More On Video Games

Having made it through The Last of Us once, I'm now about halfway through the second time around, still playing on normal difficulty. I'm still getting killed, but not as often and really only when I make mistakes on especially hard encounters. More often, what's happening is I make it through an encounter but I take a lot of hits and my health goes down.

Playing this game has me really thinking about this whole world of video games and how they have emerged as a new and in many ways more immersive entertainment experience than books, movies, or TV. The Last of Us, in particular, immerses the player in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future similar to The Walking Dead, where humans live in quarantine zones or quasi-sovereign settlements, and where other humans are just as dangerous, if not more so, than the zombies, or in this case, the infected. 

End of the world scenarios seem quite popular these days, though I don't think that's a new development. The idea of the end of days goes back to early Christianity, and probably much earlier than that. 

Video Games

I've jumped into the world of video games by purchasing a Playstation 4. In the last 10 days I've spent about 50 hours playing The Last of Us, which is a tremendous game. It's gotten rave reviews and won tons of awards and a movie based on the game is in development. I finished the game last night and tonight I'm hoping to start a new one. I'm split between Call of Duty: Ghosts and Sniper Elite 3, but leaning towards the latter since it seems to have a better single-player experience. But the Call of Duty series is a big deal with legions of fans that play it obsessively in multi-player mode. As I understand it, the single-player experience is pretty dumb, but is there to help you learn how to play. Once you get good in single-player, you go online to join matches.  

One reason I wanted to buy the console was to figure out what the deal was with the current generation of video games. I felt like I needed to understand what the experience was. Now that I've experienced it for myself, I feel like I get it and holy cow do I ever have ideas for games!

Procrastination and Boredom

My job isn't terribly difficult. Most days, I should be able to get everything done that needs to get done in less than 1/2 of a workday, and yet still I procrastinate. I'm not sure what the problem is. The tasks I need to complete aren't boring - not exactly. My gut instinct is that it has something to do with poor self-esteem and lack of confidence, as in I put things off because in my heart of hearts I feel like I can't do them effectively and no one takes me seriously as a manager. 

Business Plan

I'm thinking more and more about starting up my own professional services firm. These guys that I'm working for now seem like good people, but it's obvious to me that they don't know how to build a business.

I see two branches of this type of business: 1) Staffing and 2) Professional Services. To be clear, "staffing" is a professional service, but I'm differentiating here between the business of providing contractors and FTEs to companies vs. other professional services, such as application development and support.

The advantage of the staffing business is that it provides recurring revenue that helps support the rest of the company and it opens doors to the other side of the business, which is where the real money is made. Five years in, the goal should be to have a staffing business that's pulling in $3 million or more each year, and a professional services business that's worth $20 million or more annually. With profit sharing to key practice leaders and partners, income for a CEO should be in the range of $300K.

The opportunity that's hitting me over the head is in the so-called big data/business intelligence stack. This is what I think that stack looks like:

Client Application Development
Custom development of client applications on PC, Mac, Tablets, iOS, and Android devices. This is one end of the data stack, where user activity is captured. At this layer, we'll need expertise in project management, requirements gathering, design, user experience, development and testing. I don't know if this is really where the big money is or to what extent expertise here is truly a differentiator. It may be the case that the way to go here is to have a small team and then sub-contract out that work to other shops. 

Front-End Web Services
Web service architecture allows us to create applications that can provide initial processing of input from client applications and provide information in return. We can think of the front-end as the next step in the data chain. At this layer, we'll need expertise in project management, requirements gathering, front-end web development, and testing. Since the front end will likely need to exist on a cloud platform, expertise in Azure, AWS, and similar services comes into play here as well. 

Cloud Hosting and Storage
The basic idea here is that data comes in through the FE and then needs to be stored somewhere, either in a relational database of some kind or some sort of structure like Cassandra or Amazon S3, or perhaps all of those. I'm not versed enough in the various tools that are available to know the distinctions, especially between Cassandra and S3. The expertise that would be needed at this layer would be varied, but would include basic server administration, SQL, Cassandra, and Hadoop, and possibly even this new thing called Spark that I am completely unfamiliar with. Opportunities at this layer also include reselling of cloud services and providing expertise in various pricing plans and structures.

This is also where I think there may be opportunities in application monitoring and support. 

Data Mining and Business Intelligence
These are probably two different areas but for now I'm going to lump them together, the basic idea being that this is where the data that is collected is somehow turned into useful information for business people or in some cases consumers (e.g. recommendations). This is probably where the "data scientist" application comes into play. 


To deliver on all of this, you need some sort of Project Delivery Framework, some set of agreed upon methods and processes for getting work done from initial requirements gathering to project delivery. Which brings us to...

