Game Programmer Quits Job To Sell Street Food, Doubles Salary | Hacker News Reader

Game Programmer Quits Job To Sell Street Food, Doubles Salary

kotaku.com

258 pointssushi164 comments

This is just the upside of running your own business. Summer food trucks have been a fixture in my city for decades around the state capitol. Some folks make a great living doing it.

My favorite was an older couple operating a small hotdog stand... they made a ridiculously delicious meatsauce and basically worked a 35 hour week in the summer in the Northeast, and a similar schedule for a couple of months down South.

They owned a nice house in city, were active in the church and community, and were genuinely good people, who made a great living selling hotdogs, mostly to government and Verizon workers.

But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer.

> But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer.

Small business owners should be able to plan ahead for rainy days and the slow season. Squirrels can do it. Humans can too.

Unexpected health issues? That's a little more tricky.

And what does an American employee do about unexpected (long term) health issues?

(For short term issues there is insurance, whether in the form of savings or actual insurance.)

Long term care insurance.

Long term disability is more appropriate. Long term care is more appropriate for the elderly. To your point, however, insurance products exist to assist when a long term health issue arises.

Long-term disability coverage has been part of all the insurance plans I've had over the years in the US. I assume that it's pretty common across US insurance plans, at least for full-time employees.

Such coverage pays some percentage of your salary for many years from the beginning of a long-term disability. I think that both of those numbers vary widely from plan to plan.

Provided you have insurance in the first place. (The rest of this post is seemingly invalid in California:) Contractor? No, you don't get insurance. Don't you have COBRA? You can't afford that? Well, golly, better hope that you don't get sick.

If you're a contractor w/o insurance, you're doing it wrong. You should be setting rates so that you can afford insurance.

Health insurance, business insurance, vacation time, holiday time, sick time, equipment, etc. All of these things go into the calculations for your rates.

I did that when I was a contractor. The CEO wouldn't sign my contract because I would end up "making" more than he did in salary.

So I had to cut my hours. I took the 10 free hours/week as an opportunity to hunt for additional work.

Indeed. The GP's question was about "American employees", which I interpreted as "full-time employees at a company in the USA".

Contractors are subject to the health care plans of the company they work for (or whatever they buy on the individual market, if they are self-employed). Part-time employees (less than 30 hours per week, IIRC, although that's probably state-by-state) also receive different treatment. Some companies have started to manage hours to have more part-time workers instead of fewer full-time workers as a means to game the heath care laws: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/06/w...

Normal weather you can plan for, but there are outlier events that can still wipe you out that's basically impossible to predict or prepare for.

Sandy in NYC flooded a great deal of infrastructure and left buildings without power or communications for a long time. Large parts of downtown were completely depopulated for weeks on end - that sort of event takes out independent business owners, and you can't effectively plan for it.

For the most part food vending isn't so profitable that you can build up a thick cushion for longer-term outages.

We commonly say that hackers should save up 3-6 months of floating money, especially if they are in the self-employed or contracting/consulting world. You never know when the next job is, you never know what could happen.

I don't see how being a small business operator of something like this is different. The source of income is different, the wisdom is the same.

Hopefully they were able to set aside months worth of floating money, and even weeks due to a natural disaster wouldn't wreck them.

>We commonly say that hackers should save up 3-6 months of floating money

It's not hackers, it's adults. This is called an "emergency fund". 3 to 6 months cash that's easy to access in the event of a genuine emergency, including loss of work. Personal Finance 101.

Exactly, and if your monetary stream is inconsistent, then 3-6 months should really be considered insufficient. You're shouldn't be regularly be eating into your emergency fund.

Totally agree. I would say closer to a year, but some would disagree. Less than 6 months is not enough, especially for freelance/consulting types.

Hell, make it at least a year. If you can't plan this far ahead, either your expenses are too high or you're doing something that is not sustainable. At least a year should be a long-term goal if you're doing something which is at all exposed to random acts of God.

> At least a year should be a long-term goal if you're doing something which is at all exposed to random acts of God.

You mean like being a human being who is currently alive on the planet Earth?

I tend to forget the number (is it 6 months? 9?) and just say, oh hell, make it 18 months.

It won't kill you to have more dry powder rather than less. But then, I tend to be a bit conservative and paranoid about money. :)

I co-own a restaurant as a side job. Saving 3-6 months or more worth of emergency funds for my personal use is the trivial part. The real problem is covering everything that the insurance policies won't cover to a sufficient extent: everything from building damage (maybe the landlord takes forever to rebuild/repair) to replacing equipment and any fees to go through processes and get all kinds of permits all over again. That's if there aren't external factors in play that causes problems (like maybe everyone else in the neighborhood got fucked by a major earthquake too).

This is totally different from my freelancing mindset since I have to start thinking about tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars just for floating a brick and mortar business for even a couple months, whereas my biggest investment for my main line of work is...mostly a nice computer. All this after insurance, so then it's time to start thinking about FEMA and bank loans (as if the stingy as fuck banks will give out loans).

All of this is on top of other hassles (SF, Alameda and LA counties are ....nuts for restaurant owners, to say the least) and it just sucks to think about. Maybe food trucks get more leeway or whatever in a lot of areas due to flexibility and size, but if I'm having these thoughts about a pretty profitable decent volume restaurant I shudder to think about the smaller fish out there.

Actually, after a disaster, if you have losses that aren't covered by insurance, businesses don't initially get assistance from FEMA, they apply for a low-interest loan from Small Business Administration (see: http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/loans-grant...) instead.

