No, no, I don't mean that there aren't people who have it bad. I'm saying that a lot of people who aren't that bad off, but still keep complaining. And often when an opportunity comes their way to change and/or improve their life, they make excuses not to take it.
@Ryex: You got into the New Mexico Tech, didn't you? Are you saying that this wasn't an opportunity? I don't disagree that the world is harsh most of them time, but it's sometimes difficult to see where something is leading when you're still on the path.
An example about opportunity. In our country we had two recessions in the past years. Apparently it's now over, but the number of unemployed people is still growing and we have an unemployment percentage among the highest in Europe. My mom lost her job in January. In a shitty economy like this, she did find another job. Everybody in the entire country keeps complaining how there are no jobs. Yet my mother found not only one, no, she found 2 jobs and turned the first one down, because it paid the minimum wage. That was 2 months ago. Sure, she was 3 months without a job. Of course that's not a good thing. But what's special about my mom? Nothing. The only difference is that she kept looking vigorously for a new job instead of sitting at home, watching TV and blaming the government for everything. (I'm not saying it's not our government's fault, but being a lazy ass and just complaining gets us nowhere.)
But my point is actually an entirely different one. My point is that it's not just "hard work" that's important, it's also important what kind of work. If you "work hard" as a gardener, of course there is a limit to how far you can get. But if you just work as a gardener and in your free time you try to learn how to get a successful online business running to start your own company, that's an entirely different thing. Sure, the online market is getting more and more competitive. But 20 years ago there wasn't even such a thing. Or you could start a gardener pimping business. Find people who will do gardening and find people who need gardening done. Take a percentage of the earnings and if you grow enough, maybe you can start a business.
Quote from: Ryex on June 07, 2014, 10:04:56 pm
Winkio's point about lack of opportunities? complacently valid. Blizz I don't think you realize how lucky you were to get in with a good company while you were still in school. Me? I'm shit out of luck I go looking for an opportunity like an internship or ANYTHING that could advance my carrier and I'm instantly laughed away "1.4 GPA?" they say, "we have an mandatory cut off of a 3.5", "but look at all the cool things I have done!" I say, "meh, if you had the gpa to back it up they would be impressive." and I'm sent away in shame.
I think you are approaching the entire thing completely wrong. If their response is "meh, if you had the gpa to back it up they would be impressive.", then yours should be "Why? Because I know my priorities rather than waste time on learning nothing about everything? Because I specialize in what I want to do and do it well? Because I care more about having a skill that I can apply in a future career than just learn all the stuff they say in class and forget it a month later? Because I think it's more important to create new value than just please my teachers with the tasks they come up with? Excuse my language, but my job is doing XYZ, not being a prostitute." Ok, I may have gone over the top with the prostitute comment.
Quote from: Ryex on June 07, 2014, 10:04:56 pm
True I share blame in that, I spent a good deal of my first years in college board out of my mind with the material so I procrastinated and my performance suffered.
Which exactly validates my point. But at least you understand that you did a mistake. That way you can avoid it in the future.
We all make mistakes and we all sometimes blame others for our own mistakes. That's normal. The important thing is that we understand that and take things from there.
Quote from: Ryex on June 07, 2014, 10:04:56 pm
but lets look at that GPA requirement shale we? 3.5 3/4 of the way to perfect. Every class I've ever been in the final grades were curved so that the average student got about a c+ than means on average a student gets a 2.25 GPA. A 3.5 is something only a truly determined student can acheave, the type of determination you get from actually knowing exactly what you want to do with you life.
I agree that 3.5 is way too high. But 3.5 isn't carved in stone. You can't judge everybody by the same standards of a flawed school system and companies know that. If an exceptional individual comes along, companies do consider employing them. With exceptional I don't mean "special", I mean "different". If you have somebody who's really passionate and dedicated, but just not dedicated in school, interviewers pick up on that.
Quote from: Ryex on June 07, 2014, 10:04:56 pm
No, real opportunity that gets you a fulfilling career is only given to thous who are "special" minorities, exemplary people, people who have already proven themselves, the top 20% of those who try. For the rest of us opportunity is a 7-5 job paying just above minimum wage, and even that is hard to come by. Case in point it took over 2 WEEKS for the place I'[m working for now to hire me AFTER I had accepted the offer of employment. because of a rigorous hiring process that required a criminal background check that couldn't even revival more than one speeding ticket with out recending the offer. and I had already worked for this pace for the last two summers.
Then become one of the top 20%. The rest is the rest because they choose to be the rest. With the Internet you have so much opportunity and knowledge at your disposal that it's ridiculous.
Example: You are looking for a certain job in a certain field? Use the Internet to make a list of companies that work in this of field, find out if they are hiring and contact them (or contact them to find out if they are hiring in the first place, lol).
