First Week Roundup
The problem with waking up at 7:40 every day (the girlfriend’s alarm time… I would set it for 8:45) is that you tend to wake up at that same time on the weekends. Up, now, and no point going back to sleep, I thought I might as well reflect on my first week in the working world.
I resolved exactly one bug. Other than that, the week was spent getting the computer set up and starting a major feature re-write that will solve two or three other bugs. I feel like I didn’t get a whole lot done, but my co-worker has been overwhelmingly positive so far–so maybe the bar is pretty low for this sort of thing. A good friend just got an offer from Yahoo!, so she’ll be moving out here mid-June. Her offer beat the crap out of my offer (although Y! and Google are both very well-known for paying well), so that got me to thinking.
When I accepted my offer, I was applying to a mix of game design positions and web dev positions. My experience was on the game design side, but what I really wanted to do was web development. Not having any idea how much cash either one makes, I sort of went with my expectations for a game designer/producer’s salary. Also–my undergraduate degree is in Film Studies, so I wasn’t really sure my MS in Digital Media really qualified me to demand top dollar.
I’m not entirely sure I made the wrong choice, though. My resume said “Game Designer Game Designer Game Designer!”, so in essence I cut my company a pretty sweet discount so that I could break out of my previous experience. I guess the real answers will come further on down the line–does my pay grade catch up to other web developers or stay in line with a game design?
I was reading an interesting article in Fortune on Gen Y mobilitiy–there isn’t really a stigma attached to moving around a lot when you’re young. I’d feel bad about ditching these guys (I actually like the team a lot–which is why I turned down other, slightly higher offers), but the reality of the situation is that in one or two years time I’ll have the 1-2 years of Ruby and Flex development under my belt that will grant me access to all the jobs that didn’t take a second look at me the first time around. How much is loyalty worth? The amounts of money that get tossed around out here are pretty ludicrous, so taking a slightly less fun job for an extra ten or twenty grand a year could make the difference between retiring at 40 and retiring at 50 (or whenever).
For now, though, the onus is still on me. I feel like I’ve landed in a pretty good place–but I’ve got to really show that I can pick up the tech before I do anything else.