Yeah, I took a shortcut when I said FEMA loans, it's not directly from FEMA but they'll help you with the SBA to get a disaster loan.

Pretty nice to have a safety net, but the government can be picky too. Many people I know got rejected for loans after the Northridge earthquake 20 years ago for trying to make a quick buck selling batteries etc. way above the regular price. FEMA people commented to my parents (they owned a small biz at the time) that they were one of the handful of businesses that didn't price gouge anyone within the area. I had no idea the government could pay so much attention to what people were doing in such a big area.

Yup! That's why there are more squirrels than humans!

I should do what squirrels do.

Oh absolutely.

I just point out that many people are programmed to be risk-averse. A shitty job with a steady paycheck is perceived as lower risk than a potentially more lucrative job with a big company.

When I was in college, I sold extended warranties with computers. People would buy a PC for $2,000, and 80% of them would buy an extended warranty for $400. They felt like they were winning, because their liability was now limited.

The fact that even with all that they are better than a game programmer is really sad.

Game programmers are the equivalent of children workers in a sweatshop.

Why is that really sad?

More people need food than games.

More people want to make games than sell street food.

The food business is brutally hard work, and I have a lot of respect for anyone doing it (well). There's no a priori reason why game programmers should be rewarded more than street food vendors.

You'd need to sell a lot of bread to make even an average US game programmers salary. The reason being that the work is creative and technically skilled. There are fewer people able to do it and that pushes up salaries. Like any industry there are exploitative employers, but it's just a case of finding or making a good place to work. The video game business is constantly changing in terms of the types of games people will pay for and the technology used. There's a never ending demand for new games.

Are you implying that cooking is not a creative and technically skilled employ? Because I'm sure there are several people that would be glad to argue that point with you. I mean, sure, a line cook or something? Maybe not. But someone running their own food stand, responsible for everything from the menu to presentation?

There are skills involved, and I wouldn't say they were lesser than those needed for programming. But in the same vein, I'd say spending a few days learning to make bread to sell in a cart does not compare to the years it takes to become a competent programmer.

I would say that speaks more to the formalization of baking than anything else. Software engineering is so far interesting in the sense that it doesn't have a kind of "technical" employee. That is, there is a huge difference between someone who can bake bread from a recipe, and someone who can create that recipe to start with. The former is just being able to follow directions; the latter involves a lot of in-depth knowledge and experience about, for lack of a better term, baking chemistry. In the same line, a lot of traditional (physical) engineering professions can utilize drafters.

I guess the equivalent in software engineering would be someone who can only implement designs and algorithms from other people, and any ambiguities or questions about the design would result in them stopping work until a clarification is received from the "engineer".

I don't have numbers to back this up, but I strongly suspect your average hotdog cart sells more hotdogs per day than your average indie or solo game developer sells iPhone games per day.

A new street food vendor only competes with other food vendors in the area. A new game developer competes globally, against both established studios and hobbyists happy to work for free because it's fun. You have people who want to make games so badly they'll fight to get in, knowing fully it's low pay and long hours.

Any way you look at it, the reason game developer salaries are relatively low is because supply for the jobs is higher than the demand.

It's a bit silly to compare the two because the economics are so different (local, non-scalable product vs. global product with zero marginal cost), but I stand by my assertion that there's no inherent reason why game developers should earn more, on average, than food vendors.

Inherent reason to me would be that the skills of food vendors are more common and easily acquired than those of game developers. I have a BSc in CS and over 10 years experience. This guy learned to make bread from his girlfriend and opened a stand shortly after. You're probably unfamiliar with the game industry beyond popular articles and headlines, but I can assure you tha demand for qualified engineers is very high. At least in the parts of the industry that are profitable. i.e not the millions of bedroom coders or cheap labour that pump out mediocre games.

I guess we're talking about different things - you're talking about the high end positions, I'm talking about the average case. To get my analogies even further muddled up, you're talking about musicians signed with a major label, I'm talking about all musicians, from rockstars to people busking in subway stations. The expected value is going to be very different if you're only taking the top N percentile.

(not particularly relevant, but I have friends with similar qualifications and experience as you who work / worked in the industry at... shall we say more mediocre studios. I suspect their perspective on this topic is somewhat different from yours.)

Yup. And it's quite difficult to figure out how to efficiently sell that much bread (or hotdogs, or shaobing). But once you do, you're in business.

You miss the key part of the equation though. More people want to make video games than want to sell street food...

See my other replies. Many less people can make video games than want to.

> The reason being that the work is creative and technically skilled.

Given how fast I've been going through potential (literal) burger flipper cooks at my restaurant, I'm not sure that's totally the case. Some people are surprisingly _terrible_ at a job that many people consider to be the lowest of the low.

There is also a never ending demand for food ;)

Salary distributions in the video game industry are starting to look a lot like salaries in the movie and TV industries. The bottom tends to pay peanuts and demand long hours, because there's an oversupply of willing applicants relative to the demand for low-level talent. (The question "Who wants to make games/movies/TV shows for a living?!" will always be exciting enough to attract entry level applicants by the boatload).

The top tiers of any of these industries, however, pay millions. I'm not talking millions because people started their own businesses and got acquired. I mean millions in salary and/or bonus per year, as employees. This is because, as you put it, the supply of extremely talented and skilled workers at the higher tiers is outpaced by demand. (And also because they're hit-driven businesses -- and, absent any real data as to a causal relationship between Superstar A's presence and Supergame B's performance, Superstar A receives the full benefit of correlation).

