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jadams's comments

jadams | 18 years ago | on: An Offer

60K seems like good money for an entry-level game programming job. I wouldn't count on any profit sharing or equity to be worth anything. If it is, great, but don't count on it.

The game industry is organized kind of like the music industry. Small studios are the bands to the publisher's record companies. Small studios (typically under-funded and over-ambitious) beg the big guys for money to work on projects. They often get screwed. Fight to get your name in the credits of any game you release. OTOH, many many games never get released.

Hm. Re-reading your post, it occurs to me that the startup may not be a game company.

jadams | 18 years ago | on: Paul Buchheit: Is there more to life than money?

"Love your work" is often just a way for startups and other small companies to extract unreasonable hours from you, with little payback.

I've done the startup thing. I've worked 9-5 er I mean 9-6, oh, wait it was more like 10-7:30. In the end, any job will require you to put up with things you don't like. Obviously, some jobs are a better fit than others.

I find the startup smugness naive.

jadams | 18 years ago | on: One Laptop Per Child - Give 1 Get 1 starts today

Nice. Just got two.

One for me, one for my Dad. He's 75, and still writing Mathematica notebooks and software to try to help educate people in developing countries. Rock on dad, this one's for you.

jadams | 18 years ago | on: How good were you at college?

Er, why do you care?

Make sure you do lots of extra-curricular work that you enjoy, and that's difficult. If your grades aren't great, you can show off projects to get jobs. If you want to make your own job, grow it out of your projects.

I failed out of school, and I'm an inconsistent employee at best, but I only know a couple of people who work harder than I do, and they're all business owners.

jadams | 18 years ago | on: How good were you at college?

Not very. Marks anywhere from 40% to 85%. I started when I was fifteen and failed out in my fourth (last) year.

Went back part-time about 5 years later, and failed a compilers course after I decided to forgo the group, write the compiler myself, but got sidetracked leading bots in assault mode on Unreal Tournament.

I really learned how to study about 2 years ago. Sigh.

Spending too much time playing games was a major contributing factor. OTOH I now work in game-development.

I occasionally think about going back so I can some day get a post-grad degree, but don't relish being some profs biatch.

I have a university library-card, read theses and research papers, and generally do whatever I damn well want, while getting paid and hatching product ideas.

jadams | 18 years ago | on: Software Is Hard

Actually software is so much easier than any other kind of physical engineering, that ridiculously small and inexperienced teams try to solve fiendishly complex problems. That's what makes it hard.

jadams | 19 years ago | on: Java faster than C

A pointer dereference can make all the difference in an inner loop. As usual, the answer is to profile, then to optimize.

No other dogma really applies.

jadams | 19 years ago | on: Seth's Blog: NOBS, the end of the MBA

I have a lot of respect for people who get college degrees.

An MBA is barely a college degree. Compare how much you learn in engineering, or the sciences, to what you learn in an MBA. It's all hype except the networking and resume-filtering.

I keep trying to convince my MBA friends to drop out and start something, but it seems to attract non-entrepreneurial people.

jadams | 19 years ago | on: Startup Meme: Ballhype is a Digg Clone for Sports Fans

Ooooh, unfortunate name. My wife deals with a lot of pharmaceutical names, so we've come up with the 13-year-old boy test for product names. If your product / service / company name would make a 13 year old boy snicker, then find another name.
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