Nothing. I achieved my dream of working in the games industry and then reality hit.

Now I just write games a casual hobby.

The only thing I would do is relocate pretty much anywhere, and as such leave friends behind. I don't have a wife or a kid yet so it's fine on that side.

But I am an audio guy so it is pretty much a given anyways that you'll have to move.

Making sacrifices is one thing, but there's reasonable ones and unresonable ones. Most people will have to make one or the other sacrifice, for example if you work 12 hours, you will almost certainly have to stop partying. Relocating is something a lot of people have to do, and it's pretty acceptable (and kind of irrelevant whether it's to the next city or another planet -- same effect really).

On the other hand, paying for a job is something that should never be negotiable. Even thinking of it is beyond reason.

Why? Isn't it great if you're so motivated that you'd even work for free?

Not really... first of all, there's of course what Radikalizm said. It's a dangerous attitude to go far out with things like "I will work 12 hours per day" (you will find out that you'll have to do that anyway, only now they'll be asking 14 hours!) or "I need no holiday" or "I will even pay you" since that creates an expectation towards everybody else, even if it's entirely unreasonable. It also means that you will almost certainly find yourself in a much worse situation and find yourself exploited in a way that you didn't anticipate.

Plus... it doesn't work the way you think anyway.

Someone who works for free (or half the wage) or even pays for being employed or getting an interview does that (almost certainly) not because he is an altruist, but because either he has second thoughts (think of Arthur Conan Doyle's story The Leage of the Red Haired Gentlemen), or he is so pathetically bad and unfit that he has no chance of getting an interview otherwise. So, think about it, who would want to hire such a person, for real? Nobody.

It's a common scam which is used on teen girls / young women. Do a photo shooting, become a model, rich and famous. The shooting will only cost you $2,000.

Nobody pays for a shooting, and nobody does a shooting for free. Nobody, ever. You work, you're being paid (even if "work" only means to stand around and smile). Those girls usually find that out as well, after a month or two when they're not being called and when the number they've been given is a textile cleaner in Chinatown.

I would sacrifice a lot more things (i've already sacrificed so much), but i wouldn't sacrifice my happiness.

I agree that this is a dangerous attitude to take towards a job. I set myself goals about 5/6 years ago while I was still in secondary/high school. They have adapted and changed as my life progressed but I still have done well in achieving them. But I never sacrificed anything major for them. Obviously I had to move but this is Ireland and most people end up in Dublin anyway. I have a great job with a major middleware company in the games industry and I'm there because I earned the spot. I got this while I was still in college because I worked hard and set my mind to things. I consider myself very lucky to be where I am now and where I worked previously. They were/are great places but I can't imagine sacrificing my free time, my money, friends, family for the jobs. The job is just another part of my life and they all have to live in balance.

I'd be interested to know what is your current background that you are asking this question from. Are you young and looking at the industry, currently working, indie developer or something else?

This is all great info and it's awesome to hear what some people would and would not trade to achieve their goals.

I'm learning a lot from this: how much people value a job of their liking, how much people care about jobs in general, how friends and family fit into their role as a developer, and what part of their life is separate from work.

It also says something about how much family and friends play roles in their lives. I don't think that there is a right or wrong answer to this question because what one person deems okay to trade for their job might sound outrageous to someone else.

Like the two people who said it was a dangerous attitude STILL relocated and sacrificed sufficient time to get where they wanted to go. So in my personal interpretation, this was worth the trade.

But they would not trade their free time, marriage, family, and friends. Which probably means that they have a good family life and good friends to begin with. This is not always the same for some people.

I think in assuming that its inherintly wrong for someone to trade something for their passion is assuming that they have the same values, and similar family an friends life as they do, respectively.

For someone like me, my life involves a lot of working out business details and discussing ideas with friends and family, and the few friends that I have are all entrepreneurs and gamers like myself, so it's easy for me to say that I will dedicate my time and money to advancing as a game developer and entrepreneur because that's already embedded naturally into my life. Not to mention, my father is an entrepreneur himself so that also fits naturally into my being.

Also, for those who went to college full time, an 8 hour day is a reprieve. Homework, and even a job on top of class usually turns out to be more than a 40 hour work week. I know I was constantly staying up late and waking up early to get my 14 credits of work in to achieve my goal of an A and work to get where I am today.

And to say sacrifice something major, don't you think even 8 hours a day is a sacrifice and dedication? I sure do. It's all relative.

For me, as a developer/programmer/entrepreneur, the things that I have traded for my career currently are well worth where I am today. My life is full of love, passion, dedication, challenges, good friends who care and who also push me forward, and happiness.

Things I would not trade: anything that would steal my happiness from myself or my friends and family.

The things I've traded to get where I am were well worth it.

In theory, I'd trade my current job. And that's about it.

Beyond that I agree with the general sentiment that the idea of making non-trivial sacrifices for a job, especially some of those listed as examples in the original post, is naive and dangerous.

One of the issues here seems to just be semantics. You consider putting time into college a sacrifice while I consider it giving it the time it deserves. Its not a sacrifice or a trade or me giving something up. Similar to moving. Thats just going where the job is. I'm not trading or sacrificing (in my opinion). Also the crazy examples at the start was what really triggered most of the responses.

Also, for those who went to college full time, an 8 hour day is a reprieve. Homework, and even a job on top of class usually turns out to be more than a 40 hour work week. I know I was constantly staying up late and waking up early to get my 14 credits of work in to achieve my goal of an A and work to get where I am today.

Speaking as someone who went to college full time myself, no, not always. School is not like work. Going to sit in a lecture hall watching someone talk at you a few hours a week is not like solving programming problems 8 hours a day. Doing homework where the only person your failure will affect is yourself is not like debugging a crash bug that puts everyone on the team's salary in danger if you don't solve it in a few hours. I remember when I left my last co-op work term thinking that going back to school was the reprieve! I've always found that I have much less energy after a day of working than I ever did after a day of homework + classes. I think many or even most people would agree with me.

Of course, and this is with me enjoying my game development job, and I am not particularly interested in changing careers at all. But it is a job.

School would feel like a vacation relative to work for me.

As others have stated, I see this way of thinking as naive at best, and outright toxic at worst.

Getting a job shouldnt be seen as a form of bartering where trade X thing for Y, nor as some wierd sacrificial ritual where you sacrifice pieces of your life to the gods for your dreams.