
Game Programmer Quits Job To Sell Street Food, Doubles Salary - sushi
http://kotaku.com/game-programmer-quits-job-to-sell-street-food-doubles-864816450
======
Spooky23
This is just the upside of running your own business. Summer food trucks have
been a fixture in my city for decades around the state capitol. Some folks
make a great living doing it.

My favorite was an older couple operating a small hotdog stand... they made a
ridiculously delicious meatsauce and basically worked a 35 hour week in the
summer in the Northeast, and a similar schedule for a couple of months down
South.

They owned a nice house in city, were active in the church and community, and
were genuinely good people, who made a great living selling hotdogs, mostly to
government and Verizon workers.

But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain ==
slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get
sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game
programmer.

~~~
freyr
> But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain
> == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get
> sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game
> programmer.

Small business owners should be able to plan ahead for rainy days and the slow
season. Squirrels can do it. Humans can too.

~~~
potatolicious
Normal weather you can plan for, but there are outlier events that can still
wipe you out that's basically impossible to predict or prepare for.

Sandy in NYC flooded a great deal of infrastructure and left buildings without
power or communications for a long time. Large parts of downtown were
completely depopulated for weeks on end - that sort of event takes out
independent business owners, and you can't effectively plan for it.

For the most part food vending isn't so profitable that you can build up a
thick cushion for longer-term outages.

~~~
criley2
We commonly say that hackers should save up 3-6 months of floating money,
especially if they are in the self-employed or contracting/consulting world.
You never know when the next job is, you never know what could happen.

I don't see how being a small business operator of something like this is
different. The source of income is different, the wisdom is the same.

Hopefully they were able to set aside months worth of floating money, and even
weeks due to a natural disaster wouldn't wreck them.

~~~
MrFoof
> _We commonly say that hackers should save up 3-6 months of floating money_

It's not hackers, it's adults. This is called an "emergency fund". 3 to 6
months cash that's easy to access in the event of a genuine emergency,
including loss of work. Personal Finance 101.

~~~
shawn-furyan
Exactly, and if your monetary stream is inconsistent, then 3-6 months should
really be considered insufficient. You're shouldn't be regularly be eating
into your emergency fund.

~~~
TDL
Totally agree. I would say closer to a year, but some would disagree. Less
than 6 months is not enough, especially for freelance/consulting types.

~~~
marvin
Hell, make it at least a year. If you can't plan this far ahead, either your
expenses are too high or you're doing something that is not sustainable. At
least a year should be a long-term goal if you're doing something which is at
all exposed to random acts of God.

~~~
msandford
> At least a year should be a long-term goal if you're doing something which
> is at all exposed to random acts of God.

You mean like being a human being who is currently alive on the planet Earth?

------
JPKab
The streetfood business is awful in the long term. I hope he can quickly move
into a brick and mortar restaurant. Depending on the municipality, streetfood
vendors get nailed by all sorts of random fines, get shunted around to various
"permitted areas" which may or may not have lots of foot traffic, and the
worst part: the low barrier to entry. Competitors can come in super quickly,
and when they do, they can lower the total revenue by just a few percent for
all other vendors in an area and kill profitability.

~~~
simpleglider
He's in China, so that's less of an issue.

~~~
leishulang
you sir, do not know China.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Are those the Chengguang knocking at my cart?

------
parfe
I really dislike these type of stories. Basically saying "Investor buys lotto
ticket; outperforms DJIA by 5 billion percent." Or a more realistic example,
the stories that flow when gas prices spike. Like the person with the diesel
engine running off waste grease from restaurants.

It's nice this person found a profitable niche but the concept itself doesn't
lend itself to even linear growth.

~~~
Mikeb85
Obviously if an investor was that bad, they shouldn't be an investor.

Running a diesel engine off waste oil is a great idea, more people should be
doing it.

And no, food businesses don't scale well, but that's ok, because if you're
efficient, and your food is good, you can make a decent living for your whole
life.

~~~
pyre

      > Running a diesel engine off waste oil is
      > a great idea
    

Once enough people are doing it, it will be classified as a fuel and
politicians will be tripping over themselves to regulate and tax it. Also, at
some point there won't be enough waste grease to fuel the market, and the
prices of unused vegetable oil will go up possibly limiting its use for food.

~~~
vecinu
To add to this, has anyone actually tested the diesel engine to make sure it
meet all emission standards?

How safe are the fumes to be burned around cities? Remember when we found out
lead in gas was unsafe to be inhaled from exhaust pipes?

