5 ms·

How does ones career even look after working on something like that?

by neals 11y ago

duaneb 11y ago
I would imagine specialized: resumes matter less and know-how (which is technically covered under most anti-competitive clauses, though IANAL) matters much, much more.
jerf 11y ago
Could you elaborate a bit? Do you mean that you think that's too specialized to go anywhere else? But a solid base of "client-server" abilities at that level of demand will get you in the door in all kinds of places. With a pedigree like that one would merely need not get too drunk before the interview to walk on to almost any "cloud" team.
- AtmaScout 11y ago
  > With a pedigree like that one would merely need not get too drunk before the interview to walk on to almost any "cloud" team. Thanks for that, I needed a nice laugh today.
- iolothebard 11y ago
  No way, the cloud is totally new and amazing! /s
  - jerf 11y ago
    Well, sure it's all totally new to you and amazing. You're like, what, 900 years old canonically? We don't all get to escape to a parallel dimension where time moves more slowly but we continue to age in our original time line. /topical
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  Eh! I'm a bit more jaded. I've been fed the line "you have awesome background and we wish we could take advantage of it, but your experience with the skills we're looking for is a little too long ago" before. Translation: "too old" | "too expensive for us"
newobj 11y ago
This is a really strange comment to make. First of all, this was 1997 +/- a year. They amount of stuff you could pull off the internet was radically smaller than today. The number of solved problems was radically smaller. So basically they went were few had gone before and created something successful that persists to this day. So heir career would be looking pretty damn good I would say. Second, tech stack != career. I'm seeing this sentiment more and more on HN and it's weird. Especially weird in an industry know for its rapid change. Your question is so backwards it almost feels like trolling.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Kiro 11y ago
  I interpreted the comment as "these guys must have kick ass careers" and not the other way round.
  - neals 11y ago
    This was indeed what I meant :)
- chipsy 11y ago
  The "tech stack != career" is on my mind lately since the "stack" terminology seems to be really in vogue these days. Like, I hadn't even heard of a "full stack engineer" until a few years ago and now it's everywhere - which I think is because it ultimately amounts to "general-purpose programmer" and that's actually what most businesses need most of the time. Everyone(who's been around long enough) knows that the technology churns and real progress is slow, but I think this kind of fashion is based on employee marketability - nobody wants to be just a code monkey, after all.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    Something a friend of mine said that really resonates with me, and helps to put the whole thing into perspective: s/stack/pile/ This works splendidly because even the hippest startups working out of mansions by the beach (or whatever) are still fairly kludged together from an engineering standpoint, especially if there is ageism serving as a kind of experience cap (for example ageism by proxy of being too expensive for those startups to pay for). People are extremely territorial about their piles, but if you are good enough friends with those engineers (or get them drunk enough), you find out that everybody lacks confidence in their work to some degree. Someone I work with currently said that if you don't look at code you wrote three months ago and feel like it's shit code, you aren't improving. That is a very insightful comment, to me.
LanceH 11y ago
Shipping a successful game is the most important line on the resume when applying in the games industry.
putzdown 11y ago
As someone has said, the quality of your resume in the game industry (or film industry, I'm told) is only as good as the last game you worked on. Ultima Online was an attention getter for employers for many years; to a certain extent still is. That's unlike most games that are forgotten after a year or two: there are still a lot of old UO fans whose brains were pumped full of dopamine by this thing and will not let them forget it. On the other hand, UO burned me on game development worse than any other game I ever worked on (though I have kept working on games since then). It was a miserable project. So the effect on the resume was good; the effect on the soul was awful. I never worked on another MMO again and never, ever would.
- scott_s 11y ago
  I'd be very interested in anything else you have to say on the topic. As, I assume, would most of the rest of HN. What games did you work on after? Was it something specific to MMOs or UO in particular?
- yarou 11y ago
  Can you elaborate on the experience? I assume the burn out comes from the time constraint. What would be the antithesis to the burnout you experienced working on an MMO?
  - Negative1 11y ago
    This might answer you questions: http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-workplace-culture-like-at-Origin-Systems-during-the-development-of-Ultima-Online http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-workplace-culture-like-at-... Making games is not as much fun as playing them.
  - putzdown 11y ago
    Hm, there's a lot to it. Maybe the best way to do this is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style of answer. Do you want to know about... 1) the incredible complexity of MMO development and why nobody wants to make an MMO (though everybody thinks they do)? 2) the origin of Ultima Online as a small, skunkworks project that led to extremely awkward core engineering? 3) the even more awkward munging together of the Ultima IX and Ultima Online teams that led to a suddenly massive team trying to ship a massive game in six months (and succeeding!)? Pick one.
fl0wenol 11y ago
Pretty damn good, especially after the turn of the millenium. Hell I'd hire any of the guys now if that was in their resume somewhere, because that was some nifty stuff. Gotta respect those sort of individuals who show real front-to-back understanding of what it takes to build/implement something people actually use, do it well, and adapt to change while scaling.

