> Going from zero to software engineer might require enrolling in a boot camp that can cost about $16,000.
I'll be honest, part of me hurts a little realizing that I've dumped so much of my life into a career that so many people think of as being so rudimentary. Then again, these people spent at least as much time learning to perform for peanuts, and they watch as manufactured pop stars who can barely sing make millions.
If you've been making tech money then: leave whatever expensive-ass city you're living in, there are very few full-time artists who can afford to live in the San Francisco Bay any more. Work remotely in your tech job for a year or so, build up several years of runway, because going from "I guess I like to draw" to "I draw good enough that people are willing to pay me for my art, and enough of an audience that I can pay my rent doing this" is gonna take at least five years of it being your full-time job.
If you have a significant other who is also making tech money and is willing to keep doing it, this will be easier.
Get a Patreon or similar up as soon as possible. "Patreon paid for my drink at the artist meetup!" is a milestone worth celebrating as much as "Patreon paid all my bills this month with money to spare!".
If you are interested in this sort of thing, I've observed that indie videogame development offers quite a lot of opportunity to jump between code and art for people with the right skillsets. I also suspect that there's a lot of freelance gigs that would offer the same, since a lot of people seem to think that "Unity Developer" or "Unreal Developer" should be able to handle both graphics and code.
Not exactly, but I'm working on something that I hope enables independent musicians just a little bit. TBD.
That said, I'm one of those artists who was consumed by tech because I have a lifelong interest in computers. Working on an out myself. Life's short, and it's really happening. My patience for scrums and HR-organized slack #donut meetings is waning. That's not the life I enjoy living, or want to promote to my possible children.
If you're an artist, I recommend doing research into grants. I'm from Canada where our current federal government improved the grant system recently—but there are also third party organizations that offer them as well. They are attainable.
It is work to get them, and you have responsibilities—like tracking valid expenses, some deliverables, and so on. But if it enables you to spend more time on art and less time on building half-baked software projects for cynical gold-rush pursuants (allow me my facetious remarks) then it's worth it. They're not going to pay your entire way, but they will help subsidize expenses for materials, studio time, promotion and marketing, exhibits and concerts, and so on.
Sorta; the Gray Area Foundation [0] in San Francisco is a great organization that hosts and supports artistic projects that incorporate/interact with/comment on technology and society. They run courses on creative coding and host exhibitions and performances throughout the year. Their biggest event each year is the Gray Area Festival [1], which brings together an incredible collection of tech-adjacent creatives, artists and thinkers for a week of great talks, workshops and events. One of the best and most inspiring conferences I've ever been fortunate to attend.
Next time you're at Trader Joe's just ask the cashier about it on the way out, if they aren't an artist they'll certainly know someone in the store who is.
Kidding (sort of) aside, I've known a surprisingly large number of professional artists and all of them had a primary source of income that had a much smaller salary than a software engineer. None of them could subsist entirely from art.
It's an unfortunate reality that artists, unless they're focused on something "practical" like wedding photography, really can barely scrape by as a career, and that nearly always includes having a part time job and a partner with full time income to make it even possible. Even people like professional symphony musicians often need an extra job to get by.
If you're in tech and interested in the arts I would start making art in the evenings. If you have a laid back tech job you should have plenty of time to devote to what you're interested in and will have an income, even at a low paying tech job, that will make you the perpetual envy of the artist friends you make along the way.
tl;dr there is no such thing as a "career" in art. If you're passionate about art, just start making it.
Generative art is really gaining a lot of recognition in the NFT space. It doesn't have to be on chains like Ethereum either. Fxhash is a generative art marketplace on Tezos. I encourage you to check it out and play with it. The communities exist mostly on Twitter and Discord and are very supportive.
First off, I'd recommend you explore art on a personal level before you start looking to apply it outwardly. What mediums do you like? What's your style? Where does your inner drive to make art come from?
Art can be incredibly rewarding just doing it for yourself, and from my perspective I'd find it hard to have an artist career without first knowing my own artistic expression.
I'd also be interested in figuring out how I can utilize my tech experience towards a more artistic kind of career. I paint outside of my day job and I wish I could bring the things I love about it, open-ended creativity, curiosity, etc, to my career.
The straightforward path has existed for most of human history:
Step 1: make art
Step 2: don't starve
Big difference between tech careers and art careers is you probably won't find anyone to hire you to be an artist, it's more entrepreneurial than that.
You also can't decide today, with no prior training, that you'd like to be in Broadway musicals, do a workshop or two and then get your first gig. The career change arrow doesn't point both ways even close to equally.
