10 ms·

Game Programmer Quits Job To Sell Street Food, Doubles Salary

258 points by sushi 13y ago

ziko 13y ago
Strangely enough, this idea has gone through my mind a couple of times, for a completely different reasons though. Mortality is closely connected with the hours we spend sitting each day. So that's one reason. The other one is that after working so hard and saving up enough for the rest of your life, you need something that is much more stress-free. And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.
- Fargren 13y ago
  While sitting is correlated with mortality, I don't think it's been proved that it causes it. I suspect the relation between the two is more complicated than that. As far as stress free... Interacting directly with many customers can be a trying experience. I think it can be a lot more stressful than an office job for many people.
  - ziko 13y ago
    I'm not saying you'll be dead in 5 years time if you spend more than 12 hours a day sitting on a chair programming. But it adds up if you're doing that your whole lifetime and neglect healthy food and physical activity. Of course it differs from person to person but I think you see my point. Regarding stress free comment... I guess it depends on the person in question. Besides, when you finish for the day, you really finish for the day and that's the most important thing. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Smart people will put health before entrepreneurship, especially if it prolongs their life and not just in the sense how many years will they have to life.
- silencio 13y ago
  > And selling something so basic as food is exactly that. I dare you to take a food safety course. I sweat bullets just thinking about what might happen in the tiny chance that a customer gets sick from eating my food even after all the ten million precautions that were taken. Then I dare you to run a reasonably high volume restaurant during peak lunch/dinner hours. :) Forget all the other stresses like how it's really hard to find good burger flippers in the bay area, even for $14/hour plus tons of overtime 3x meals and more. And the health inspector breathing down your neck giving you a 99/100 for something that has nothing to do with the safety of your restaurant. Compared to my development work, running a restaurant is a whole different set of stresses and just as bad, all the time.
- rwallace 13y ago
  Bear in mind that while selling food worked out well for the guy in the article, most game programmers don't need to make a move that drastic. For most game programmers, the right move is to just get out of the game industry and get a programming job in some other sector where the ratio of supply to demand is healthy enough that you can stick to reasonable working hours and have some time to spend outdoors.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > And selling something so basic as food is exactly that. There is very little that is as stress free as being a programmer. Certainly not the food industry. My wife's cousin is a chef. Her job is terribly interesting, but she works 80 hours a week to make 1/3 as much money as a programmer and has to deal with tremendously demanding situations (cooking at peak dinner service).
JonSkeptic 13y ago
For the TLDR crowd: >We had no idea that we'd sell so much—we sold 100 shaobings in a day, business is only getting better and better." said the programmer. "We already earned enough for an apartment and now we're saving up more money. We hope to get married next year. The story has a happy ending. It's nice to see people, if not doing what they love, then at least loving their newfound life. And that's the whole shaobing.
JPKab 13y ago
The streetfood business is awful in the long term. I hope he can quickly move into a brick and mortar restaurant. Depending on the municipality, streetfood vendors get nailed by all sorts of random fines, get shunted around to various "permitted areas" which may or may not have lots of foot traffic, and the worst part: the low barrier to entry. Competitors can come in super quickly, and when they do, they can lower the total revenue by just a few percent for all other vendors in an area and kill profitability.
- simpleglider 13y ago
  He's in China, so that's less of an issue.
  - pilom 13y ago
    So the fines may be less of an issue, but I feel like there are more possible competitors and probably even less of a barrier to entry.
  - leishulang 13y ago
    you sir, do not know China.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Are those the Chengguang knocking at my cart?
  - dak1 13y ago
    It's really more of an issue: http://english.sina.com/china/2013/0717/609718.html http://english.sina.com/china/2013/0717/609718.html http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/190358-protests-after-street-vendor-is-killed-by-chinese-urban-officers/ http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/190358-protests-after-street...
- bluekite2000 13y ago
  A vendor moving from a street stand to a restaurant is essentially what lean startup is. I wrote a post about a coconut man on the steamy sidewalk of saigon here. http://datdiary.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/lean-startup-vietnamese-style/ http://datdiary.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/lean-startup-vietna...