Another example: You want a better job in the tech industry? What about Japan, how are they doing? Good? Ok, but you don't speak Japanese. No problem, use the Internet. There are online courses or you can find and download tapes or whatever. There are ways to learn Japanese without spending a dime. All you need is some time. It's not gonna be easy, but it can be done. You have that option available at all times. Tell me that this is not an opportunity that is dangling there at all times. For the rest of the process of finding a job in Japan, take the previous example.
And another one: Or maybe you are interested in sales. Let's say you want to get a web shop running and make a small company from that. Do you have a niche market or product? If yes, great, that will make things a bit easier along the road. If not, just try to find something that is profitable enough. How? Use the Internet. Google, search, research. Find out the whens, whats, hows. Educate yourself. Then start calling up the manufacturers for products and who would be interested in having their product available in your web shop. Maybe a PC parts web shop would be a great idea. And since it's a web shop, you don't even need to rent out space for the wares.
Yet another example: You love programming, but you don't really have what it takes to work on big projects, because you get easily bored? No problem, just register on multiple freelancer programmer websites and get started. Yet again the Internet is there for you. You can make a living off that. Sure, there's no retirement plan, but you could still do a private one at a bank or something like that.
These are only simple examples and none of them existed 20 years ago. The information we have available in this age is vast, but people don't realize what they can do with it. I agree that greater opportunities are "given" to people who have already proven themselves. But that only means that you haven't proven yourself YET. (Even though you clearly said that it helped you get that job because you worked for the last 2 summers there, lol!) Still, neither of these affects the constant opportunities that are all around you all the time. Of course, it's easier to say "but yeaaaaaaaaaaah, learning Japanese is hard and I don't want to go live in Japan." It's valid excuse, I'm not saying it's not. But it's still an excuse.
Quote from: Ryex on June 07, 2014, 10:04:56 pm
But none of this has to do with personal happiness. One can be absolutely disgusted with the state of the world as I am and still be personally happy. It's a matter of scale and what you consider important. For me all that required for me to be happy is a small sense of security about the future, that I can keep going, and personal connections. If I have friends and family I can come home to I can't stay depressed or frustrated with the world.
I agree. These things don't really have to be connected. As a matter of fact, you don't even need outside things to be happy. Most people think happiness is just one thing away. "If I get this, I will be happy." Be it a job, a girlfriend, a car, doesn't matter. And they may feel good about it for a few months, but then they realize that nothing has changed. They still aren't "happy". So happiness doesn't even have to be a journey. It can also be a decision. And none of this means that there aren't multiple degrees of happiness. You can be happy with your life right now, but if you choose to take action, you can become more happy since you will have even more going for you. To be happy, you first have to accept the current state of things and then take it from there.
I am very well aware that I was lucky to come across Kreso and that I work now at Cateia. I'm not denying that. But what about Daygames? It was an opportunity as well. It was there at all times. We started with nothing. Each one of us worked on our games in their free time. Yesterday I realized that we probably broke even with King of Booze looking at the money we earned, the time we spent on it and some arbitrary salary we could have gotten for that time. It took us a year and a half, but we broke even (solely with KOB, not our other games). By our estimation we're 6 to max. 12 months away from actually founding a company. The only reason why we haven't done it yet is purely financial and since we didn't know where KOB would go. KOB was completely free for the first 6 months and a year ago we added in-game ads. We started making a bit of money. It was huge for us. But not as huge as iOS last October. We actually started earning some respectable amount. Sure, it isn't still enough for a living, but we're getting there. We just need one more game to take off properly to justify actually founding a company. KOB is a somewhat niche market, so we can't rely on repeating its success just like that. We have to use more "traditional" ways of marketing. If one game works out with these methods, it means that we might have a business and marketing model that works well enough that we can apply it to other games and grow.
How did we do this? We seized opportunities AND took risks, because each opportunity is usually also somewhat of a risk. e.g. A simple example while we still weren't earning any money. When we added the term "drinking game" directly into the title of King of Booze, our weekly downloads on Google Play went up by 30%. Each time we did something "right", the number of weekly downloads increase by about 30%. We recently paid somebody to "optimize" our title and keywords (2 weeks ago) on iOS and while it's still early to estimate how much our weekly downloads have increased because of that, I think that it will be around 20%-30% altogether. But this time our profit increases as well, because on iOS the game is paid. We also paid 3 Magic Shots about 2 months ago to do a campaign for KOB, but they fucked up and that means $300 down the drain for nothing. (We were able to turn it around recently and now they will do minor 3 campaigns for 3 of our free games, but still.)
See my point? You can say we are lucky all you want, but fact is that we have tried many things and only a few worked. This isn't luck, this is hard work. Success is working hard and seizing opportunities. Sometimes an opportunity is just sheer luck, but it's an opportunity nonetheless.
Opportunities are everywhere, but people don't want to see them. "Wait. If there are so many opportunities and it's possible to be successful... if the little man can be successful, if the little man can 'win'... That means that I've been a little bitch all this time! Noooooooooooooooo!" Acknowledging these opportunities means acknowledging failure to see them before and people don't like feeling like they have been under-performing this whole time. Because, you know, they are special.
Let me leave you with this image.