Continuing to be off-topic: if you're considering a change, I'll tell you from my personal experience as a creative type turned dev - devving for a living, stressful as it is, is massively less stressful than doing art.
Trying to be creative on demand is very difficult in the best of scenarios, and trying to be creative on demand when your (shitty) income relies on it is massively more so.
Definitely not the same thing as art, but as far as creative entertainment goes, it would seem like nearly every major tech lifestyle YouTuber whose main focus is "Here's what it's like to work as a SWE/at FAANG" is retiring from tech to become full time YouTubers.
There seems to be a recurring sentiment in the comments that we're losing artists to tech, but you know what we lose even more artists to? Commercial art.
Earning a living as an artist is tough. Most won't get their work seen in a gallery, so they turn to commercial art or graphic design. Now they learn to create art for a client that fits a brief. They do this every day for years until they lose the ability to make art for themselves. I know this happens, because it happened to me.
Learning to code was the best career decision I ever made. I now make significantly more money than I did before, which enables me to fund my own art projects on the side. I'm learning to get back in touch with why I wanted to make art in the first place. Like it or not, we all need to earn a living. In my opinion, doing so in an art-adjacent field is not somehow morally better than doing so in tech.
Agreed. Personally, it's depressing that everyone's getting into software, increasing my competition. Societally, it's depressing that people think art is a viable career unless they don't need to care about making money.
Why? Art simply doesn't pay, by and large; it is, if perhaps to variable extents, a recreational pursuit as opposed to a viable profession. So it's best when people who are good at art also have other skills that they can use to get an income and further their hobby.
In the first 4 paragraphs alone the word 'software engineer' appeared 4 times. I really wonder if some of these are actual engineers, or whether the use of that word has been inflated to accommodate people who _aren't_ actually engineers.
I really don't expect most of the purported 'artists' to be actually have a substantial career in tech at all, especially if they are purely creatively-minded, and are not inclined to put in the long hours required for the technical finesse and study of writing (good) code.
You realize that many many many artist put in incredibly long and focused hours for their craft? Some Artist are very well suited for coding work, they are mentally flexible and habe high order abstraction, they can focus and keep complex structures/concepts visualized mentally and are able to make nobel decisions when problem solving (there was just an article here about how their neural pathways differ from most people).
The technical finess you speak of is only a matter of time and study, which anyone can eventually gather with hard work.
That being said, engineer is being used too broadly.
Math is where most artist fall short from the typical CS graduate, but basic math will get you for.
The demoscene has plenty of "artists who code", dating back literally decades. https://www.pouet.net I really hope this isn't just some sort of lame ripoff effort, and instead will honestly try to uphold and proceed further from that kind of remarkable history.
It's something different and has nothing to do with code as art or any of those demoscene values. It's an effort to get starving artists, often from the performing arts, to sling JavaScript for megacorps so they can eat.
I've worked with a bunch of bootcampers at a previous job.
I don't have good things to say.
Even the good bootcamp developers still required way more oversight than a typical developer.
They also made our business analyst and UI/UX team pretty angry because it was clear they wanted to do more than just be developers.
I also think a 4 software engineering degree is a waste of time.
There has got to be a better middle ground like a 2 year course that teaches better fundamentals than a bootcamp, and is far more practical than a typical university degree.
I wonder what bootcamps they recommend for their mentees to attend. Having just had a VERY negative experience at a well-regarded bootcamp, I struggle to imagine that their students end up with happy outcomes for their money.
Yea I just finished interviewing 8+ bootcamp developers for position. They really struggled, where I'm thinking bootcamps have adopted the same financial model as those really scammy for profit colleges.
Please keep doing art. We need you so much more than another person slinging Javascript for adtech companies. Or at the very least go into design. Great designers can absolutely make or break a project, and don't need to know a single line of code.
> companies essentially do anything to fill jobs and devalue our work
what on earth are you talking about?
I joined the industry 15 years ago after getting a BA in theology. The history of software creation as job has never been a gated, guild-like professional one.
Everyone has always been able to become a console jockey.
[+] [-] mywittyname|4 years ago|reply
I'll be honest, part of me hurts a little realizing that I've dumped so much of my life into a career that so many people think of as being so rudimentary. Then again, these people spent at least as much time learning to perform for peanuts, and they watch as manufactured pop stars who can barely sing make millions.
[+] [-] faitswulff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] paskozdilar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robotburrito|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starwind|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drusepth|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egypturnash|4 years ago|reply
If you have a significant other who is also making tech money and is willing to keep doing it, this will be easier.
Get a Patreon or similar up as soon as possible. "Patreon paid for my drink at the artist meetup!" is a milestone worth celebrating as much as "Patreon paid all my bills this month with money to spare!".