So you end up with a sort of pyramid structure to the business: lots of workers at the bottom, slightly fewer at the middle, very few at the top, and the compensation flows disproportionately from the top down.

A lot of industries function this way, but the various entertainment industries have especially interesting distributions because they're so inherently attractive to potential applicants.

People outside the industry make these kind of generalisations all the time but in practise it's nonsense. Sure millions of kids may want to be video programmers, but very few are qualified (i.e: can program well enough and have sufficient CS background to cope with the job.

Where I work we have a good mix of veterans and recent graduates. Typically they are from top North American Universities including Stanford and Waterloo.

Why is that really sad?

It's not sad that the conditions for a street food vendor are better, it's sad that the conditions for a game programmer are so bad.

It is sad because it is too close for comfort. It could happen to me. It also sets a bad price anchor for programmers.

Sorry for late reply.

More people need sex than food, yet we pursue it with greater fervor than food.

More people don't need social networks, yet HN is filled to the brim with new social network or social site.

You got a point about it being a more desirable/glamourous job than selling food.

My point was that people get away with that kind of abuse of employees (and yes I'm aware its due to supply/demand).

Really?

Being a game programmer is a choice taken by people with good choices available to them. They could be working less hard and/or earning more elsewhere. They choose not to. I don't see why that's a travesty.

Sweatshop is working is horrible conditions that no one would choose if they had any decent options.

It's not all bad. Valve compensates its programmers the same as Google and Facebook, sometimes better. I believe their revenue per employee exceeds that even of Apple (but don't quote me on that).

The streetfood business is awful in the long term. I hope he can quickly move into a brick and mortar restaurant. Depending on the municipality, streetfood vendors get nailed by all sorts of random fines, get shunted around to various "permitted areas" which may or may not have lots of foot traffic, and the worst part: the low barrier to entry. Competitors can come in super quickly, and when they do, they can lower the total revenue by just a few percent for all other vendors in an area and kill profitability.

He's in China, so that's less of an issue.

So the fines may be less of an issue, but I feel like there are more possible competitors and probably even less of a barrier to entry.

you sir, do not know China.

Are those the Chengguang knocking at my cart?

It's really more of an issue:

http://english.sina.com/china/2013/0717/609718.html

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/190358-protests-after-street...

A vendor moving from a street stand to a restaurant is essentially what lean startup is. I wrote a post about a coconut man on the steamy sidewalk of saigon here. http://datdiary.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/lean-startup-vietna...

It's not even a big news to make a fortune by selling street food in Asia. Personally I know a family selling Pan-fried Stuffed Buns as street vendors in Taipei about 25 years ago. After 5 years or so they earned their buildings and moved in to a brick and mortar place in a neighborhood that's equivalent to the UES in NYC. Their business is still standing today, with three or more items on their menu. I would say they pretty much embed the "lean startup" spirit by surrounding their MVP, Pan-fried Stuffed Buns, from the beginning.

I really dislike these type of stories. Basically saying "Investor buys lotto ticket; outperforms DJIA by 5 billion percent." Or a more realistic example, the stories that flow when gas prices spike. Like the person with the diesel engine running off waste grease from restaurants.

It's nice this person found a profitable niche but the concept itself doesn't lend itself to even linear growth.

Obviously if an investor was that bad, they shouldn't be an investor.

Running a diesel engine off waste oil is a great idea, more people should be doing it.

And no, food businesses don't scale well, but that's ok, because if you're efficient, and your food is good, you can make a decent living for your whole life.

  > Running a diesel engine off waste oil is
  > a great idea

Once enough people are doing it, it will be classified as a fuel and politicians will be tripping over themselves to regulate and tax it. Also, at some point there won't be enough waste grease to fuel the market, and the prices of unused vegetable oil will go up possibly limiting its use for food.

To add to this, has anyone actually tested the diesel engine to make sure it meet all emission standards?

How safe are the fumes to be burned around cities? Remember when we found out lead in gas was unsafe to be inhaled from exhaust pipes?

From Wikipedia: "Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have successfully completed the Health Effects Testing requirements (Tier I and Tier II) of the Clean Air Act (1990)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_biodie...

Either way the tetraethyl lead situation was completely different. It was very clear early on that the stuff was extremely toxic. Lead was already known to be toxic, and workers at the refineries were dying left and right due to exposure.

Slow down there.

Biodiesel is meant to be used in standard diesel engines and is thus distinct from the vegetable and waste oils...

Unfun fact, the person who invented tetraethyl lead gasoline additive also invented chlorofluorocarbons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.

Why is it unfun? Is he evil for inventing things that later turned out to be harmful?

I believe the grandparent was merely stating a piece of possibly interesting but not particularly useful knowledge that might normally be labelled a "fun fact", but didn't want to use the word "fun" when mentioning inventions that caused thousands of deaths.

Apparently he indeed was evil: "On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL. In this demonstration, he poured TEL over his hands, then placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose and inhaled its vapor for sixty seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems whatsoever. Midgley himself was careful to avoid mentioning to the press that he required nearly a year to recover from the lead poisoning brought on by his demonstration at the press conference."

I have no idea - but my anecdata point relates to a school friend who converted a van. It smelt like a fish and chip shop from a fair distance. It ran great until the home-brew water injection failed. It was parked on a slope and the water filled the cylinders. Turning it on was a rather violent attempt at compressing water.

Not to mention the simple fact that it's hardly a waste product in most places as-is.