How does ones career even look after working on something like that?

by neals 11y ago

How does ones career even look after working on something like that?

I would imagine specialized: resumes matter less and know-how (which is technically covered under most anti-competitive clauses, though IANAL) matters much, much more.

jerf 11y ago

Could you elaborate a bit? Do you mean that you think that's too specialized to go anywhere else? But a solid base of "client-server" abilities at that level of demand will get you in the door in all kinds of places. With a pedigree like that one would merely need not get too drunk before the interview to walk on to almost any "cloud" team.

AtmaScout 11y ago
> With a pedigree like that one would merely need not get too drunk before the interview to walk on to almost any "cloud" team. Thanks for that, I needed a nice laugh today.
iolothebard 11y ago
No way, the cloud is totally new and amazing! /s
- jerf 11y ago
  Well, sure it's all totally new to you and amazing. You're like, what, 900 years old canonically? We don't all get to escape to a parallel dimension where time moves more slowly but we continue to age in our original time line. /topical
HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
Eh! I'm a bit more jaded. I've been fed the line "you have awesome background and we wish we could take advantage of it, but your experience with the skills we're looking for is a little too long ago" before. Translation: "too old" | "too expensive for us"

newobj 11y ago

This is a really strange comment to make. First of all, this was 1997 +/- a year. They amount of stuff you could pull off the internet was radically smaller than today. The number of solved problems was radically smaller. So basically they went were few had gone before and created something successful that persists to this day. So heir career would be looking pretty damn good I would say. Second, tech stack != career. I'm seeing this sentiment more and more on HN and it's weird. Especially weird in an industry know for its rapid change. Your question is so backwards it almost feels like trolling.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Kiro 11y ago
I interpreted the comment as "these guys must have kick ass careers" and not the other way round.
- neals 11y ago
  This was indeed what I meant :)
chipsy 11y ago
The "tech stack != career" is on my mind lately since the "stack" terminology seems to be really in vogue these days. Like, I hadn't even heard of a "full stack engineer" until a few years ago and now it's everywhere - which I think is because it ultimately amounts to "general-purpose programmer" and that's actually what most businesses need most of the time. Everyone(who's been around long enough) knows that the technology churns and real progress is slow, but I think this kind of fashion is based on employee marketability - nobody wants to be just a code monkey, after all.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  Something a friend of mine said that really resonates with me, and helps to put the whole thing into perspective: s/stack/pile/ This works splendidly because even the hippest startups working out of mansions by the beach (or whatever) are still fairly kludged together from an engineering standpoint, especially if there is ageism serving as a kind of experience cap (for example ageism by proxy of being too expensive for those startups to pay for). People are extremely territorial about their piles, but if you are good enough friends with those engineers (or get them drunk enough), you find out that everybody lacks confidence in their work to some degree. Someone I work with currently said that if you don't look at code you wrote three months ago and feel like it's shit code, you aren't improving. That is a very insightful comment, to me.

LanceH 11y ago

Shipping a successful game is the most important line on the resume when applying in the games industry.

putzdown 11y ago

As someone has said, the quality of your resume in the game industry (or film industry, I'm told) is only as good as the last game you worked on. Ultima Online was an attention getter for employers for many years; to a certain extent still is. That's unlike most games that are forgotten after a year or two: there are still a lot of old UO fans whose brains were pumped full of dopamine by this thing and will not let them forget it. On the other hand, UO burned me on game development worse than any other game I ever worked on (though I have kept working on games since then). It was a miserable project. So the effect on the resume was good; the effect on the soul was awful. I never worked on another MMO again and never, ever would.

scott_s 11y ago
I'd be very interested in anything else you have to say on the topic. As, I assume, would most of the rest of HN. What games did you work on after? Was it something specific to MMOs or UO in particular?
yarou 11y ago
Can you elaborate on the experience? I assume the burn out comes from the time constraint. What would be the antithesis to the burnout you experienced working on an MMO?
- Negative1 11y ago
  This might answer you questions: http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-workplace-culture-like-at-Origin-Systems-during-the-development-of-Ultima-Online http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-workplace-culture-like-at-... Making games is not as much fun as playing them.
- putzdown 11y ago
  Hm, there's a lot to it. Maybe the best way to do this is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style of answer. Do you want to know about... 1) the incredible complexity of MMO development and why nobody wants to make an MMO (though everybody thinks they do)? 2) the origin of Ultima Online as a small, skunkworks project that led to extremely awkward core engineering? 3) the even more awkward munging together of the Ultima IX and Ultima Online teams that led to a suddenly massive team trying to ship a massive game in six months (and succeeding!)? Pick one.

fl0wenol 11y ago

Pretty damn good, especially after the turn of the millenium. Hell I'd hire any of the guys now if that was in their resume somewhere, because that was some nifty stuff. Gotta respect those sort of individuals who show real front-to-back understanding of what it takes to build/implement something people actually use, do it well, and adapt to change while scaling.