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I feel like I am in a decently unique situation where I learned C++ throughout my preteens and teens, and got a job straight out of high school writing C++ for

I feel like I am in a decently unique situation where I learned C++ throughout my preteens and teens, and got a job straight out of high school writing C++ for Unreal Engine applications. Most of the C++ jobs I see when I look are things that I just honestly do not want to do. I don't really mind working with the language and wouldn't mind sticking with it. But I don't want to work on financial software, as I don't want to mess with people's money. I work in a game development context right now, and may for the foreseeable future, but I also know that I get paid less than others at my same level in a different context. That part hurts with the way inflation has been lately. I think in the end, those factors drive me away from trying to further my career in C++ and instead move toward something that would at least pay the bills in the future. I didn't start with C++ and could pivot to other languages and stacks as needed. But it would be a bit painful to know that I put a lot of time into this language to just not use it and let the experience rot. This also doesn't factor in the numerous jobs that I have seen postings for that I am not qualified for, according to their description. It's hard to become a Senior C++ Engineer when no one is hiring a Junior to Mid C++ Engineer. Probably part of the lack of "talent" is not wanting to invest in cultivating that talent.

Justsignedup 4y ago
yeah im starting to get into the mindset of "fuck doing what you love, just get hobbies" Ultimately, working in these high paying jobs lets you have a lot of great hobbies and enjoy life. Get a job with a decent work-life balance, and use the rarity of your skillset to make the crazy cash, retire early, make your own game company if you want.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  I think both ends of that spectrum are fine. If you really do mostly love your work, and you can afford necessities, then that is just as good as getting paid oodles to do a job you don't hate that gives you time and money to do exactly what you love. The traps are convincing yourself you love your job more than you actually do, or that you don't hate your golden handcuff job and the hours won't always be this crazy...
  - Justsignedup 4y ago
    And paying the opportunity costs. "Oh man I love working on this game, surely someone will recognize me" all the while putting major life things on hold, like having a kid, or securing your future. I know a guy who LOVES his job/company and knows he's underpaid. But he's set. Has zero plans on having kids. Has his own place. 100% secure. So he can afford to do whatever. But many who have bigger goals in this economy have to follow the money.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Google, Amazon, & Microsoft are nearly always hiring talented C++ engineers. So you're not limited to finance. Quite the opposite. I'd be surprised if the majority of C++ jobs had anything to do with finance.
- danuker 4y ago
  Too bad Google, Amazon, & Microsoft just shrank their workforces in response to the no-longer-zero interest rate.
- tinfoilboy 4y ago
  Only finance and game dev was a little bit of hyperbole. I do see other jobs for like aerospace or GIS, at least looking at job postings on LinkedIn. Though I most assuredly do not have the requisite skills outside of just C++ to work in those fields. I think big tech has the same issue where they don’t want to cultivate talent. I doubt Google or Microsoft would consider me at this stage in my career because I lack a college degree. I will say that I do get recruitment emails from Amazon, though I’m sure those are just shotgun blasted to anyone with a pulse and a LinkedIn.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    > I doubt Google or Microsoft would consider me at this stage in my career because I lack a college degree. Don't know for sure about Microsoft - but if you can get a referral at Google, they will definitely consider you. A college degree definitely helps you get to the interview stage, but doesn't do much more than that. A solid referral pretty much guarantees you an interview.
- CoolGuySteve 4y ago
  Yeah but then you go in to interview at these places and someone who only programs javascript or python will ask you to answer a contrived whiteboard question by hand that involves manually writing out verbose C++-isms like "std::unordered_map<uint64_t, std::string_view> hashmap;". I went through a day of interviews at Facebook once where not even a single person interviewing me worked in C++. A lot of the interview cycle consisted of me answering basic syntax and STL questions or clarifying my handwriting which made it extremely difficult to finish the problem in the allotted time.
