3 ms·

Been coding professionally 37 years. Started as a self taught video game developer back in the Apple II, Commodore era. I loved it at first. University had me w

Been coding professionally 37 years. Started as a self taught video game developer back in the Apple II, Commodore era. I loved it at first. University had me working at a 3D graphics research lab with Mandelbrot himself, later on I was an OS developer for the 3DO and the first PlayStation. I worked on tons of high profile video games, and later transitioned to VFX for film, and worked on a ton of popular blockbusters. But the thing is: I love the work, but the management of software development is stone age voodoo and witch hunts, deceptive management, and psychological manipulation. Our career is create on demand on schedule. It's a recipe for stress and burnout. And I burned out. I returned to school, got an MBA (2nd in my class) and found that no one would hire me because my technology past was "too exciting" and "I'd never be happy with what they do". But that is exactly what I wanted! I even tried not including my previous "exciting" past work, but that read as either an unemployment hole or was figured out with a Google search of my name. I had to eat, so I returned to developing. I created a startup for my technology passion (www.3D-Avatar-Store.com : neural nets that 3D reconstruct people) and now work in facial recognition. All the things I love and hate about the career at still there. If I could do it all over again, I'd have thrown that temper tantrum at 17 and gone to animation school rather than a normal university.

lgieron 11y ago
> If I could do it all over again, I'd have thrown that temper tantrum at 17 and gone to animation school rather than a normal university. Is animation that different? It's also "create on demand on schedule".
- AI_Overlord 11y ago
  I believe he means that doing the MBA had no effect. Might as well try something interesting even if ending back in the same place.
- bsenftner 11y ago
  Animation tools do not go obsolete as quickly as software frameworks, so an expertise can develop that far exceeds the expertise we can develop because our OS/language/framework foundations turn over over three years. Plus, in animation one is dealing with story telling; much more satisfying than the typical software project.
dev360 11y ago
>>> Our career is create on demand on schedule. Spot on. Lately, I've started questioning if agile development isn't the worst thing that has happened to my overall happiness :) Waterfall had severe drawbacks, but in any reasonably sized organizations, you'd have a lot of time on your hands in between projects, QA testing and acceptance testing. I still miss being able to hack on small stuff on work time without anybody breathing down your neck.
- geebee 11y ago
  I wouldn't want to go back to waterfall, but my experiences with "on demand on schedule" (a very astute phrase, that) have caused me to realize it did have advantages. Good software usually doesn't result from massive upfront requirements analysis, design, and scheduling, and the iterate and repeat approach has huge benefits (provided you've done some planning about where you're going). However, waterfall did have one big advantage, in that it forces the business side to be clear about what they want. This is an impossible and unfair task, and of course the business side will need to change, amend, modify, limit and expand scope, and so forth. The advantage is that it's unfair to everyone. I know this will sound terribly cynical (and every time I say it, someone asks, not unreasonably, "why do you even work where you work!?"), but waterfall is a contract that puts everyone in breach. The all too common corruption of agile turns into a situation where only the developer is failing to make deadlines or deliver on promises, with a daily standup reminder of this fact. I'm only partly cynical here. Software is a big, confusing, chaotic mess, and that's ok, it's the nature of the craft. However, people, especially on the outside, get frustrated. I think that the business side perceives the impossibility of truly estimating and planning software better when they try (and fail) to do waterfall. It puts them in the position of coming to the developer or technical team and saying "sorry, I know we sent you those specs, but it isn't working, we need to change our minds." With (corrupted) "agile", they are cleared of this responsibility, and they can just show up every day (or every few days), think about nothing but a very specific task, ask the dev for a time estimate, and then wonder why it hasn't gotten done (yet). When agile works well, it's when the entire team is ok with measuring progress by the value of working software, released frequently. Those have been rare occasions for me, but that has been the best experience, the happiest one, for me. Corrupted agile has been the very worst. Waterfall is somewhere in the middle.
tim333 11y ago
Cool about page https://3d-avatar-store.com/about https://3d-avatar-store.com/about

lgieron 11y ago

> If I could do it all over again, I'd have thrown that temper tantrum at 17 and gone to animation school rather than a normal university. Is animation that different? It's also "create on demand on schedule".

AI_Overlord 11y ago
I believe he means that doing the MBA had no effect. Might as well try something interesting even if ending back in the same place.
bsenftner 11y ago
Animation tools do not go obsolete as quickly as software frameworks, so an expertise can develop that far exceeds the expertise we can develop because our OS/language/framework foundations turn over over three years. Plus, in animation one is dealing with story telling; much more satisfying than the typical software project.

dev360 11y ago

>>> Our career is create on demand on schedule. Spot on. Lately, I've started questioning if agile development isn't the worst thing that has happened to my overall happiness :) Waterfall had severe drawbacks, but in any reasonably sized organizations, you'd have a lot of time on your hands in between projects, QA testing and acceptance testing. I still miss being able to hack on small stuff on work time without anybody breathing down your neck.

geebee 11y ago
I wouldn't want to go back to waterfall, but my experiences with "on demand on schedule" (a very astute phrase, that) have caused me to realize it did have advantages. Good software usually doesn't result from massive upfront requirements analysis, design, and scheduling, and the iterate and repeat approach has huge benefits (provided you've done some planning about where you're going). However, waterfall did have one big advantage, in that it forces the business side to be clear about what they want. This is an impossible and unfair task, and of course the business side will need to change, amend, modify, limit and expand scope, and so forth. The advantage is that it's unfair to everyone. I know this will sound terribly cynical (and every time I say it, someone asks, not unreasonably, "why do you even work where you work!?"), but waterfall is a contract that puts everyone in breach. The all too common corruption of agile turns into a situation where only the developer is failing to make deadlines or deliver on promises, with a daily standup reminder of this fact. I'm only partly cynical here. Software is a big, confusing, chaotic mess, and that's ok, it's the nature of the craft. However, people, especially on the outside, get frustrated. I think that the business side perceives the impossibility of truly estimating and planning software better when they try (and fail) to do waterfall. It puts them in the position of coming to the developer or technical team and saying "sorry, I know we sent you those specs, but it isn't working, we need to change our minds." With (corrupted) "agile", they are cleared of this responsibility, and they can just show up every day (or every few days), think about nothing but a very specific task, ask the dev for a time estimate, and then wonder why it hasn't gotten done (yet). When agile works well, it's when the entire team is ok with measuring progress by the value of working software, released frequently. Those have been rare occasions for me, but that has been the best experience, the happiest one, for me. Corrupted agile has been the very worst. Waterfall is somewhere in the middle.

tim333 11y ago

Cool about page https://3d-avatar-store.com/about https://3d-avatar-store.com/about