I've seen about six people go through this journey. Burning waste veggie oil, or even biodiesel, is considerably more annoying and labor intensive than merely filling a car. Unless this changes, it's unlikely to scale in the way you indicate.

The real threat is actually blends that use a small amount of biodiesel mixed with rock diesel. These can be burned in any engine, and there is so little food oil (animal and vegetable) compared to the demand for liquid fuel, that this practice can easily lead to the kind of effects you describe.

In Poland it's already taxed. If you burn oil in your engine that was not intended for that purpose (and not taxed for that purpose) you should go to your tax office and pay the missing tax. Of course this is met with silent "piss off" from all the people who are doing it.

Running a diesel engine off of waste oil works great, as long as there's enough waste oil. They usually seem to be talking about restaurant frying oil. A medium-size city generates enough waste frying oil for, what, a couple of dozen people to fuel their vehicles? Maybe a few hundred? That's nice for them, but what will the other 99% of the city use? Try to scale it up to fuel their vehicles too, and it'll rapidly get much more expensive and much worse for the environment than ordinary gasoline and diesel.

Running a diesel engine off waste oil is a great idea, more people should be doing it.

I'm not really a fan of running diesel cars off waste oil.

To be clear, when I say "not really a fan" I mean I hate with a passion. In my experience, driving behind a vehicle running on waste oil is an absolutely foul experience. It doesn't just smell like fetid garbage, it tastes like it too.

Considering it is a gaming industry site I think the idea was mainly to bring up how low paid many game programmers are and how poor their lives are due to the long hours. I know at China related events particularly it has also been mentioned you can get pretty much free office space in the right areas thanks to the government incentives as well. So if anything, the publicity on the low pay and long hours for game programmers might encourage investors/companies to start their own out sourcing branch over there/etc..

Also annoying: the focus on money.

The article basically says he wrecked his body working punishing hours, so he quit, found a girlfriend, started collaborating with her on a mutual goal, and plans to get married. Headline says "he doubled his salary!"

If he doesn't care whether he's on the path to linear growth, why should we?

Nerd moves in with girlfriend, doubles household income!

"Nerd has girlfriend!"

"Just because you hide in her closet does not make her your girlfriend"

this is another classic example of the HN echo chamber - "wait there are non white collar professions outside of programming - where people can make a lot of money too?!? :O".. there are "n" ways to make more money than a programmer in most parts of the world outside the valley (heck even in the valley) - and not just as a banker / consultant etc..

The title is slightly inaccurate / misleading. He quit his job and now runs his own business together with his girlfriend (i.e. they both work). Her part in this is not negligible, perhaps she is the main asset of the company.

(I don't know why this gets modded down, but let me clarify: his old salary is his personal income. The "doubled" salary is the income from his business, apparently the combined salary of both of them - so it's misleading to say that he "doubled his salary")

Your point about having his girlfriend's labor as a huge contribution to his venture is pretty correct. I don't think it down plays his success at all... but it's certainly a significant contributor. If my wife would embrace my madcap ideas and work on them full-force, it would be quite awesome.

This title could attract more traffic. Programmer is a good topic, and double salary as well.

Your point is correct. But people will ignore the key.

For the TLDR crowd:

>We had no idea that we'd sell so much—we sold 100 shaobings in a day, business is only getting better and better." said the programmer. "We already earned enough for an apartment and now we're saving up more money. We hope to get married next year.

The story has a happy ending. It's nice to see people, if not doing what they love, then at least loving their newfound life. And that's the whole shaobing.

A nitpick about its translation of "Ma Nong" (码农): it doesn't mean "Number Cruncher". Although the "Ma" is the same character with "Hao Ma" (number), in describing the profession of programmer, it means "Code".

"Nong" means farmer ("Nong Fu"). It implies laborious work.

The closest translation to it should be "Code Farmer".

also nong(农) is the character for migrant worker(农民) which are look down upon in china as poor peasants who come to big city looking for work in manual labor jobs. So it is like calling them a code peasant or something like that. It is really meant as a self depreciating kind of insult. The character nong(农) is always used to describe someone who does menial jobs like manual labor or farming

So it seems like it's Chinese equivalent of code monkey.

The numbers in the article don't quite add up. Shao bing is cheap food... usually 1.5 or 2 renminbi, maybe 2.5.

If they're selling 100 a day, every day, at 2.5元/each, that would be 250元/day and ~7500元/month.

7500元 is only about $1220.

So even if the article is only assuming revenue per month (and not profit), they still have to increase their price or sales (or some combination) by 267% to hit the $3,259/month mentioned.

If you're talking actual profit, which would be a more adequate comparison to his previous salary, then it's probably closer to a factor of 5.

I used to buy shaobing with all the extras at my local street vendor, usually added up to 8元 in 2012 Beijing prices.

They probably sell more than 100 a day now. "We sold 100 a day."

I can imagine for a popular cart selling 100 items is usually done over a lunch, then something similar in the evening again.

Street vendors in Canada can typically sell well over 100 of anything on a nice day, I imagine in China with the greater foot traffic and culture of street food they're selling a lot more.

I read the story as them thinking that when they sold 100 per day when they started was validation that their plan was going to work.

This will probably be buried, but this conversation needs some serious context and the article title really needs to be changed to "Game Programmer Quits Job To Sell Street Food, Doubles Salary in China".

Programmers are almost notoriously overworked and underpaid in China. Working 10 to 12 hours a day for $1000 a month is quite common. It's possible to make more money working six hours a day for half a month working as an English teacher.

