I had the Turtle Graphics cartridge for the VIC-20. Never picked up a version for the C64.

Most people leave the video game industry for good after they realize that they want a personal life that includes a significant other and having a family. Very few testers work their way up to become producers or programmers. I went into help desk support for ten years and I'm now doing computer security, making twice as much money for half the hours that I did as a video game tester.

A lot of cars today are not user servicable beyond routine maintanence. My father once spent $800 on replacement parts trying to fix his car, gave up and took it to a shop. The mechanic scanned the computer, checked the error code, and replaced a electronic module for $30 in 15 minutes. The problem was digitial, not mechanical.

The company I worked for insisted on making each and every game be available for each and every video game consoles in existence. That looks good on paper, if properly executed. The developers took shortcuts to meet the aggressive schedules imposed on them. The pipeline blew up when Nintendo started rejecting the PS2 ports for the GameCube and demanded that the deveopers start over with an original game. On my last project, I had to work 28 days straight to keep management happy.

I picked up a black MacBook and became an Apple fanboy. Nice little machine until the CPU fan died last year. Apple bought back the MacBook like this year, but I'm sitting on the fence as version 1.0 is quite ready for prime time yet.

When I worked in the video game industry in Silicon Valley, management always told us that we could get a job clearning toilets at Taco Bell if we didn't like our pay and work condiitions. One of the testers did that after discovering he could make more money, get better benefits and work a saner schedule at Taco Bell. Management stopped mentioning Taco Bell after that.

As a lead video game tester for three years, I had to teach the next generation of video game testers fresh out of high school. They like the idea of being paid to play video games, and then they learn that testing video games is not the same as playing games. Writing bug reports, going to meetings, and testing the same broken piece of shee-it game for weeks at a time is just the beginning. Most don't survive the mind-numbing crunch times of working 80 hours a week for months.

I hated learning LOGO on the Apple II in the seventh grade (circa 1983). That's when I found out I came from a "poor" family because we couldn't afford to get an Apple II (~$2,500). My parents got me a Commodore VIC-20 (~$250). The logo instructor called it toy and the entire class laughed. I hated Apple for the next 25 years.

I had an Atari 2600 with 30 cartridges as a preteen and did BASIC programming on the Commodore 64. Many years later, I got a testing job at a video game company called Accolade, which got bought out by Infrogrames, which bought Hasbro Interactive, which owned the IP rights for Atari. After the company relocated from San Jose to Sunnyvale and renamed itself Atari, I was a tester for three years and became a lead tester responsible for 10 titles for the next three years.

I also went back to school to earn my IT certifications and learn computer programming because testing video games was a dead end job financially. Made the president's honor list for graduating with a 4.0 GPA in my major while two taking two classes per semester, working 80 hours per week and occasionally teaching Sunday school. Somehow I spent the next 10 years in help desk support without doing any professional programming, making more money than I did as a tester while only working 40 hours per week.

I'm doing computer security and learning Powershell scripting in my current job. I use Python and the LAMP stack for websites at home. I'm more of a script monkey than a programmer these days. Maybe that will change as I get my security certifications and do more programming on the job.

I had two friends who decided to take a six-month vacation after getting laid off in 2001. Both had bachelor's degree but did nothing to improve themselves after five years of working in the industry. They started looking for a new job after their vacations were over, but no one wanted them because their existing job skills were out of date. Ironically, they both found jobs as drug store clerks after draining their savings account. Nearly 15 years later, they're still drug store clerks.

Except for the non-technical HR department that writes the job description requiring five years of experience for a new technology that came out recently. The only people who remotely qualify are those who worked on the language before anyone even heard about it.

Going back to school would disqualify you from getting unemployment benefits, at least in California, if you were "honestly" filling out the form. Most job training programs approved by the unemployment office don't offer "professional development" courses for programmers. Always seems like a Catch-22 to me.

My school ten years ago couldn't afford to renew the Microsoft site license, so everything was taught in every flavor of Java. I ended up in help desk support. I'm now doing computer security and writing PowerShell scripts to automate routine tasks. I use Python at home. Haven't touched Java since graduating from school.

I had a Nvidia GeForce 6200, Nvidia Quadro 3400, ATI Radeon 3850 and a few others that were probably AGP. The ATI Radeon 7960 was my newest card out of the bunch when it died from a dead fan. I had to install the Windows Vista driver file to get the ATI Radeon 3000-series motherboard graphics to work under Window 8.1.

Recruiters look at what you done in the last three positions and/or three years on your resume, and assume that you want to continue doing the same thing as before. So when I was out of work for two years (2009-2010), recruiters assumed that I wanted to continue being out of work. O_o

Smart recruiters will understand that you can parlay past experience into a new job. Dumb recruiters will go by the check list (i.e., five years of experience in a technology that came out six months ago).