Anybody with tips for beginning an evaluation for the purpose of choosing between future career and academic choices? As far as I can tell, my values are as commonly held as the next fellow:
Felt Purpose—A frequent occurrence of situations that demonstrate, in unique ways, the positive effects of my past actions. I see this as being somewhere in the middle of a continuum, where on one end I’d have only rational reason to believe my actions were doing good (effective charity), and on the other only the feeling as if I were doing good, but less rational evidence (environmental volunteerism?).
Utilitarian Benefit—I do need a fair bit of the left-hand-side of the above continuum. Even if no feeling might leave me depressed, too much feeling without enough rational evidence would leave me feeling hollow and wrong. I might also expect an increase in altruism through personal development that will push me further in the direction of effectiveness.
Academic Fun—The feeling of discovery, that my work is on not-commonly-trodden path, and the realized ability to make novel contribution.
Social Fun—Being surrounded by people with widely varying backgrounds, providing direct opportunity to partake in new social situations, a fun going beyond anthropological interest. Ability to make friends of an intelligent, kind, and uplifting sort.
Artistic Outlet—The feeling that long-held and heavily inspected aspects of my psyche are finding expression, probably combined with the feeling that this expression is understood by like minds, and that those minds are being helped by it.
Financial Freedom—Money for me is less about buying objects so much as the freedom to do new things. Like travelling and inviting as many people as I want. Also, income reflects my real economic output, which is valuable in itself, with the benefit that I can put the profit toward effective charities.
Of course, this listing of values is the beginning of my self-evaluation. What I’m less keen on is where to find a listing of my options. I am a 24 year old computer science graduate, currently in the video game industry as a pipeline and graphics engineer working on AAA titles (as opposed to independent games). I have saved up for myself about 80,000 USD, and increase this savings at roughly $40,000 per year at my current job. I would have only minor qualms about relocating (within the country). I view myself as having a high aptitude for learning but a very limited working set. I tend to solve hard problems very cleverly and thoroughly, but find it difficult to maintain work on multiple hard problems at the same time.
Current options I’ve considered:
Switch jobs in-industry to reclaim novelty, and/or achieve a pay increase (“Got to move sideways to move upward.”)
Switch jobs out-of-industry (with retained CS focus, perhaps) to broaden interests, continue learning.
Return to academia (What study? What university?)
Form a startup with already-formed acquaintances. (Make an indie game? Other solvable problems with my skillset?)
Combination of above.
??
Would love comments, although interestingly typing this out has itself been a great help.
The impression I get is that games programming is underpaid and overworked relative to other styles of programming, because games are fun and the resulting halo effect dramatically increases the labor supply for the games industry as a whole. You may be able to make more working on Excel than Halo, but that’s an guess from the outside with only a bit of anecdotal backing. (This may not be true for your particular skillset; my impression is that the primary consumers of intense graphics are games and animation firms.)
This also would trade off felt purpose- even if you have trouble convincing yourself games are worthwhile, you’ll have a harder time convincing yourself Excel is worthwhile- for income, which may not be the right move, and would depend on the actual numbers involved. (It might be that decreasing your felt purpose by 1 on a ten point scale is not be worth an additional $10k a year, but is worth an additional $50k a year, to use arbitrary numbers as an example.)
My understanding is that grad school in computer science is only worthwhile if you want to be a professor (which I don’t think will fit your criteria as well as working in industry) or you’re looking for co-founders. Another thing to consider along similar lines is software mentorship programs for undergraduate students (here’s one in Austin, I imagine there’s probably one in Seattle)- it’s a great way for you to meet people that might be cofounder material, and see how they work, as well as getting social fun (and possibly academic fun).
Anybody with tips for beginning an evaluation for the purpose of choosing between future career and academic choices? As far as I can tell, my values are as commonly held as the next fellow:
Felt Purpose—A frequent occurrence of situations that demonstrate, in unique ways, the positive effects of my past actions. I see this as being somewhere in the middle of a continuum, where on one end I’d have only rational reason to believe my actions were doing good (effective charity), and on the other only the feeling as if I were doing good, but less rational evidence (environmental volunteerism?).
Utilitarian Benefit—I do need a fair bit of the left-hand-side of the above continuum. Even if no feeling might leave me depressed, too much feeling without enough rational evidence would leave me feeling hollow and wrong. I might also expect an increase in altruism through personal development that will push me further in the direction of effectiveness.
Academic Fun—The feeling of discovery, that my work is on not-commonly-trodden path, and the realized ability to make novel contribution.
Social Fun—Being surrounded by people with widely varying backgrounds, providing direct opportunity to partake in new social situations, a fun going beyond anthropological interest. Ability to make friends of an intelligent, kind, and uplifting sort.
Artistic Outlet—The feeling that long-held and heavily inspected aspects of my psyche are finding expression, probably combined with the feeling that this expression is understood by like minds, and that those minds are being helped by it.
Financial Freedom—Money for me is less about buying objects so much as the freedom to do new things. Like travelling and inviting as many people as I want. Also, income reflects my real economic output, which is valuable in itself, with the benefit that I can put the profit toward effective charities.
Of course, this listing of values is the beginning of my self-evaluation. What I’m less keen on is where to find a listing of my options. I am a 24 year old computer science graduate, currently in the video game industry as a pipeline and graphics engineer working on AAA titles (as opposed to independent games). I have saved up for myself about 80,000 USD, and increase this savings at roughly $40,000 per year at my current job. I would have only minor qualms about relocating (within the country). I view myself as having a high aptitude for learning but a very limited working set. I tend to solve hard problems very cleverly and thoroughly, but find it difficult to maintain work on multiple hard problems at the same time.
Current options I’ve considered:
Switch jobs in-industry to reclaim novelty, and/or achieve a pay increase (“Got to move sideways to move upward.”)
Switch jobs out-of-industry (with retained CS focus, perhaps) to broaden interests, continue learning.
Return to academia (What study? What university?)
Form a startup with already-formed acquaintances. (Make an indie game? Other solvable problems with my skillset?)
Combination of above.
??
Would love comments, although interestingly typing this out has itself been a great help.
The impression I get is that games programming is underpaid and overworked relative to other styles of programming, because games are fun and the resulting halo effect dramatically increases the labor supply for the games industry as a whole. You may be able to make more working on Excel than Halo, but that’s an guess from the outside with only a bit of anecdotal backing. (This may not be true for your particular skillset; my impression is that the primary consumers of intense graphics are games and animation firms.)
This also would trade off felt purpose- even if you have trouble convincing yourself games are worthwhile, you’ll have a harder time convincing yourself Excel is worthwhile- for income, which may not be the right move, and would depend on the actual numbers involved. (It might be that decreasing your felt purpose by 1 on a ten point scale is not be worth an additional $10k a year, but is worth an additional $50k a year, to use arbitrary numbers as an example.)
My understanding is that grad school in computer science is only worthwhile if you want to be a professor (which I don’t think will fit your criteria as well as working in industry) or you’re looking for co-founders. Another thing to consider along similar lines is software mentorship programs for undergraduate students (here’s one in Austin, I imagine there’s probably one in Seattle)- it’s a great way for you to meet people that might be cofounder material, and see how they work, as well as getting social fun (and possibly academic fun).