Yeah. BigCo bureaucracy and management is killing me. If you don't mind me asking, what smaller company did you go to, or what does smaller company do?
"Try something you dreamed of doing as a kid. You were more honest with yourself as a kid."
Don't think I agree with the socio economic commentary a whole lot - after all, the capitalism MMO is what brought me my childhood dreams - but the above statement is deeply true. It guided me for part of my career. But I lost my way.
It's not just commentary. I'm a game developer (http://davetaylor.name). I assure you, capitalism + our national laws + the international treaties our nations have agreed to is a game. It's the Old Game.
Catch is, the rules (laws) of the Old Game are such a complex mess that we have to hire expensive lawyers at hundreds of dollars an hour just to interpret slivers of the rules that apply to our particular situations. It's not fair to those still at level 1 (in poverty) still learning to play the game and who can't afford to pay people just to know the rules. Even at level 100 (extreme wealth), no one likes that they have to hire armies of attourneys just to protect themselves from being the targets of lawsuits.
This is poor game design. We learned years ago that players don't read manuals. That's why games don't come with them anymore. We learned they can't even stand tutorials. What they want is intuitive gameplay and gentle pacing, so that their minds aren't blown with the whole wad at once, and so that they can get a sense of steady progression and accomplishment. That's definitely not what the Old Game has to offer today. Perhaps it once did, but not anymore.
Today, the Old Game essentially tells us: "Congratulations. You've graduated high school. Maybe. Now, the rules moving forward are... incomprehensible. Don't suppose you have a few law degrees? Oh no, that's right. High school. OK. Better get a job, or you'll be homeless and will starve. Cool? Oh, unless you're rich, in which case, don't worry about it. You have no obligations." You haven't played any games like that because they wouldn't be compelling.
Worse, the Old Game has evolved to a point where it now tries to place a monetary value on all things. Its precept is that all your problems can be solved with money. Need new laws? Spend money on lobbyists. Need new politicians? Spend money on their campaigns. Need a date? Spend money on a dating service. Need excitement? Spend money on travel. Need new cloud infrastructure? Spend money on coders.
What modern game has a single currency that satisfies all your desires? It's hard to think of one, isn't it? That's not by accident. I assure you, we tried it. It doesn't work. We discovered empirically that money just isn't that satisfying. You need things that can't be bought, like random loot drops, level ups, status, new goals, friends, exploration, surprises, emergent behaviours, challenges, defeats, victories, romance, and more. We've even learned the importance of breaks. Too much is too much.
The Old Game is losing its competitiveness. It would have flopped long ago if it were not for the fact that playing it is mandatory. You need it to clothe yourself, eat, shelter yourself, and receive medical treatment to not die.
But read that list of items more carefully. We have 3D printers marching steadily towards finer-grained resolutions with more materials and can now build just about whatever we need, even tools, homes, and clothes. We have the ability to automate the gathering of our own energy, the ability to grow our own food (you can eat healthier with a fish tank and some algae than you can visiting most supermarkets now), the ability to diagnose and even treat ourselves.
The costs of living are plummeting. We are approaching autonomy. These things subvert capitalism, because they subvert your need to change the spin of more magnetic domains on your bank's hard drive.
You are in an incredibly enviable position. You have an enormous amount of potential excess income, probably a decent savings, and certainly a valuable skill set (for now- you know you can already feel the competitive heat from younger, cheaper minds than yours). You can continue to play the Old Game while scaling back your dependency on it so that you can transition to a new game of your own choosing.
I get that it's frightening, but I assure you, it's mostly your addiction to money that makes it frightening. The Old Game certainly hasn't kept up with the times, but it does know how to addict its players, and it keeps us playing by frightening us with scary potential consequences if we stop playing it.
I don't want to trivialize the risk, but to put it in context, the outcome is the same for all of us. Game over is death. You don't lose or win. There's no high score or prize. All we can do is decide what games we want to play getting there.
I don't recommend playing the Old Game anymore than you absolutely have to. It's just not well designed.
Thank you everyone for all the amazing feedback. It's so helpful after you get stuck in your own head with your thoughts. Very good stuff to ruminate on here.
I probably should have mentioned for context - for people recommending radical alterations to my life, or wondering why I'm not on the verge of retiring - I'm a divorced dad. I have my kiddo 50% of the time and still write his mom large checks every month. So, no spirit quests for me nor moving somewhere cheaper, etc.