Project Management Office
This is both something that will be needed to get work done and potentially another practice area as well. The PMO is where projects are registered and chartered, where project managers are assigned and where project planning takes place. The PMO is also where project status across the company is compiled and centralized, so business leaders understand how work is progressing and where problem areas may be cropping up that require intervention. Over time, as we get better at managing work efficiently and effectively, we can farm out that expertise to companies that want to implement a PMO themselves. 

New Job

So I see it's been about 10 months since I posted here. In the intervening time period, I've moved to a new job, which in most ways is an improvement over the previous situation. What I was starting to realize about this time last year is how miserable I was working for Steve at Microsoft. There was no sense of mission and there was never any sense of accomplishment or that we were even working for anything that mattered. Things got better in January when Abdul came along, but it was too little too late. By April-May I was ready to go.

So at the end of June my contract ended, at which point I basically went on the bench for 4 months until my company called me back and asked me to take over management of this contract with one of their main customers. The job, this time around, is more of an account management role than project management, which is fine by me. I don't think I actually like project management all that much, even though I know quite a bit about it at this point. 

The problem is that I'm not sure anything can be done with this customer. It may just be scorched earth. Also, I'm getting conflicting messages from my manager telling me not to worry about the status of invoices, but to simply focus on making sure the service is running correctly and that we don't pay penalties. This is confusing to me because my understanding of account management has me wrapping my arms around the whole thing and owning it. That's the kind of work I want to do, especially the money part. I want to see the money each month. 

Another issue is that there is this very real, very tangible sense that this position isn't permanent, that it could all come crashing down and I could be out of a job. However, I suppose as long as I keep things running and we don't pay any further penalties, that it could last a while. But it seems like there just isn't that much that I can do, which makes me feel like I'm not doing enough, which makes me feel like the job isn't going to last. 

Update for the new year - job, depression, and other personal matters

It's good that I keep this journal and periodically update it so that I can see my thoughts from the previous posts over the last year. This is turning out to be useful in self-examination.

I'm just going to write my thoughts out in list form. It's sometimes easier to do that.

1. I've been pretty overwhelmed the last few months at work and there's no real hope of it getting better. I have to change this dynamic and get a new job of some kind.
2. I've had some contacts from recruiters looking to fill positions. Luke, from that other contracting company, reached out to me again the other day. It looks like they have some sort of Release Manager position opening up. Now, what I talked with them about before was a Program Manager role, which as it turned out I wasn't an ideal fit for. I agreed with them on that once I understood what they were looking for. But, I also had a great conversation with them about moving into a Service Manager role, which I still think would be ideal. But Release Management would be fine as well and hopefully I can move into a Service Manager slot later on. So, I'm waiting to hear on that. I also had a recruiter contact me from another company that I've interviewed with in the past, and I'm waiting to hear back from her. There are one or two other things happening as well.
3. The black hole of depression seems to come and go in waves. It's worst at work. Even now, while I'm writing this, I have something like 5 or 6 pending tasks waiting for me, each one loaded with ambiguity. Luckily, I have this stuff written down. It really is pretty miserable though.
4. I've been missing my workouts like crazy and it gets harder and harder to get back into it. I'm burning through my monthly fees, wasting all that money, which feels like shit. My Mom would have a heart attack if she knew how much money I'm wasting.
5. My Grandmother died the other day. Grandpa died about 3 years ago and she'd just been sort of hanging on ever since. I didn't go to the funeral, but my Dad did.
6. My Dad texted me at Christmas but I didn't text him back or call him, which is kind of a dick move on my part.
7. I have a cat finally. Her name is Lilly. It's nice to have something else living in that apartment with me. I feel less depressed when I'm there than I did in the past.
8. All the work and late nights the last few months, while not much has been given back in the way of positive reinforcement from S, something that has happened is that I've gotten a lot more confident in my skills.
9. On the lack of positive reinforcement: as a matter of self-awareness, it's become obvious that this is a big problem for me. I can't help it. It's not like S is an asshole or anything, because he's actually a pretty decent guy. But quite literally, I'm not sure he's ever said an encouraging word. Actually, he probably has. But the point is that it's so infrequent that I can't recall the last time it happened. Other people around here have said nice things to me from time to time, but I don't know the last time he did. I feel like a stupid girl writing that down, but the reality I suppose is that I'm human, which is what I meant by saying that this is a matter of self-awareness. I have a feeling he's going to be pretty unhappy when I eventually leave.
10. I suspect that one reason I'm not trying harder to get a new job is because I'm comfortable in my misery.
11. I think I may be wired to simply always be unhappy in my job.  

Having written all of the above, I feel a tiny bit better, but not a lot. For my next journal entry, I need to focus on some sort of plan to improve my happiness level and give myself something to look forward to.