Spooky23 13y ago
This is just the upside of running your own business. Summer food trucks have been a fixture in my city for decades around the state capitol. Some folks make a great living doing it. My favorite was an older couple operating a small hotdog stand... they made a ridiculously delicious meatsauce and basically worked a 35 hour week in the summer in the Northeast, and a similar schedule for a couple of months down South. They owned a nice house in city, were active in the church and community, and were genuinely good people, who made a great living selling hotdogs, mostly to government and Verizon workers. But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer.
- freyr 13y ago
  > But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer. Small business owners should be able to plan ahead for rainy days and the slow season. Squirrels can do it. Humans can too.
  - untog 13y ago
    Unexpected health issues? That's a little more tricky.
    - nodata 13y ago
      And what does an American employee do about unexpected (long term) health issues? (For short term issues there is insurance, whether in the form of savings or actual insurance.)
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        Long term care insurance.
dak1 13y ago
The numbers in the article don't quite add up. Shao bing is cheap food... usually 1.5 or 2 renminbi, maybe 2.5. If they're selling 100 a day, every day, at 2.5元/each, that would be 250元/day and ~7500元/month. 7500元 is only about $1220. So even if the article is only assuming revenue per month (and not profit), they still have to increase their price or sales (or some combination) by 267% to hit the $3,259/month mentioned. If you're talking actual profit, which would be a more adequate comparison to his previous salary, then it's probably closer to a factor of 5.
- msvan 13y ago
  I used to buy shaobing with all the extras at my local street vendor, usually added up to 8元 in 2012 Beijing prices.
- solarmist 13y ago
  They probably sell more than 100 a day now. "We sold 100 a day." I can imagine for a popular cart selling 100 items is usually done over a lunch, then something similar in the evening again.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Street vendors in Canada can typically sell well over 100 of anything on a nice day, I imagine in China with the greater foot traffic and culture of street food they're selling a lot more. I read the story as them thinking that when they sold 100 per day when they started was validation that their plan was going to work.
suyash 13y ago
The guy should open more street food stalls and scale this business if it is so profitable.
- dubcanada 13y ago
  Or! He could save his company and start a video game company! All jokes aside, unless you have a very good knack or special offering, scaling might not work so well. You have to train people to be just as good as you are, some people go to specific food trucks for the people.
- lrobb 13y ago
  Sounds like the parable of the mexican fisherman: An executive from America was standing at the pier of a Mexican village, taking a much needed vacation. It was his first in more than 10 years. He noticed a small boat docked with just one fisherman on board. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The executive complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman replied, “only a little while.” The executive then asked, “why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The fisherman replied, “I have enough to support my family for a little while.” The executive then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.” The executive scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15-20 years.” “But what then?” The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.” “Millions.. Then what?” The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
thenomad 13y ago
"The biggest asset any businessman can have is a hungry crowd." A rare example of an adage which still works when applied literally.
netcan 13y ago
The game programmer part is a bit of a juxtaposition. Hearing that a good living can be made selling traditional street food in China is interesting though. That's some sort of sign.
- __--__ 13y ago
  These kinds of stories pop up every so often. There was one in '05 about a programmer who became a bicycle messenger in SF[1]. I think as programmers, we often get so absorbed in our own thing that we don't see there's a world of opportunity outside of programming work. [1] http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548
tocomment 13y ago
What are other promising businesses programmers in the US can start?
- winter_blue 13y ago
  The article is about programmers in China.
  - netcan 13y ago
    This sounds like a nitpick, but it's not: The article is about a programmer in China. This one guy might be (probably is) particularly good at making & selling street treats.
- pilom 13y ago
  Cutting spending and keeping my programming job instead of starting a new business has worked out really well for me. Passive investing of my savings earns me $500/month and I don't have to do any work at all. Other options for those outside of SV is landlording. In some mid-west cities you can earn over $10,000/year/house after all taxes and expenses (including saving for long term expenses like roofs). Not exactly traditional small businesses, but honestly, both options have much higher probability of success (or at least not losing all of your money like restaurants)
  - aestra 13y ago
    Landlording can be very profitable in some areas or a huge money pit in some areas. My parents did it for years and barely broke even, or lost a ton of money if you include labor costs. Plus you get people waking you up in the middle of the night when they lock themselves out.