~~~
dubfan
From Wikipedia: "Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have successfully
completed the Health Effects Testing requirements (Tier I and Tier II) of the
Clean Air Act (1990)."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_biodie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_biodiesel)

Either way the tetraethyl lead situation was completely different. It was very
clear early on that the stuff was extremely toxic. Lead was already known to
be toxic, and workers at the refineries were dying left and right due to
exposure.

~~~
sliverstorm
Slow down there.

 _Biodiesel is meant to be used in standard diesel engines and is thus
distinct from the vegetable and waste oils..._

------
lazyjones
The title is slightly inaccurate / misleading. He quit his job and now runs
his own business _together with his girlfriend_ (i.e. they both work). Her
part in this is not negligible, perhaps she is the main asset of the company.

(I don't know why this gets modded down, but let me clarify: his old salary is
his personal income. The "doubled" salary is the income from his business,
apparently the combined salary of both of them - so it's misleading to say
that he "doubled his salary")

~~~
stackthatcode
Your point about having his girlfriend's labor as a huge contribution to his
venture is pretty correct. I don't think it down plays his success at all...
but it's certainly a significant contributor. If my wife would embrace my
madcap ideas and work on them full-force, it would be quite awesome.

------
JonSkeptic
For the TLDR crowd:

>We had no idea that we'd sell so much—we sold 100 shaobings in a day,
business is only getting better and better." said the programmer. "We already
earned enough for an apartment and now we're saving up more money. We hope to
get married next year.

The story has a happy ending. It's nice to see people, if not doing what they
love, then at least loving their newfound life. And that's the whole shaobing.

------
bearwithclaws
A nitpick about its translation of "Ma Nong" (码农): it doesn't mean "Number
Cruncher". Although the "Ma" is the same character with "Hao Ma" (number), in
describing the profession of programmer, it means "Code".

"Nong" means farmer ("Nong Fu"). It implies laborious work.

The closest translation to it should be "Code Farmer".

~~~
marme
also nong(农) is the character for migrant worker(农民) which are look down upon
in china as poor peasants who come to big city looking for work in manual
labor jobs. So it is like calling them a code peasant or something like that.
It is really meant as a self depreciating kind of insult. The character
nong(农) is always used to describe someone who does menial jobs like manual
labor or farming

~~~
scotty79
So it seems like it's Chinese equivalent of code monkey.

------
dak1
The numbers in the article don't quite add up. Shao bing is cheap food...
usually 1.5 or 2 renminbi, maybe 2.5.

If they're selling 100 a day, every day, at 2.5元/each, that would be 250元/day
and ~7500元/month.

7500元 is only about $1220.

So even if the article is only assuming revenue per month (and not profit),
they still have to increase their price or sales (or some combination) by 267%
to hit the $3,259/month mentioned.

If you're talking actual profit, which would be a more adequate comparison to
his previous salary, then it's probably closer to a factor of 5.

~~~
msvan
I used to buy shaobing with all the extras at my local street vendor, usually
added up to 8元 in 2012 Beijing prices.

------
CitizenKane
This will probably be buried, but this conversation needs some serious context
and the article title really needs to be changed to "Game Programmer Quits Job
To Sell Street Food, Doubles Salary in China".

Programmers are almost notoriously overworked and underpaid in China. Working
10 to 12 hours a day for $1000 a month is quite common. It's possible to make
more money working six hours a day for half a month working as an English
teacher.

The view in Eastern Asia is that a programmer is akin to a machine that you
hand a specification and code is produced and hence the low pay. You could
trade programming in China for a large number of other careers and double your
salary. It's not a particularly usual thing.

If you were to trade this for a software development position in the US or
Western Europe it's going to be a much different story. Culturally speaking,
it's seen much more like and engineer or craftsmen rather than a labourer.
Switching from a position like this in the US to selling food is much less
likely to see the same kind of return.

------
rdouble
Strangely enough, when I lived in Japan the guy who owned the takoyaki cart
near my office surprised me with perfect English and a Californian accent that
he had picked up as a game programmer in the USA in the 90s.

------
Mikeb85
I used to work in the food industry, in fine dining restaurants (which are
notorious for long hours, hard work, and mediocre pay).

Alot of my friends left to start food trucks, street stands, etc... Keep in
mind where I live (a cold part of Canada), you can realistically only sell
street food for 4-6 months out of the year. They would all make $60,000 to
$100,000 in a season, and now a few of them have brick and mortar restaurants
to their name.

I worked a street food stand for a festival awhile back, we made $3000 in a
day (split 2 ways).

Street food doesn't scale too well, and there are a whole slew of downsides,
but if you can figure out an efficient way to make tasty food, you can make a
lot of money and there's only a small barrier to starting out (likely less
start up cost in China).

------
ziko
Strangely enough, this idea has gone through my mind a couple of times, for a
completely different reasons though.

Mortality is closely connected with the hours we spend sitting each day. So
that's one reason.

The other one is that after working so hard and saving up enough for the rest
of your life, you need something that is much more stress-free. And selling
something so basic as food is exactly that.