martincmartin 4y ago
How's your work-life balance? I worked in the games industry a couple times, at Activision in the 1990s and later at Rockstar, and like almost the entire industry, everybody was in crunch mode almost all the time. I remember when the list of holidays came around one year, Christmas was on a Saturday so they gave us Friday off. Someone asked if we were also going to have the Saturday, Christmas day, off. Programming is essentially solving puzzles, so you can find the work interesting even if the topic area isn't interesting. No seven year old says "when I grow up, I want to write a memory allocator!" but doing it well, with as few CPU cycles as possible, without fragmenting memory too much, is an interesting challenge. I wouldn't worry about what people have in their job descriptions. There's a quote from John Carmack about an ad for a Oculus dev that he technically wouldn't qualify for, and DHH who invented Ruby on Rails, was called by a recruiter asking whether he had 10 years of Rails experience when Rails was only 9 years old. A "Senior C++" engineer might just mean more than 2 years of experience with C++, who knows.
nostrademons 4y ago
FWIW most of the folks who work with C++ in the financial industry are not really "messing with people's money" except in the sense of trying to exploit market inefficiencies to take it. In a typical quant hedge fund no actual money changes hands; instead, the C++ parts are there to perform analytics extremely quickly, which then feeds into an execution engine (usually also in C++, or sometimes Rust or assembly) that's sending trades to the exchange. And they're usually trading their own capital or a small set of very wealthy limited partners. The retail financial industry, the folks like Fidelity and Vanguard that manage money for ordinary people or folks like Bloomberg that supply data for this, largely runs on Java. There are fewer foot-guns here, and you really don't want a security vulnerability that loses your customer's funds or creates an inaccurate statement.
- perlgeek 4y ago
  > except in the sense of trying to exploit market inefficiencies to take it that's precisely the bad part about it
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    Well yes, but the gaming industry is all about exploiting psychological efficiencies to take your money. Big Tech (in its advertising/retail/OS forms) is all about exploiting psychological inefficiencies to help other people take your money, and then taking a cut of it.
    - klik99 4y ago
      If you mean "gaming industry" meaning gambling machines, then yes. If you mean "games industry" as in video games then it's just not true that it's "all about exploiting psychological inefficiencies". There are many monetization strategies that are not exploitative that are common and even dominate in the market. Ubisoft, DLC, or Candy Crush freemium models are not representative of the whole industry.
      - nostrademons 4y ago
Scramblejams 4y ago
Tip: Amazon Games pays above game industry standard, hires for Unreal skill, and has options for good work/life balance. (Like any large company, it can depend on the particular game team. Moving to other teams is generally supported, if the needs and skills match up.) And answering one of the other sibling replies: if you apply for one of the games reqs, you'll be interviewed by members of the game team that posted the req. If it's a C++ role, you'll be interviewed by someone who uses C++ on the job. You will benefit from doing your interview homework first. Make sure you know the Amazon Leadership Principles by heart, try to have 2-3 solid examples at the ready of how you exemplified each one (some matter more than others), and be comfortable solving little programming challenges (I'm sure it's happened but I've never seen some of these Google-esque obscure tree challenges get asked). Lots of good Amazon interview material out there, I recommend reviewing it. Also, I hear some recruiters can help you prep.
- cyber_kinetist 4y ago
  The problem is that all the titles Amazon Games has developed were either flops on release or were cancelled, and the reason it’s still alive is probably because of its parent company having too much money to spend. Maybe it’s the “corporate” Amazon culture having a bad influence to the studio’s creativity… But really they seem to have no idea on how to make a game that people would like.
  - Scramblejams 4y ago
    Yep, we have a lot to accomplish. I can only speak for my own experience but I've enjoyed the ride so far. And if Games gets old for you, broader Amazon is also supportive of transfers. Amazon's got a zillion interesting projects going, so there is a lot of opportunity to scratch whatever random itch you get. (Many use C++!)