    - pilom 13y ago
      I agree entirely with the fact that real estate it is very hit or miss. But worst case scenario (assuming you have insurance) is you have to sell the house at a depressed price and take a loss on your time. With a restaurant (where 50%+ are out of business in 3 years) you rent the space, lose all the money you spent on rent, and on food and on employees etc. Very easy to lose everything with a restaurant, but you need to be fairly unlucky to loose more than you put into a house (i.e. you bought in 2007) That being said, saving lots of money and living off of dividends is the way to go.
lazyjones 13y ago
The title is slightly inaccurate / misleading. He quit his job and now runs his own business together with his girlfriend (i.e. they both work). Her part in this is not negligible, perhaps she is the main asset of the company. (I don't know why this gets modded down, but let me clarify: his old salary is his personal income. The "doubled" salary is the income from his business, apparently the combined salary of both of them - so it's misleading to say that he "doubled his salary")
- stackthatcode 13y ago
  Your point about having his girlfriend's labor as a huge contribution to his venture is pretty correct. I don't think it down plays his success at all... but it's certainly a significant contributor. If my wife would embrace my madcap ideas and work on them full-force, it would be quite awesome.
- shellehs 13y ago
  This title could attract more traffic. Programmer is a good topic, and double salary as well. Your point is correct. But people will ignore the key.
SeanDav 13y ago
The game programming industry is pretty well known as being the "sweat shops" of the tech industry. Not at all surprised about this story.
LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
The average age of the US farmer is 58. In Japan it is 68. There is less and less land available for agriculture. Less and less fresh water (agriculture uses 90% of fresh water in the US). The weather gets worse by the year to produce food. On the other hand there are more and more people in the world. So supply is diminishing while demand is high. That's why food is more and more expensive almost every quarter. All these smart folks at Stanford are wasting their time studying IT, law or finance. Too much competition. Study agriculture, be rich. Farmers are going to drive Maserati's in the future not successful software developers or Wall Street crowd.
- nrb 13y ago
  Or, the engineers and developers make the hardware and software that is inevitably replacing all human labor in agriculture.
  - LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
    An IT startup dealing with agriculture could be successful. There are these companies like the one that produces water purification systems and chemicals in China that are just pure gold to invest in. (Chinese have horrible, horrible water quality even for the purposes of agriculture). As China is becoming richer and richer doing basic stuff like this may turn out to be much better place to be than spending years competing for VC money with 10% chances of success.
    - pnathan 13y ago
      Climate Corp in Seattle does ag insurance with Clojure. Pretty cool people.
- cabalamat 13y ago
  > Farmers are going to drive Maserati's in the future Or people who own farmland?
- rubinelli 13y ago
  Farmers are getting older because small-scale farms are disappearing. Agriculture is an incredibly hard business, and unless you have scale, one bad year will wipe you out. Now, those few that do have more land than some sovereign states and the machinery to work it are making some serious money, so working for them is a perfectly viable career strategy.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
wxspll 13y ago
It's just an ad, not fact.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
lcedp 13y ago
Well, as saying goes: if you want different result, try something new. Also, if you click the Chinese link in the article you'll find a video.
bonede 13y ago
wtf? 20k a month just by selling 'shaobing'. This is just another shitty marketing 'news' for a MMO called "Yuan zheng"[1] [1]http://yz.q1.com/ http://yz.q1.com/
- maglos 13y ago
  It's rare for some to share their earnings, it invites competition.
knv 13y ago
Does she/he really like street food better? If so all the best to him/her.
parfe 13y ago
I really dislike these type of stories. Basically saying "Investor buys lotto ticket; outperforms DJIA by 5 billion percent." Or a more realistic example, the stories that flow when gas prices spike. Like the person with the diesel engine running off waste grease from restaurants. It's nice this person found a profitable niche but the concept itself doesn't lend itself to even linear growth.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Obviously if an investor was that bad, they shouldn't be an investor. Running a diesel engine off waste oil is a great idea, more people should be doing it. And no, food businesses don't scale well, but that's ok, because if you're efficient, and your food is good, you can make a decent living for your whole life.
  - pyre 13y ago
    > Running a diesel engine off waste oil is > a great idea Once enough people are doing it, it will be classified as a fuel and politicians will be tripping over themselves to regulate and tax it. Also, at some point there won't be enough waste grease to fuel the market, and the prices of unused vegetable oil will go up possibly limiting its use for food.