~~~
Fargren
While sitting is correlated with mortality, I don't think it's been proved
that it causes it. I suspect the relation between the two is more complicated
than that.

As far as stress free... Interacting directly with many customers can be a
trying experience. I think it can be a lot more stressful than an office job
for many people.

~~~
ziko
I'm not saying you'll be dead in 5 years time if you spend more than 12 hours
a day sitting on a chair programming. But it adds up if you're doing that your
whole lifetime and neglect healthy food and physical activity. Of course it
differs from person to person but I think you see my point.

Regarding stress free comment... I guess it depends on the person in question.
Besides, when you finish for the day, you really finish for the day and that's
the most important thing. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

Smart people will put health before entrepreneurship, especially if it
prolongs their life and not just in the sense how many years will they have to
life.

------
Patrick_Devine
My first job out of college was writing Super Nintendo games in Vancouver. My
starting salary was $28.5K/year in 1994. Had I have been working 40 hour work
weeks, this would have been a reasonable salary, but for 80 hours a week
(which is closer to what I was working), it was less than McDonalds paid at
the time.

The difference is upwards mobility. It's hard moving up the corporate ladder
while flipping burgers. It was not so hard to turn the game programming job
into a lucrative career in software development.

~~~
maglos
Moving up might have been true in 94 but what about now? How soon are you
planning on retiring/dieing?

~~~
Patrick_Devine
Hopefully never. :-D

The video games industry is pretty difficult to cut your teeth in though. It's
highly technical, it has a ridiculous amount of competition and the software
produced has a very short shelf life. If you can make it there, chances are
you can make it anywhere.

------
joshuaellinger
The joke at Origin Systems (back in the day) was: "We train people for well-
paying jobs in the computer game industry."

It was funny on several levels... if you didn't work there.

~~~
angersock
RIP Origin bros. :(

EDIT: I assume that joke is funny in the same way that you'll find "The
Liberated Democratic Free People's Republic of Chernarus"?

~~~
joshuaellinger
Yep.

I never had the 'honor' of working there. One of my brother's did.

------
jval
I feel like there's a lot of articles like this, which kinda make it seem like
life is easy as an entrepreneur, or that successful business just happen. I
feel like this mentality is behind the explosion in early stage financings
relative to late stage financings.

I know that as an early stage founder that I am part of the problem, but I
often stop to think about whether what I'm doing is really that valuable or if
I should just join another company in growth phase. I think the 100th engineer
at Facebook would have had a lot more impact than most of the failed founders
today.

I just think that being a founder is a harsh experience that you have to learn
from many times over in order to get right, and that even when things go well
there's no guarantee of a money pot at the end of the rainbow. I think you
really need to have motivations other than cash to truly convince yourself
that what you're working on is worth waking up for every day.

I think if you have that motivation inside you then being a founder is a great
experience. Thinking you should just leave your job for an instant moneypot is
just silly though, IMHO.

~~~
shellehs
Nope. See this Programmers salary report :

[http://www.programmer.com.cn/14918/](http://www.programmer.com.cn/14918/)

CNY 3k - 5k , that means USD 400 - 800.

Nearly 1/5 programmers in China live in this salary.

What USD 500 can buy in America?

------
SeanDav
The game programming industry is pretty well known as being the "sweat shops"
of the tech industry. Not at all surprised about this story.

------
thenomad
"The biggest asset any businessman can have is a hungry crowd."

A rare example of an adage which still works when applied literally.

------
suyash
The guy should open more street food stalls and scale this business if it is
so profitable.

~~~
lrobb
Sounds like the parable of the mexican fisherman:

An executive from America was standing at the pier of a Mexican village,
taking a much needed vacation. It was his first in more than 10 years. He
noticed a small boat docked with just one fisherman on board. Inside the small
boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The executive complimented the
Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to
catch them.

The fisherman replied, “only a little while.”

The executive then asked, “why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more
fish?”

The fisherman replied, “I have enough to support my family for a little
while.”

The executive then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my
children, take siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening
where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

The executive scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should
spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the
proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you
would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a
middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your
own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You
would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico
City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding
enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then?”

The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right
you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become
very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions.. Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing
village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take
siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you
could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

~~~
IanCal
The fisherman laughed, and a few years later there was a shortage of fish, and
his family suffered having not built up any reserves of money or assets.

The parable of the fisherman is basically the Ant and the Grasshopper told up
until some time before winter.

Exaggerated obviously, but then parables always are, that's why they are
almost useless.

~~~
vacri
You forgot to mention the embezzlement that wiped the businessman out after
all those years of hard work.

------
bonede
wtf? 20k a month just by selling 'shaobing'. This is just another shitty
marketing 'news' for a MMO called "Yuan zheng"[1]
[1][http://yz.q1.com/](http://yz.q1.com/)

~~~
maglos
It's rare for some to share their earnings, it invites competition.