Justsignedup 4y ago

yeah im starting to get into the mindset of "fuck doing what you love, just get hobbies" Ultimately, working in these high paying jobs lets you have a lot of great hobbies and enjoy life. Get a job with a decent work-life balance, and use the rarity of your skillset to make the crazy cash, retire early, make your own game company if you want.

galangalalgol 4y ago
I think both ends of that spectrum are fine. If you really do mostly love your work, and you can afford necessities, then that is just as good as getting paid oodles to do a job you don't hate that gives you time and money to do exactly what you love. The traps are convincing yourself you love your job more than you actually do, or that you don't hate your golden handcuff job and the hours won't always be this crazy...
- Justsignedup 4y ago
  And paying the opportunity costs. "Oh man I love working on this game, surely someone will recognize me" all the while putting major life things on hold, like having a kid, or securing your future. I know a guy who LOVES his job/company and knows he's underpaid. But he's set. Has zero plans on having kids. Has his own place. 100% secure. So he can afford to do whatever. But many who have bigger goals in this economy have to follow the money.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

Google, Amazon, & Microsoft are nearly always hiring talented C++ engineers. So you're not limited to finance. Quite the opposite. I'd be surprised if the majority of C++ jobs had anything to do with finance.

danuker 4y ago
Too bad Google, Amazon, & Microsoft just shrank their workforces in response to the no-longer-zero interest rate.
tinfoilboy 4y ago
Only finance and game dev was a little bit of hyperbole. I do see other jobs for like aerospace or GIS, at least looking at job postings on LinkedIn. Though I most assuredly do not have the requisite skills outside of just C++ to work in those fields. I think big tech has the same issue where they don’t want to cultivate talent. I doubt Google or Microsoft would consider me at this stage in my career because I lack a college degree. I will say that I do get recruitment emails from Amazon, though I’m sure those are just shotgun blasted to anyone with a pulse and a LinkedIn.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > I doubt Google or Microsoft would consider me at this stage in my career because I lack a college degree. Don't know for sure about Microsoft - but if you can get a referral at Google, they will definitely consider you. A college degree definitely helps you get to the interview stage, but doesn't do much more than that. A solid referral pretty much guarantees you an interview.
CoolGuySteve 4y ago
Yeah but then you go in to interview at these places and someone who only programs javascript or python will ask you to answer a contrived whiteboard question by hand that involves manually writing out verbose C++-isms like "std::unordered_map<uint64_t, std::string_view> hashmap;". I went through a day of interviews at Facebook once where not even a single person interviewing me worked in C++. A lot of the interview cycle consisted of me answering basic syntax and STL questions or clarifying my handwriting which made it extremely difficult to finish the problem in the allotted time.

martincmartin 4y ago

How's your work-life balance? I worked in the games industry a couple times, at Activision in the 1990s and later at Rockstar, and like almost the entire industry, everybody was in crunch mode almost all the time. I remember when the list of holidays came around one year, Christmas was on a Saturday so they gave us Friday off. Someone asked if we were also going to have the Saturday, Christmas day, off. Programming is essentially solving puzzles, so you can find the work interesting even if the topic area isn't interesting. No seven year old says "when I grow up, I want to write a memory allocator!" but doing it well, with as few CPU cycles as possible, without fragmenting memory too much, is an interesting challenge. I wouldn't worry about what people have in their job descriptions. There's a quote from John Carmack about an ad for a Oculus dev that he technically wouldn't qualify for, and DHH who invented Ruby on Rails, was called by a recruiter asking whether he had 10 years of Rails experience when Rails was only 9 years old. A "Senior C++" engineer might just mean more than 2 years of experience with C++, who knows.

nostrademons 4y ago

FWIW most of the folks who work with C++ in the financial industry are not really "messing with people's money" except in the sense of trying to exploit market inefficiencies to take it. In a typical quant hedge fund no actual money changes hands; instead, the C++ parts are there to perform analytics extremely quickly, which then feeds into an execution engine (usually also in C++, or sometimes Rust or assembly) that's sending trades to the exchange. And they're usually trading their own capital or a small set of very wealthy limited partners. The retail financial industry, the folks like Fidelity and Vanguard that manage money for ordinary people or folks like Bloomberg that supply data for this, largely runs on Java. There are fewer foot-guns here, and you really don't want a security vulnerability that loses your customer's funds or creates an inaccurate statement.

perlgeek 4y ago
> except in the sense of trying to exploit market inefficiencies to take it that's precisely the bad part about it
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Well yes, but the gaming industry is all about exploiting psychological efficiencies to take your money. Big Tech (in its advertising/retail/OS forms) is all about exploiting psychological inefficiencies to help other people take your money, and then taking a cut of it.
  - klik99 4y ago
    If you mean "gaming industry" meaning gambling machines, then yes. If you mean "games industry" as in video games then it's just not true that it's "all about exploiting psychological inefficiencies". There are many monetization strategies that are not exploitative that are common and even dominate in the market. Ubisoft, DLC, or Candy Crush freemium models are not representative of the whole industry.
    - nostrademons 4y ago

Scramblejams 4y ago

Tip: Amazon Games pays above game industry standard, hires for Unreal skill, and has options for good work/life balance. (Like any large company, it can depend on the particular game team. Moving to other teams is generally supported, if the needs and skills match up.) And answering one of the other sibling replies: if you apply for one of the games reqs, you'll be interviewed by members of the game team that posted the req. If it's a C++ role, you'll be interviewed by someone who uses C++ on the job. You will benefit from doing your interview homework first. Make sure you know the Amazon Leadership Principles by heart, try to have 2-3 solid examples at the ready of how you exemplified each one (some matter more than others), and be comfortable solving little programming challenges (I'm sure it's happened but I've never seen some of these Google-esque obscure tree challenges get asked). Lots of good Amazon interview material out there, I recommend reviewing it. Also, I hear some recruiters can help you prep.

cyber_kinetist 4y ago
The problem is that all the titles Amazon Games has developed were either flops on release or were cancelled, and the reason it’s still alive is probably because of its parent company having too much money to spend. Maybe it’s the “corporate” Amazon culture having a bad influence to the studio’s creativity… But really they seem to have no idea on how to make a game that people would like.
- Scramblejams 4y ago
  Yep, we have a lot to accomplish. I can only speak for my own experience but I've enjoyed the ride so far. And if Games gets old for you, broader Amazon is also supportive of transfers. Amazon's got a zillion interesting projects going, so there is a lot of opportunity to scratch whatever random itch you get. (Many use C++!)