30 People Speak The Truth About Careers Everyone Thinks Are Great

Bored Panda spoke with Redditor ColSurge who is a video game developer about why so many people romanticize their job and what it is that they don’t know about it. “Most people look at this as a dream job because they have a picture in their minds of MAKING a game. Like they think about making a story, or cool levels, or cool weapons. They have ideas! And they want to use the amazing ideas they have,” ColSurge told us.

However, the reality couldn’t be more different. “The reality is that it will be a long time before you get any creative control in game design. The overwhelming majority of people will spend the overwhelming majority of their career doing things like making tree textures. Then being told that the green on the trees they made is a little too green, then being told that the shadows aren't quite right and you need to make them ‘better,’” ColSurge said and added that this is a very far cry from what most young people think when they want to get into game design.

The video game developer confessed that they don’t think their job is very creatively fulfilling at all. “It's almost no different than making burgers at McDonalds. Your job is to churn out burgers the exact way your boss tells you to, just the burgers are digital assets.”

For anyone who is considering a job in the video gaming industry, ColSurge suggests realizing that you are not going into the video game industry. “You are actually going into the graphic design/computer programming industry, and choosing to apply for jobs in game design. When you get into the industry you quickly realize there is no difference between making a digital asset for the new Halo game or making one for Allstate insurance.”

ColSurge continued: “You think it would be so cool that you are working on Halo, and that it would be awesome to tell people you are making Halo, but that glow wears off after about a week.” According to them, “if you can't see yourself being happy making digital content for an insurance company app as your day job, DO NOT get into video game design,” and added that it’s “because they are the exact same job.”

And when it comes to challenges of work in the video game industry, there are plenty of them. “The challenge comes from burnout and the burnout comes from two different places: deadlines and monotony,” ColSurge said. Moreover, “Projects are always behind schedule for reasons way beyond your control. So you are being pushed harder and harder to hit deadlines to fix the delays. This has gotten a little better, but the 24-hour workday leading up to an important deadline is still a very real thing.”

The other challenge you gotta tackle is the monotony. “You are constantly doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. For people that got into this line of work to be creative, that really can drag people down,” ColSurge concluded. No wonder the Redditor considered changing their career many times, since according to them, “everyone in game design has.”

Having said that, they added that just like “any career, the longer you stay in the field, the further you move up the ladder, you start getting that creative control you probably wanted from the beginning.”

Another job industry that’s been constantly idolized in our society is working in the fashion industry, so we spoke with Redditor After-Woodpecker-595 who said that fashion jobs are very overestimated these days. “Well, in the '90s, the only people in the industry were weirdos, really, the intent was mainly making clothes and there wasn't a proper career path like other professions. Around the 2000s the universities started catching up to the fact they could cash in on it, making it a bachelors and teaching people nothing, basically,” After-Woodpecker-595, who’s also the creator of r/Toxicfashion, told us.

She added that “around 2008/9 things went awry... we're talking Devil Wears Prada, Gossip Girl, Project Runway… The industry was filled with people who had no interest in sitting behind a sewing machine.”

One of the most common misconceptions about working in fashion according to After-Woodpecker-595 is “that you will draw clothes or use creativity or be famous and so on,” she said and added that “truth is, most fashion jobs are pretty standard office jobs these days.” According to the Redditor, what makes working in fashion particularly demanding is the people in the industry: “It is competitive and cutthroat. Much like you saw on Devil Wears Prada, except you don't get to go to Paris in the end.”

For anyone who’s still considering working in fashion, the Redditor urges you to do it, “because you're going to do it anyway, like I did.” However, you have to realize “it's not easy money and you have to have very thick skin to even stand a chance.”