------
anothermouse
I don't know why so many people are saying that it needs to be made clear that
this is in China, and that it doesn't apply elsewhere.

I'm a programmer in Finance in London, and a good day rate for a Senior
contractor is 600GBP/day. I have a good friend who started out doing "grilled
chorizo in a ciabatta bun" at a London market, and easily made 1000GBP his
first day. Now he uses employees to man that stall, and has moved on to the
next idea, at a different locations doing something different to allow him to
do something that appeals during different seasons. By now I imagine he is
easily making double what I do.

------
tocomment
What are other promising businesses programmers in the US can start?

~~~
pilom
Cutting spending and keeping my programming job instead of starting a new
business has worked out really well for me. Passive investing of my savings
earns me $500/month and I don't have to do any work at all. Other options for
those outside of SV is landlording. In some mid-west cities you can earn over
$10,000/year/house after all taxes and expenses (including saving for long
term expenses like roofs).

Not exactly traditional small businesses, but honestly, both options have much
higher probability of success (or at least not losing all of your money like
restaurants)

~~~
aestra
Landlording can be very profitable in some areas or a huge money pit in some
areas. My parents did it for years and barely broke even, or lost a ton of
money if you include labor costs.

Plus you get people waking you up in the middle of the night when they lock
themselves out.

~~~
pilom
I agree entirely with the fact that real estate it is very hit or miss. But
worst case scenario (assuming you have insurance) is you have to sell the
house at a depressed price and take a loss on your time. With a restaurant
(where 50%+ are out of business in 3 years) you rent the space, lose all the
money you spent on rent, and on food and on employees etc. Very easy to lose
everything with a restaurant, but you need to be fairly unlucky to loose more
than you put into a house (i.e. you bought in 2007)

That being said, saving lots of money and living off of dividends is the way
to go.

~~~
aestra
Assuming you can find a buyer for the house. My parents could absolutely not
sell theirs, there was no buyer, because anyone could see there was no money
to be made. You need a buyer to sell.

------
netcan
The game programmer part is a bit of a juxtaposition.

Hearing that a good living can be made selling traditional street food in
China is interesting though. That's some sort of sign.

~~~
__--__
These kinds of stories pop up every so often. There was one in '05 about a
programmer who became a bicycle messenger in SF[1]. I think as programmers, we
often get so absorbed in our own thing that we don't see there's a world of
opportunity outside of programming work.

[1]
[http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548](http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548)

------
lcedp
Well, as saying goes: if you want different result, try something new.

Also, if you click the Chinese link in the article you'll find a video.

------
CurtMonash
If the young woman in the pictures is the girlfriend mentioned as part of the
deal, I understand his choice even better.

------
INTPenis
I know a programmer who quit his job and became a janitor, apparently doubled
his happiness.

Just because you have the logical mind for something does not mean it will
make you happy. I often feel like I lack the logical mind for working in IT
but I freaking LOVE the work.

------
seivan
This is what happens when our field is overrun with MBA's and other scum.

------
tracyma
As a game developer in china, We use this story to self-mockery.We work more
than 50 hours a week, without girlfriend, without high pay.But We know one day
When we has to leave we have another choice. He he~

------
mvkel
But does he double his net income?

------
knv
Does she/he really like street food better? If so all the best to him/her.

------
jfb
I don't like to think about what I'd do for a good shaobing in Toronto.

------
scourgen
Hey guys, It's just an advertisement

------
mattdeboard
Reminds me of the story behind zerocater

------
wxspll
It's just an ad, not fact.

------
itsbpk
guess he is better at cooking than programming.

------
LekkoscPiwa
The average age of the US farmer is 58. In Japan it is 68. There is less and
less land available for agriculture. Less and less fresh water (agriculture
uses 90% of fresh water in the US). The weather gets worse by the year to
produce food. On the other hand there are more and more people in the world.
So supply is diminishing while demand is high. That's why food is more and
more expensive almost every quarter.

All these smart folks at Stanford are wasting their time studying IT, law or
finance. Too much competition. Study agriculture, be rich. Farmers are going
to drive Maserati's in the future not successful software developers or Wall
Street crowd.

~~~
nrb
Or, the engineers and developers make the hardware and software that is
inevitably replacing all human labor in agriculture.

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
An IT startup dealing with agriculture could be successful. There are these
companies like the one that produces water purification systems and chemicals
in China that are just pure gold to invest in. (Chinese have horrible,
horrible water quality even for the purposes of agriculture). As China is
becoming richer and richer doing basic stuff like this may turn out to be much
better place to be than spending years competing for VC money with 10% chances
of success.

~~~
pnathan
Climate Corp in Seattle does ag insurance with Clojure. Pretty cool people.