The view in Eastern Asia is that a programmer is akin to a machine that you hand a specification and code is produced and hence the low pay. You could trade programming in China for a large number of other careers and double your salary. It's not a particularly usual thing.

If you were to trade this for a software development position in the US or Western Europe it's going to be a much different story. Culturally speaking, it's seen much more like and engineer or craftsmen rather than a labourer. Switching from a position like this in the US to selling food is much less likely to see the same kind of return.

Strangely enough, when I lived in Japan the guy who owned the takoyaki cart near my office surprised me with perfect English and a Californian accent that he had picked up as a game programmer in the USA in the 90s.

I used to work in the food industry, in fine dining restaurants (which are notorious for long hours, hard work, and mediocre pay).

Alot of my friends left to start food trucks, street stands, etc... Keep in mind where I live (a cold part of Canada), you can realistically only sell street food for 4-6 months out of the year. They would all make $60,000 to $100,000 in a season, and now a few of them have brick and mortar restaurants to their name.

I worked a street food stand for a festival awhile back, we made $3000 in a day (split 2 ways).

Street food doesn't scale too well, and there are a whole slew of downsides, but if you can figure out an efficient way to make tasty food, you can make a lot of money and there's only a small barrier to starting out (likely less start up cost in China).

Strangely enough, this idea has gone through my mind a couple of times, for a completely different reasons though.

Mortality is closely connected with the hours we spend sitting each day. So that's one reason.

The other one is that after working so hard and saving up enough for the rest of your life, you need something that is much more stress-free. And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.

While sitting is correlated with mortality, I don't think it's been proved that it causes it. I suspect the relation between the two is more complicated than that.

As far as stress free... Interacting directly with many customers can be a trying experience. I think it can be a lot more stressful than an office job for many people.

I'm not saying you'll be dead in 5 years time if you spend more than 12 hours a day sitting on a chair programming. But it adds up if you're doing that your whole lifetime and neglect healthy food and physical activity. Of course it differs from person to person but I think you see my point.

Regarding stress free comment... I guess it depends on the person in question. Besides, when you finish for the day, you really finish for the day and that's the most important thing. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

Smart people will put health before entrepreneurship, especially if it prolongs their life and not just in the sense how many years will they have to life.

> And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.

I dare you to take a food safety course. I sweat bullets just thinking about what might happen in the tiny chance that a customer gets sick from eating my food even after all the ten million precautions that were taken. Then I dare you to run a reasonably high volume restaurant during peak lunch/dinner hours. :)

Forget all the other stresses like how it's really hard to find good burger flippers in the bay area, even for $14/hour plus tons of overtime 3x meals and more. And the health inspector breathing down your neck giving you a 99/100 for something that has nothing to do with the safety of your restaurant.

Compared to my development work, running a restaurant is a whole different set of stresses and just as bad, all the time.

Bear in mind that while selling food worked out well for the guy in the article, most game programmers don't need to make a move that drastic. For most game programmers, the right move is to just get out of the game industry and get a programming job in some other sector where the ratio of supply to demand is healthy enough that you can stick to reasonable working hours and have some time to spend outdoors.

> And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.

There is very little that is as stress free as being a programmer. Certainly not the food industry. My wife's cousin is a chef. Her job is terribly interesting, but she works 80 hours a week to make 1/3 as much money as a programmer and has to deal with tremendously demanding situations (cooking at peak dinner service).

My first job out of college was writing Super Nintendo games in Vancouver. My starting salary was $28.5K/year in 1994. Had I have been working 40 hour work weeks, this would have been a reasonable salary, but for 80 hours a week (which is closer to what I was working), it was less than McDonalds paid at the time.

The difference is upwards mobility. It's hard moving up the corporate ladder while flipping burgers. It was not so hard to turn the game programming job into a lucrative career in software development.

Moving up might have been true in 94 but what about now? How soon are you planning on retiring/dieing?

Hopefully never. :-D

The video games industry is pretty difficult to cut your teeth in though. It's highly technical, it has a ridiculous amount of competition and the software produced has a very short shelf life. If you can make it there, chances are you can make it anywhere.

It hasn't got much better, starting salary is games usually $35,000 in Australia (in 2008, fairly sure it's still the same now) And you're still expected to work crazy hours and weekends.

The joke at Origin Systems (back in the day) was: "We train people for well-paying jobs in the computer game industry."

It was funny on several levels... if you didn't work there.

RIP Origin bros. :(

EDIT: I assume that joke is funny in the same way that you'll find "The Liberated Democratic Free People's Republic of Chernarus"?

Yep.

I never had the 'honor' of working there. One of my brother's did.

I feel like there's a lot of articles like this, which kinda make it seem like life is easy as an entrepreneur, or that successful business just happen. I feel like this mentality is behind the explosion in early stage financings relative to late stage financings.

I know that as an early stage founder that I am part of the problem, but I often stop to think about whether what I'm doing is really that valuable or if I should just join another company in growth phase. I think the 100th engineer at Facebook would have had a lot more impact than most of the failed founders today.

I just think that being a founder is a harsh experience that you have to learn from many times over in order to get right, and that even when things go well there's no guarantee of a money pot at the end of the rainbow. I think you really need to have motivations other than cash to truly convince yourself that what you're working on is worth waking up for every day.

I think if you have that motivation inside you then being a founder is a great experience. Thinking you should just leave your job for an instant moneypot is just silly though, IMHO.

Nope. See this Programmers salary report :

http://www.programmer.com.cn/14918/

CNY 3k - 5k , that means USD 400 - 800.

