Shaobing
Few would argue, especially in
California or other technology hot beds, that if you want a good
career with a high salary, you should go into tech. Whether that be
as a system administrator, programmer, or web developer, if you like
to create stuff and potentially make a lot of money, then few areas
of expertise will compete with these career paths. But these types of
jobs are not for everyone. More importantly, not all the gritty
little details are explained to students graduating before they go
into the industry. Today an article describes the case of one
particular programmer who found out that selling food at a street
stand turned out to be better for his health and finances.
The story is about a video game
programmer who worked on some of the most well known titles in China,
creating software that would bring fun to thousands of people.
However, one thing he was not prepared for is the toll it would take
on his health. As he describes it, being a programmer in the gaming
industry involves a lot of overtime. Any time a game is about to
launch, there is the crunch time, or a period of a few weeks or even
months when everyone working on the project is expected to work many
hours, often full evenings and weekends, to ensure the product ships
on time and with as few bugs as possible. And because nothing is sold
until the game actually hits the market, that means salaries don’t go
up to meet this higher work expectancy.
In this man’s case, his body could not
cope and he had to drop out due to health issues. Instead, he looked
at something simpler, and found out that a particular type of food
called shaobing was becoming very popular in tourist areas. So
instead, he decided to start his own street cart selling this type of
food in some of the higher end Chinese districts, and to his
amazement, made more money selling food on the streets than working
with high tech computer systems. Of course, his story doesn’t mean
all programmers should head out to the food sector, but it’s a tale
showing that making money through good ideas can be done in any
sector. It’s not because tech happens to be the hot thing right now
that any inventor who wants to make something useful has to go there.