Just saw this, but I don't see it as an excuse for not travelling.
I also have a son in Hungary, still I left to Japan when he was 3.
I'm also writing checks (not too large ones from my perspective, but still...) We were not married ever though, neither did we permanently live together.
It was 7 years ago. I've never been back. During this time we found out he has Asperger's syndrome, but I just can't regret leaving them.
I married a 38rys old Thai lady ~5yrs ago; I'm 37. She has a daughter (15yrs old) studying in Thailand and visiting us in Hong Kong whenever she has a school holiday.
Before that we worked in Singapore and she visited us there. While I regret we can't live together, it's not sin not to. You should not treat it as such a hard constraint.
"I have my kiddo 50% of the time" cries for some clarification.
1, Does it mean you _have to_ take care of him every second day, week, month or year?
2, Or maybe - knowing the ridiculous laws - it's actually just the grace of the jury that you _can_ see him/her, _if_ you want?
3, Or is it the other way around that your ex-wife is actually not capable of taking care of the kid, _but_ the jury still granted her 50% of the time?
If the kid's age permits, you should bring him/her with you to Thailand when school holiday kicks in.
I don't see how your self-sacrifice is really beneficial to anyone really...
Were you born to get tanked with your life after all that effort you put into what's your passion was?
All the potential you carry in yourself can help not just your kid but many more people on the long term, young or old.
Having a break of a month or 2 can only be beneficial to your whole family.
Not sure if I'm jaded or not - just feel like my internal compass is on the fritz. Nothing is singing to me. I think plenty of products are cool, sure (like - slack.com for example - love it) - but I wonder - what will I learn there? What new problem will I be able to solve??
Even if I'm not hands-on at work, I still dabble with new tech at home. I've always had side projects at home in my spare time. I don't trust developers that don't.
Thanks for your thoughts. I look back on a lot of the random jumping around I did earlier in my career - and I never thought twice about it! I always did what interested me and it was never about money, or wondering what my "career arc" would look like. And yeah, if I had tried to "climb" I might have been better off, but instead I have some cool accomplishments under my belt and I'm proud of my work and have learned a lot. Now, I guess it's unsurprising in the late 30's, to be thinking - will this sustain/increase my employability, will this be sufficient for my retirement, etc -- none of the carefree exploration I used to do on a whim. I'm glad you were able to shake yourself out of a rut, even if it was a golden rut.
Maybe visit Thailand...?
And I don't mean a "Hangout" style, Bangkok only trip, but more like travel across, see all ends of it, observe the people and their attitude towards life, look into what do they consider problems... Then Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, India if you got used to Thailand.
It's really transformative. (while not even very expensive)
The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia is too easy; too many people speak (some kind of) English there.
Don't know how you can conclude what I have in my bank account, and you're way off. Sorry :(
Moreover, not sure how having money in your bank account helps with professional ennui. I don't want to take a trip, I don't want to take cooking lessons. I want meaningful work.
You just cast some light on a major misunderstanding.
It's irrelevant whether would you like to take a trip or not.
It's like medicine.
Many of us know how it works.
You should try taking it even if you don't feel the urge.
Based on what you said so far, it's very likely to be effective.
For example I went on a 5 weeks, inter-Europe trip in 2004 with MPlayer A'rpi when he was heart broken. All of my friends said I'm crazy to recommend such a remedy, but it worked! :) We were ~27yrs old only though...
I would be delighted to talk about meaningful work with you.
I see soooo many problems in the world unsolved... many just in software land.
The amount of knowledge required to evoke the help of hardware of software to solve real world problems is just ridiculous and very prohibitive for people who otherwise understand the problem domain well and have probably good ideas for solutions.
We will never know though whether their ideas were good solutions or not, because it's just beyond their capacity to learn all that bullshit we call "programming" nowadays.
Rebol, the http://easiestprogramminglanguage.com/ showed a possible direction.
A friend of mine is pursuing that direction by writing a modern incarnation http://www.red-lang.org/
He gave up his job, retreated from Paris to Montenegro and in the past 3 years he was living on donations, then just moved to Beijing recently for incubation at InnovationWorks. He is your age too...
Good advice, I took it about 6 years ago, and now I've got a great kiddo sleeping one room over from me. We had a pretty awesome wiffle bat sword fight tonight :)
