitely a new experience for me. I worked from home, which was great, and the rest of the time I spent beefing up my resume by studying some (non-game) technologies that I had wanted to try for a while. Man, I have not worked in an office in 5 months and a half! It has been super sweet. Of course, that may change now, I do not know. What I do know is that I will try my best to find work that will leave me enough time to pursue my true interests. It is all down to fate. I hope she treats me nicely. And I am really, really dying to resolve this situation so I can finally spend some time working on games. But paying the bills is priority #1, so I will have to conjure up some patience!

Meanwhile, my friend Jonathan has been cooking up a special one year game project. How is that going, Jonathan?! I hope I can figure out my situation to join him. Boy, uncertainty is a bitch.

No is the hardest word
The verdict is in. I will not be working for a game company. If I want to make games, I will have to make it on my own. There is something sort of comforting in not having a choice, but this is not easy for me by any means. The feedback I got from 2KBoston was awesome. Not that it did not hurt, but it is good to at least know why you have been rejected and what are the things that you need to get better at. And I will get better at them. Not to make it into the game industry, which is not going to happen anytime soon, but for myself. The awesome things that these people make, the way they work as a team and just how plainly freaking brilliant they are makes me admire them a lot. Those are all of the things I want to be, what I aspire to. It is just that I will have to somehow learn to be like them without working amongst them.

For now, there are more pressing things to worry about. The motivation to make games is intact. That will never leave me: it is just what I need to do and that is that. But I need to provide for my family, so I also need to do a lot of thinking to figure out how to do both at the same time. Currently, working part-time for my old employer is not going too bad. I do not know how long it will last, and I do not really enjoy it that much. There are so many things that are wrong with that company. But it affects me a lot less right now, or so I tell myself. And really, if I found a way to make this a long term arrangement and could work on indie games the rest of the time for a while, it would be absolutely great. So, I will postpone interviewing for jobs I do not want to do until the part-time contract is over. I will go with the flow.

Independent game developers are incredibly motivated people too, and perhaps more creative than their big company counterparts. But also extremely individualistic. It seems that every single one of them has The Great Idea and wants to work on it without any help. Many simply get bored with a project and drop it when it is close to being done. I think I am somewhere in between these two types of game developers. I would love to work on something that I care about, but I also would prefer to work cooperatively with a group of people that cares about it too. That is a very difficult trade-off. We will see what happens. I have no more plans, I do not know where I am going. I will do my best, work my hardest, put myself in the hands of fate and let go.

Boston
The 2KBoston interview was today. It is unbelievable how these things drain you. At the moment it did not feel very stressful or particularly hard. I avoided thinking about it at all until today, and that helped me control my nerves. But the adrenaline was running all day anyway, and now I am crashing and feel like I am getting sick. I have no idea how it went, really. Mostly it felt like I was just talking to a bunch of guys about games and stuff. There were a few questions here and there, but not the type with an obviously right or wrong answer. And I have to say, looking back at both the California and Boston interviews, that the people in the game industry seem to be a lot nicer than I expected. I can not tell you how many a-holes I have met at interviews with "normal" companies. These guys are very different. Also, I was pleasantly surprised at how the 2KBoston team approaches the division of work. My main concern about working big companies is that you get pigeonholed and can only work within the confines of your "expertise" area. I find that repulsing. Yes, I am a hopeless dreamer and I am in a LOT of trouble.

So, what do I expect? I do not know how much of this is just a defense mechanism to avoid getting hurt by their rejection, but I really am not thinking about it right now. I will allow myself to give it some thought if they come back with an offer. All of my energy right now is being put into exploring the possibility of working as an independent game programmer. I just need to work on games, and I need to believe that being "accepted" by a big game company is not a requirement for that. I know I have the skills and the desire to do it and I know that I will be happier working on that and that is all.

And now, I need some rest. Tonight we will watch a movie and relax. It is not something that we have done very often since I quit my job, believe it or not. And I will spend the rest of the week doing some work for my old company. It should not be too bad, and I will be doing it from home. It is almost like taking a payed break, but luckily not a very long one. Later!