Nearly 1/5 programmers in China live in this salary.

What USD 500 can buy in America?

The game programming industry is pretty well known as being the "sweat shops" of the tech industry. Not at all surprised about this story.

"The biggest asset any businessman can have is a hungry crowd."

A rare example of an adage which still works when applied literally.

The guy should open more street food stalls and scale this business if it is so profitable.

Or! He could save his company and start a video game company!

All jokes aside, unless you have a very good knack or special offering, scaling might not work so well. You have to train people to be just as good as you are, some people go to specific food trucks for the people.

Sounds like the parable of the mexican fisherman:

An executive from America was standing at the pier of a Mexican village, taking a much needed vacation. It was his first in more than 10 years. He noticed a small boat docked with just one fisherman on board. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The executive complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The fisherman replied, “only a little while.”

The executive then asked, “why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”

The fisherman replied, “I have enough to support my family for a little while.”

The executive then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

The executive scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then?”

The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions.. Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

The fisherman laughed, and a few years later there was a shortage of fish, and his family suffered having not built up any reserves of money or assets.

The parable of the fisherman is basically the Ant and the Grasshopper told up until some time before winter.

Exaggerated obviously, but then parables always are, that's why they are almost useless.

You can find a contradiction in anything if you look hard enough.

You forgot to mention the embezzlement that wiped the businessman out after all those years of hard work.

in my version the fisherman had a nest-egg and a supportive village, killjoy... ;)

wtf? 20k a month just by selling 'shaobing'. This is just another shitty marketing 'news' for a MMO called "Yuan zheng"[1] [1]http://yz.q1.com/

It's rare for some to share their earnings, it invites competition.

I don't know why so many people are saying that it needs to be made clear that this is in China, and that it doesn't apply elsewhere.

I'm a programmer in Finance in London, and a good day rate for a Senior contractor is 600GBP/day. I have a good friend who started out doing "grilled chorizo in a ciabatta bun" at a London market, and easily made 1000GBP his first day. Now he uses employees to man that stall, and has moved on to the next idea, at a different locations doing something different to allow him to do something that appeals during different seasons. By now I imagine he is easily making double what I do.

What are other promising businesses programmers in the US can start?

The article is about programmers in China.

This sounds like a nitpick, but it's not:

The article is about a programmer in China. This one guy might be (probably is) particularly good at making & selling street treats.

Cutting spending and keeping my programming job instead of starting a new business has worked out really well for me. Passive investing of my savings earns me $500/month and I don't have to do any work at all. Other options for those outside of SV is landlording. In some mid-west cities you can earn over $10,000/year/house after all taxes and expenses (including saving for long term expenses like roofs).

Not exactly traditional small businesses, but honestly, both options have much higher probability of success (or at least not losing all of your money like restaurants)

Landlording can be very profitable in some areas or a huge money pit in some areas. My parents did it for years and barely broke even, or lost a ton of money if you include labor costs.

Plus you get people waking you up in the middle of the night when they lock themselves out.

I agree entirely with the fact that real estate it is very hit or miss. But worst case scenario (assuming you have insurance) is you have to sell the house at a depressed price and take a loss on your time. With a restaurant (where 50%+ are out of business in 3 years) you rent the space, lose all the money you spent on rent, and on food and on employees etc. Very easy to lose everything with a restaurant, but you need to be fairly unlucky to loose more than you put into a house (i.e. you bought in 2007)

That being said, saving lots of money and living off of dividends is the way to go.

Assuming you can find a buyer for the house. My parents could absolutely not sell theirs, there was no buyer, because anyone could see there was no money to be made. You need a buyer to sell.

What kind of passive investments do you have? It seems like you're lucky to get a 3% return on dividend paying stocks.

I just do US stock index investing. There has never been a 25 year period where the US stock market did worse than 3% if you include dividends. Let me know if you want sources. This year alone it is up over 10%. That being said there will definitely be down years but that is ok with me as they will even out over the length of my career.

"There has never been a 25 year period"

Just be aware that saying used to be 10 year period, until it broke. It hasn't worked in the last decade or so, therefore roughly speaking durations keep expanding to reach the eighties. I suspect in 2030 the phrase will be something like ... never been a 50 year period ...

The part that worries me is hearing about all those boomers having to cash in equities and real estate over the next couple decades to pay off the medical sector... Who, exactly, is supposed to step up and buy that stuff at current prices / PE ratios? AKA where's the demand?

What do you think about tax liens as a passive investment?

Never investigated them. Have a summary link?

Here you go. I'd love to give it a shot, but it does look like more learning is required: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-07/marketplace/sn...

Interesting. If you're into repo'ing property I could maybe see it working. I feel like it would be easier for a similar reture to use something like LendingClub to loan money to people who actually want to pay it back, as opposed to people who are 1-2 years late on their taxes.

"In some mid-west cities you can earn over $10,000/year/house after all taxes and expenses (including saving for long term expenses like roofs)."

Possibly true anecdote. However with the median family income for the country being $45K or so, thats implying the profit alone exceeds something like 25% of the median tenant gross income. So thats like a $1M CEO waterfront house not joe6pack's house.

Somewhat more realistically, you can expect your average family to spend maybe 1/3 their income on housing, and your profit will probably be a fraction of that, and you'll only have tenants a (large?) fraction of the time, so from a scalability standpoint to earn a median income you probably need to rent out one to two dozen houses, which rapidly becomes a full time job and is quite a capital investment. Also it becomes interesting to express various typical maintenance costs as "months of rental profit" rather than $. A furnace might be more than a years gross profit, yet only guaranteed for 20 years... times ten other major appliances all carefully value engineered to fall apart...

