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Polymath was always an idea that appealed, mainly due to Leonardo da Vinci (check out his drawings of turbulent water). I think the problem is career paths, as

Polymath was always an idea that appealed, mainly due to Leonardo da Vinci (check out his drawings of turbulent water). I think the problem is career paths, as though a working life must optimise for linearity to achieve success, when instead those individuals who explore breadth and depth and fun are both most productive and creative. Anyone who can see a problem and potential solution through more than one prism of learning is nearly always better able to communicate their insight and share their joy of thought. They tend to be more patient of failure, happier to be corrected, and fresher when returning to the problem again. Also, more money demonstrating multi-disciplinary competence when moving jobs is definitely a thing. Good managers are rare

snek_case 4y ago
Part of the problem is the idea that people must have X years experience in Y. I once applied to a game development company. I have something like 20 years experience in systems programming. The problem is that my CV doesn't have any game development experience on it... But when I was about 20, I programmed my own 3D engine, and my own raytracer with soft shadows. A few years ago, I've worked with GLSL as well. I'm familiar with concepts like perspective projection, backface culling, scene graphs, shaders, 3D models, etc. and I'm sure that I could figure out how to work on a 3D game and produce useful work fairly quickly, but these people quickly tossed my CV into the "no" pile because I've never worked at a game development company before. At the end of the day, I'm doing very well at a different company doing systems programming, but my point is, people look for boxes to check on your CV. This is especially bad if you have to go through non-technical recruiters. Your best bet if you want to get into a programming job IMO is to try to speak directly to developers who work at the company. If you can show them you know your stuff, they might just give you a chance.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Why would you submit a CV/resume to a game company without highlighting your game-dev-relevant experience?
- dagw 4y ago
  I worked at a digital animation and FX studio and we got applications all the time from people basically just like you. People without any directly relevant experience on their CV, but with a passionate cover letter about how they spend their free time working on their own animation projects and links to fun things they've done. As long as they had something fun and interesting to show we almost always called them in for an interview. Admittedly we where a fairly small and quite anonymous shop and didn't get hundreds of applications. Probably at larger, more famous, places it is harder to do this.
drewcoo 4y ago
"Polymath" emerged during the Renaissance. Because that's when there was an inflection point in specialization. There are many polymaths other than DaVinci. Like Feynman, he refused to specialize so much as everyone else of his time. And, like Feynman, he was kind of a jerk, so he got his way. But back to the point: we don't need to be non-linear so much as not overspecialized. What we usually see as "genius" is often expertise in multiple fields and the cross-pollination of ideas from that (Da Vinci and Feynman, for sure!). So I agree with you on that point.
Tanoc 4y ago
This has been a lot of my life. I wanted to be a mechanical engineer when I was younger, so I picked up a lot of the skills for that. I also became interested in architecture as a specific subset of that, which got me into learning about city planning, which got me into learning about systems infrastructure, which got me into learning about both classical and modern urbanism. I also learned a lot about internal combustion engines, which got me into learning about materials sciences, which got me into learning about chemistry, which curved back and got me into learning about metallurgy, which got me into learning about manufacturing processes. I never became a mechanical engineer because my understanding of math at the time was poor. Instead I've jumped around from job to job or gig to gig, learning everything from woodworking and joinery to programming and electrical engineering. Each bit of work I did after the first dozen or so has supplemented or reinforced knowledge from other work I've done. As a result I can give advice about pretty much anything you see standing on the street in a city, from where the concrete shape comes from and why that mix was chosen to why the street is so narrow to why the post office box is shaped like it is. Although a lot of this knowledge is shallow, it gives other people a good starting point to explain the more complex and in-depth topics of a given subject to me. That makes it easier for us to work with eachother and makes it easier for flaws in methodology, practice, or understanding to be noticed by both of us and thus makes it easier for me to understand where I went wrong. And if someone points out that I am wrong, that doesn't make me upset. It gets me excited because that means there's more to learn and more skills to acquire. I doubt any of this would've been possible if I had actually gotten a stable job as a mechanical engineer and stuck to a single career path.

snek_case 4y ago

Part of the problem is the idea that people must have X years experience in Y. I once applied to a game development company. I have something like 20 years experience in systems programming. The problem is that my CV doesn't have any game development experience on it... But when I was about 20, I programmed my own 3D engine, and my own raytracer with soft shadows. A few years ago, I've worked with GLSL as well. I'm familiar with concepts like perspective projection, backface culling, scene graphs, shaders, 3D models, etc. and I'm sure that I could figure out how to work on a 3D game and produce useful work fairly quickly, but these people quickly tossed my CV into the "no" pile because I've never worked at a game development company before. At the end of the day, I'm doing very well at a different company doing systems programming, but my point is, people look for boxes to check on your CV. This is especially bad if you have to go through non-technical recruiters. Your best bet if you want to get into a programming job IMO is to try to speak directly to developers who work at the company. If you can show them you know your stuff, they might just give you a chance.

sokoloff 4y ago
Why would you submit a CV/resume to a game company without highlighting your game-dev-relevant experience?
dagw 4y ago
I worked at a digital animation and FX studio and we got applications all the time from people basically just like you. People without any directly relevant experience on their CV, but with a passionate cover letter about how they spend their free time working on their own animation projects and links to fun things they've done. As long as they had something fun and interesting to show we almost always called them in for an interview. Admittedly we where a fairly small and quite anonymous shop and didn't get hundreds of applications. Probably at larger, more famous, places it is harder to do this.

drewcoo 4y ago

"Polymath" emerged during the Renaissance. Because that's when there was an inflection point in specialization. There are many polymaths other than DaVinci. Like Feynman, he refused to specialize so much as everyone else of his time. And, like Feynman, he was kind of a jerk, so he got his way. But back to the point: we don't need to be non-linear so much as not overspecialized. What we usually see as "genius" is often expertise in multiple fields and the cross-pollination of ideas from that (Da Vinci and Feynman, for sure!). So I agree with you on that point.

Tanoc 4y ago

This has been a lot of my life. I wanted to be a mechanical engineer when I was younger, so I picked up a lot of the skills for that. I also became interested in architecture as a specific subset of that, which got me into learning about city planning, which got me into learning about systems infrastructure, which got me into learning about both classical and modern urbanism. I also learned a lot about internal combustion engines, which got me into learning about materials sciences, which got me into learning about chemistry, which curved back and got me into learning about metallurgy, which got me into learning about manufacturing processes. I never became a mechanical engineer because my understanding of math at the time was poor. Instead I've jumped around from job to job or gig to gig, learning everything from woodworking and joinery to programming and electrical engineering. Each bit of work I did after the first dozen or so has supplemented or reinforced knowledge from other work I've done. As a result I can give advice about pretty much anything you see standing on the street in a city, from where the concrete shape comes from and why that mix was chosen to why the street is so narrow to why the post office box is shaped like it is. Although a lot of this knowledge is shallow, it gives other people a good starting point to explain the more complex and in-depth topics of a given subject to me. That makes it easier for us to work with eachother and makes it easier for flaws in methodology, practice, or understanding to be noticed by both of us and thus makes it easier for me to understand where I went wrong. And if someone points out that I am wrong, that doesn't make me upset. It gets me excited because that means there's more to learn and more skills to acquire. I doubt any of this would've been possible if I had actually gotten a stable job as a mechanical engineer and stuck to a single career path.