{"id":9617,"date":"2010-10-04T07:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T12:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=9617"},"modified":"2010-10-04T07:28:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T12:28:00","slug":"looking-for-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=9617","title":{"rendered":"Looking for Group"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen years.  That&#8217;s a long time to hold onto a job in this industry.  Technology moves fast and companies come and go, so this has been a good run for me. But now my time at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.activeworlds.com\/\">Activeworlds<\/a> is over.  We parted very amicably. But we parted. I might still do a bit of consulting-type stuff, but my 9-to-5 job is gone. (As well as the jobs of a few friends, alas.) <\/p>\n<p>On one hand, this is a little scary. I&#8217;m aware that this is actually a terrible time to be looking for work. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/php-bin\/news_index.php?story=25999\">Everyone<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.joystiq.com\/2010\/08\/13\/rumor-realtime-worlds-lays-off-myworld-team-reduces-apb-team-s\/\">else<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/news\/view\/103061-Red-Storm-Entertainment-Hit-By-Layoffs\">is<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/news\/view\/101961-Civilization-Studio-Hit-By-Layoffs\">also<\/a> looking for work. It&#8217;s also a terrible time for me to be out of work. We had already taken a financial hit a few months ago and things have been looking uncertain.  Now I&#8217;m looking at our finances and concluding that if our household was a game of The Sims, I would seriously be thinking of abandoning the game and starting over, because this game is hosed. <\/p>\n<p>But despite the ominous financial outlook, this is actually a bit of a relief. I&#8217;d been working for AW for three days a week. Then making comics, my column, and my Let&#8217;s Play during the other three. And then squeezing this blog in wherever it fit. And even Saturday, my nominal &#8220;day off&#8221; had to be spent playing games in order to keep up. I&#8217;ve been redlining for about nine months now.  I don&#8217;t care how much you love your job, (and I love my jobs) you <em>will<\/em> get sick of it if you do too much for too long without a break.  I needed this break. And I&#8217;ve been itching to do something new.  Like I said, fifteen years is a long time.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t actually made up a resume or actively looked for work since 1993 or so. I&#8217;ve preferred finding and attaining jobs organically: Meet people, discover a common goal, and throw in with them. But now I might have to look for work the old-fashioned way. For a while I&#8217;ve been hedging my bets in regard to my career. Day job as a coder. Night job as a writer. But now I need to decide which way I&#8217;m going to go. Coding is what I&#8217;ve done the most, but (oddly enough) my writing is what I&#8217;m known for. I&#8217;m actually willing to go either way.  <\/p>\n<p>My hope is to find a nice small company that can use my rather esoteric skill set. I could take a standard job as a programmer, but in a perfect world I&#8217;d find someone who wanted to do something with <a href=\"?p=3315\">procedural content<\/a>, or <a href=\"?p=9562\">specialized tools<\/a>.  Or maybe I&#8217;ll go the writing route? <\/p>\n<p>I need to brush up on resume writing.  The last time I did one was pre-internet for me.  I imagine a lot of the standards have changed.  (Or I hope so.  I always found the standard resume to be 50% names and addresses, 40% boilerplate self-promotion, and 10% useful data.) If anyone has resume-writing advice (particularly on mistakes to avoid) it would be much appreciated. <\/p>\n<p>Wish me luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen years. That&#8217;s a long time to hold onto a job in this industry. Technology moves fast and companies come and go, so this has been a good run for me. But now my time at Activeworlds is over. We parted very amicably. But we parted. I might still do a bit of consulting-type stuff, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}