One worrisome part about long term prices is a Z percentile resident will more or less always live in Z percentile housing. Now the capital cost of that housing solely depends on about 1/3 the resident's income put toward the mortgage interest payment... and that rate was at multi-generational lows aka prices were at multi-generational highs. J6P can afford to pay the bank $2K/month means he can borrow how much, depending on interest rate? So what happens to your capital investment when median income inevitably continues its multi-generational decline, while at the same time, interest rates inevitably rise resulting in crashing sale prices? There are other cultural effects like retiring baby boomers wanting to downsize, kids having mortgage sized school loans therefore unable to afford a mortgage, etc.

Just saying, focusing on return OF capital is probably more important than return ON capital, when you're doing long term real estate investment. From a diversification stand point it can work if you have 100 or so houses, but its rough at a smaller scale.

Programming Computers For Money.

Seriously, it's bordering on the most lucrative profession in the US. If "Selling Hotdogs" sounds like it might make you even 1/10 as much, you're simply not charging enough.

So if you're looking for a business that doesn't involve selling your time for money, your best option is Software Product Company. Build something people need enough to pay you $50/month for it. The math works out quite nicely.

> If "Selling Hotdogs" sounds like it might make you even 1/10 as much, you're simply not charging enough.

Actually, my side biz is selling food. Unless you propose that I make way over a million dollars a year while contracting (no thanks to that stress)...I think my restaurant does okay. If I sunk the same amount of time in my restaurant that I did for contracting, then I'd definitely make more money with the restaurant than with contracting. I'm fairly confident I can compete with many bay area salaries at those numbers, and I could sink more effort and money into opening more restaurants and.... you see where I'm going with this, right?

My business is fairly small fry anyway. Had I a couple million bucks in the bank, I'd be looking at running restaurants with $40k+/month net profit. (How many engineers make that, before stock options and ignoring the value of the business itself?)

There are a LOT of other ways to make bank and saying being a developer is the only way to do it is incredibly narrow.

Is that 40k a month per restaurant ?

What makes your restaurant so succesful, isn't that industry plagued with 80% shutdown wiyhin 5 years?

> Is that 40k a month per restaurant ?

Yes. While I haven't actually looked at financial statements for those businesses since they were way out of my budget, I'd get the occasional listing with numbers like that. Businesses like http://www.bizbuysell.com/Business-Opportunity/Sushi-Restaur... - nearly $700k in earnings in one year is not bad at all.

It's up for debate how much the owner actually makes and how much of the sales goes unreported to the BOE, IRS, etc., but it's within the realm of possibility.

Alternatively, absentee-own a franchise or series of stores for similar effect: http://www.bizbuysell.com/Business-Opportunity/4-Unit-Five-G...

> What makes your restaurant so succesful, isn't that industry plagued with 80% shutdown wiyhin 5 years?

I can believe the failure rate is that high for brand new restaurants, but that is why you buy already established businesses instead. I also don't think that number is too strange in the context of all brand new businesses. Think of how many startups fail. Imagine if there was a market for buying and selling "matured" startups - that's basically how small business sales work. (Hopefully) all the bad ones will have died out already, the ones the owners are trying to flip as fast as possible before they die are dead obvious, and you'll maybe be left over with a few sustainable businesses to choose from.

I think the only difference between running a restaurant and starting a startup is that there is no restaurant equivalent to winning the jackpot (read: selling your startup for mega bucks) and just keeping the business in the black is the norm (although, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how a lot of startups can even dream to accomplish that...).

As for what makes my restaurant successful? My takeover may have been this year, but it's sat at the same location for decades (older than I am, even) and we have big servings and tasty fries. :D

That's amazing. Do you have any tips for buying a business? Maybe some books to recommend?

That's some good points, and I never thought of it in terms of restaurants that have been there longer may not be part of that statistic.

Some caveats though: -Even large billion dollar corporations that have been in business go bankrupt -My perspective has always been that if a profitable restaurant is selling, its because it really isn't that profitable. The usual reasons given for the sale are can't spend the hours or health, but the reality is that if a restaurant is profitable, they could just hire a manager for 40-60k who could manage all aspects of the business, while the owners collect their checks every month. My feeling on why that doesn't happen is because the business isn't doing as well as reported.

The game programmer part is a bit of a juxtaposition.

Hearing that a good living can be made selling traditional street food in China is interesting though. That's some sort of sign.

These kinds of stories pop up every so often. There was one in '05 about a programmer who became a bicycle messenger in SF[1]. I think as programmers, we often get so absorbed in our own thing that we don't see there's a world of opportunity outside of programming work.

[1] http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548

Well, as saying goes: if you want different result, try something new.

Also, if you click the Chinese link in the article you'll find a video.

If the young woman in the pictures is the girlfriend mentioned as part of the deal, I understand his choice even better.

I know a programmer who quit his job and became a janitor, apparently doubled his happiness.

Just because you have the logical mind for something does not mean it will make you happy. I often feel like I lack the logical mind for working in IT but I freaking LOVE the work.

This is what happens when our field is overrun with MBA's and other scum.

As a game developer in china, We use this story to self-mockery.We work more than 50 hours a week, without girlfriend, without high pay.But We know one day When we has to leave we have another choice. He he~

But does he double his net income?

Does she/he really like street food better? If so all the best to him/her.