[+] [-] TrevorJ|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 52-6F-62|4 years ago|reply
That said, I'm one of those artists who was consumed by tech because I have a lifelong interest in computers. Working on an out myself. Life's short, and it's really happening. My patience for scrums and HR-organized slack #donut meetings is waning. That's not the life I enjoy living, or want to promote to my possible children.
If you're an artist, I recommend doing research into grants. I'm from Canada where our current federal government improved the grant system recently—but there are also third party organizations that offer them as well. They are attainable.
It is work to get them, and you have responsibilities—like tracking valid expenses, some deliverables, and so on. But if it enables you to spend more time on art and less time on building half-baked software projects for cynical gold-rush pursuants (allow me my facetious remarks) then it's worth it. They're not going to pay your entire way, but they will help subsidize expenses for materials, studio time, promotion and marketing, exhibits and concerts, and so on.
[+] [-] pimlottc|4 years ago|reply
0: https://grayarea.org/
1: https://grayareafestival.io/
[+] [-] time_to_smile|4 years ago|reply
Kidding (sort of) aside, I've known a surprisingly large number of professional artists and all of them had a primary source of income that had a much smaller salary than a software engineer. None of them could subsist entirely from art.
It's an unfortunate reality that artists, unless they're focused on something "practical" like wedding photography, really can barely scrape by as a career, and that nearly always includes having a part time job and a partner with full time income to make it even possible. Even people like professional symphony musicians often need an extra job to get by.
If you're in tech and interested in the arts I would start making art in the evenings. If you have a laid back tech job you should have plenty of time to devote to what you're interested in and will have an income, even at a low paying tech job, that will make you the perpetual envy of the artist friends you make along the way.
tl;dr there is no such thing as a "career" in art. If you're passionate about art, just start making it.
[+] [-] twox2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prions|4 years ago|reply
Art can be incredibly rewarding just doing it for yourself, and from my perspective I'd find it hard to have an artist career without first knowing my own artistic expression.
I'd also be interested in figuring out how I can utilize my tech experience towards a more artistic kind of career. I paint outside of my day job and I wish I could bring the things I love about it, open-ended creativity, curiosity, etc, to my career.
[+] [-] adbachman|4 years ago|reply
You also can't decide today, with no prior training, that you'd like to be in Broadway musicals, do a workshop or two and then get your first gig. The career change arrow doesn't point both ways even close to equally.
[+] [-] tinycabbage|4 years ago|reply
Trying to be creative on demand is very difficult in the best of scenarios, and trying to be creative on demand when your (shitty) income relies on it is massively more so.
[+] [-] noahbradley|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apocryphon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] midiguy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amon22|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dorkwood|4 years ago|reply
Earning a living as an artist is tough. Most won't get their work seen in a gallery, so they turn to commercial art or graphic design. Now they learn to create art for a client that fits a brief. They do this every day for years until they lose the ability to make art for themselves. I know this happens, because it happened to me.
Learning to code was the best career decision I ever made. I now make significantly more money than I did before, which enables me to fund my own art projects on the side. I'm learning to get back in touch with why I wanted to make art in the first place. Like it or not, we all need to earn a living. In my opinion, doing so in an art-adjacent field is not somehow morally better than doing so in tech.
[+] [-] silicon2401|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zozbot234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knighthack|4 years ago|reply
I really don't expect most of the purported 'artists' to be actually have a substantial career in tech at all, especially if they are purely creatively-minded, and are not inclined to put in the long hours required for the technical finesse and study of writing (good) code.
[+] [-] pibechorro|4 years ago|reply
The technical finess you speak of is only a matter of time and study, which anyone can eventually gather with hard work.
That being said, engineer is being used too broadly.
Math is where most artist fall short from the typical CS graduate, but basic math will get you for.
[+] [-] zozbot234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuckinhell|4 years ago|reply
I also think a 4 software engineering degree is a waste of time. There has got to be a better middle ground like a 2 year course that teaches better fundamentals than a bootcamp, and is far more practical than a typical university degree.
[+] [-] kritiko|4 years ago|reply
This seems like a good problem.
[+] [-] legerdemain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuckinhell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramesh31|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] semitones|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] murderfs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ushakov|4 years ago|reply
instead of creating utopia, companies are doing anything to fill jobs and devalue our work
what are we folks gonna do when everyone turns into a js-monkey and we get paid pennies? maybe create art to entertain them?
[+] [-] adbachman|4 years ago|reply
what on earth are you talking about?
I joined the industry 15 years ago after getting a BA in theology. The history of software creation as job has never been a gated, guild-like professional one.
Everyone has always been able to become a console jockey.