Consulting

From AboveTheGarage

Today, as I write this, August 24, 1010, it is the 15th anniversary of Windows 95.

I've been a game consultant a few times - that's generally a euphemism for "out of work" - but for me I've found that I can find work quickly as a contractor. I can lower my hourly rate below market and get work quickly. Getting paid on time is a different and more difficult problem but with one exception I eventually get paid. (It's really the number one problem with contracting - getting your clients to pay you. Ugh.)

The first time I was a contractor was the year before Windows 95 came out. I was living off my savings (really my lump-sum lucky windfall) and I didn't actually have any clients! I was working hard on my SuperSet Game Engine and also I was reasonably active in testing Windows 95. As a result I was invited to the Windows 95 launch event at Microsoft. And it was an amazing event. Jay Leno gave a funny talk about how Microsoft was finally enabling the second button on the mouse that we had been paying for all these years. The clouds - which tend toward gray in Seattle - were big fluffy things that matched the Windows 95 box!

There was some controversy later about whether Windows 95 was really a true 32-bit operating system. In fact, it was not, as 16-bit DOS was still doing a lot of work under the covers. But as a fake 32-bit operating system it was genius! You wrote 32-bit apps and that was what mattered. No more segment registers! Woo hoo! Ah, good times, good times.

Later, when I ran out of savings, I started contracting for-real, and I used my game engine to good effect. I could get things done quickly because the code matched how I worked and the tools I had. (It would probably be next to useless for someone else.) I was also able to license out parts of the code - in particular the software <-> hardware rendering interface. w00t. That was good.

My five years or so as a contractor finally came to an end when I started contracting at Cavedog. Previously, all of my clients had been out of state - which is a good thing. But once at Cavedog I was converted into an employee and was an employee for the next five years (one year until Cavedog collapsed and then four years at Adrenium) when I once again returned to contracting.

Contracting is fun and exciting and terrifying and filled with freedom. But what I've found is that contracting leads me to good companies where there is a chance I will end up as an employee. And that's a good thing.

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