I don't like to think about what I'd do for a good shaobing in Toronto.

Hey guys, It's just an advertisement

Reminds me of the story behind zerocater

It's just an ad, not fact.

guess he is better at cooking than programming.

The average age of the US farmer is 58. In Japan it is 68. There is less and less land available for agriculture. Less and less fresh water (agriculture uses 90% of fresh water in the US). The weather gets worse by the year to produce food. On the other hand there are more and more people in the world. So supply is diminishing while demand is high. That's why food is more and more expensive almost every quarter.

All these smart folks at Stanford are wasting their time studying IT, law or finance. Too much competition. Study agriculture, be rich. Farmers are going to drive Maserati's in the future not successful software developers or Wall Street crowd.

Or, the engineers and developers make the hardware and software that is inevitably replacing all human labor in agriculture.

An IT startup dealing with agriculture could be successful. There are these companies like the one that produces water purification systems and chemicals in China that are just pure gold to invest in. (Chinese have horrible, horrible water quality even for the purposes of agriculture). As China is becoming richer and richer doing basic stuff like this may turn out to be much better place to be than spending years competing for VC money with 10% chances of success.

Climate Corp in Seattle does ag insurance with Clojure. Pretty cool people.

> Farmers are going to drive Maserati's in the future

Or people who own farmland?

Farmers are getting older because small-scale farms are disappearing. Agriculture is an incredibly hard business, and unless you have scale, one bad year will wipe you out. Now, those few that do have more land than some sovereign states and the machinery to work it are making some serious money, so working for them is a perfectly viable career strategy.

I'd be interested in the source of the U.S. figure. My guess is that this is only looking at independent farmers. But they produce a declining share of agricultural output. What's the average age of an Archer Daniels Midland employee?

just google the figure. Jim Rogers uses it in the interviews all the time, so when you are at it, google him and his stand on the future of the agriculture too.

As easy as supply & demand. App Store Supply & Demand is such that you get apps for free. Food industry Supply & Demand is such that a cup of coffee can be at 3-5 bucks. Just paid 20usd for an organic chicken. And that's cheap! Really does taste different (much better).

So? Coding an iPhone app for free because it's cool? I know agriculture doesn't have any of the "cool" factor some of the people are looking for, but you know what? Working for free isn't cool. Selling chickens 20usd/piece or coffee 4usd/cup probably is. And if you can't make it in the agriculture world - the government will keep subsidizing you forever.

What not to like about it ?

It's important to watch what trader/pundits like Jim Rogers actually do, not just listen to what he says. He's made a big deal about the current and future commodities boom, but he's also running a group of commodities funds. He makes bold claims about how Balliol MBAs should be buying farms instead of going into other industries, but he does not own any farms. He moved his young daughter to Singapore so that she could become fluent in Mandarin, he did not move her to Minnesota so that she could learn how to farm soybeans. It's always going to be better to be the commodities trader who controls a market than it is to be the producer of that commodity. If you watch what he has done, rather than what he says... you want to move to Singapore to broker commodities to the emerging asian markets, not move to Fresno to start an orchard.

Regarding "why" people may choose to make iPhone apps instead of farming. It's almost impossible to get started up in agriculture for someone who hasn't inherited a farm. Farmland where I'm from is over $10K per acre at the moment. You need millions of dollars just to buy the land. Then you need millions of dollars to buy all the equipment. Also, subsidies only happen for cash crops and commodities like milk and pork, you don't get subsidies for organic chicken and vegetables.

one doesnt need to own land to participate in the agriculture industry. It seems that food stand might be all it takes. Jim rogrrs moved to singapore and not minesota because he participates in the agriculture industry using his brokerage skills. probably much mire effective given his background. my claim is this: write software that has to do with agriculture. might be a great niche. and if you are young enough dont waste your time studying IT to compete with bazolion others to write apps for free. rather help in an industry likr agriculture where supply is very weak and demand is very strong. ever heard of restaurants giving out food for free on a regular basis to lure in customers?

If you focus on just age you're not getting the whole picture. The average farm is getting much larger. In your grandfathers time you could raise a family and put kids though college on 160 acres. Nowadays it might take several thousand acres to do the same thing.

Outliers are managing 10-20,000 acres. To do that you need a lot of capital. The large need for capital makes it nearly impossible for an outsider to do a startup. Returns are small and farmers face risk with weather, markets and government intervention into the market.

Small farmers pay more for supplies and are at an extreme disadvantage before putting a single seed in the ground. Exceptions to the rule are niches like organic farming and greenhouses.

If by farmer, you mean someone who works on a farm, but doesn't own it, it's laughable to suggest that they will ever be making a lot of money.

If by farmer you mean someone with millions of dollars of capital invested in farmland, it's not accurate to compare them to a run of the mill software developer. As with all industries in a capitalist economy, the people with the capital are the ones making most of the money.

You don't need to be a farmer neccessarily. Like the guy from the article who has a food stand. You may partake in the agriculture industry in many different ways. I wonder if anybody ever has went to a farmer and asked him what is the single most annoying thing he has to deal with and tried to create start-up around a proposed solution to this annoyance. People do it all the time to get ideas about what is needed on the market. Who would go to the middle of Minesota to ask? Could be worth the effort vs. writing another Facebook game that's supposed to make money on ads - is all Im saying.

> Farmers are going to drive Maserati's in the future not successful software developers or Wall Street crowd.

Jim Rogers? http://www.jimrogersinvestments.com/2012/05/jim-rogers-farme...

edit: followed your later comments, yup.

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