    - vecinu 13y ago
      To add to this, has anyone actually tested the diesel engine to make sure it meet all emission standards? How safe are the fumes to be burned around cities? Remember when we found out lead in gas was unsafe to be inhaled from exhaust pipes?
      - dubfan 13y ago
        From Wikipedia: "Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have successfully completed the Health Effects Testing requirements (Tier I and Tier II) of the Clean Air Act (1990)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_biodiesel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_biodie... Either way the tetraethyl lead situation was completely different. It was very clear early on that the stuff was extremely toxic. Lead was already known to be toxic, and workers at the refineries were dying left and right due to exposure.
joshuaellinger 13y ago
The joke at Origin Systems (back in the day) was: "We train people for well-paying jobs in the computer game industry." It was funny on several levels... if you didn't work there.
- angersock 13y ago
  RIP Origin bros. :( EDIT: I assume that joke is funny in the same way that you'll find "The Liberated Democratic Free People's Republic of Chernarus"?
  - joshuaellinger 13y ago
    Yep. I never had the 'honor' of working there. One of my brother's did.
rdouble 13y ago
Strangely enough, when I lived in Japan the guy who owned the takoyaki cart near my office surprised me with perfect English and a Californian accent that he had picked up as a game programmer in the USA in the 90s.
Mikeb85 13y ago
I used to work in the food industry, in fine dining restaurants (which are notorious for long hours, hard work, and mediocre pay). Alot of my friends left to start food trucks, street stands, etc... Keep in mind where I live (a cold part of Canada), you can realistically only sell street food for 4-6 months out of the year. They would all make $60,000 to $100,000 in a season, and now a few of them have brick and mortar restaurants to their name. I worked a street food stand for a festival awhile back, we made $3000 in a day (split 2 ways). Street food doesn't scale too well, and there are a whole slew of downsides, but if you can figure out an efficient way to make tasty food, you can make a lot of money and there's only a small barrier to starting out (likely less start up cost in China).
seivan 13y ago
This is what happens when our field is overrun with MBA's and other scum.
Patrick_Devine 13y ago
My first job out of college was writing Super Nintendo games in Vancouver. My starting salary was $28.5K/year in 1994. Had I have been working 40 hour work weeks, this would have been a reasonable salary, but for 80 hours a week (which is closer to what I was working), it was less than McDonalds paid at the time. The difference is upwards mobility. It's hard moving up the corporate ladder while flipping burgers. It was not so hard to turn the game programming job into a lucrative career in software development.
- maglos 13y ago
  Moving up might have been true in 94 but what about now? How soon are you planning on retiring/dieing?
  - Patrick_Devine 13y ago
    Hopefully never. :-D The video games industry is pretty difficult to cut your teeth in though. It's highly technical, it has a ridiculous amount of competition and the software produced has a very short shelf life. If you can make it there, chances are you can make it anywhere.
- TimJRobinson 13y ago
  It hasn't got much better, starting salary is games usually $35,000 in Australia (in 2008, fairly sure it's still the same now) And you're still expected to work crazy hours and weekends.
mattdeboard 13y ago
Reminds me of the story behind zerocater
mvkel 13y ago
But does he double his net income?
jfb 13y ago
I don't like to think about what I'd do for a good shaobing in Toronto.
itsbpk 13y ago
guess he is better at cooking than programming.
bearwithclaws 13y ago
A nitpick about its translation of "Ma Nong" (码农): it doesn't mean "Number Cruncher". Although the "Ma" is the same character with "Hao Ma" (number), in describing the profession of programmer, it means "Code". "Nong" means farmer ("Nong Fu"). It implies laborious work. The closest translation to it should be "Code Farmer".
- marme 13y ago
  also nong(农) is the character for migrant worker(农民) which are look down upon in china as poor peasants who come to big city looking for work in manual labor jobs. So it is like calling them a code peasant or something like that. It is really meant as a self depreciating kind of insult. The character nong(农) is always used to describe someone who does menial jobs like manual labor or farming
  - scotty79 13y ago
    So it seems like it's Chinese equivalent of code monkey.
dakimov 13y ago
Hardly believable, more like economically impossible when extrapolated to the entire economy and all the nom nom shit sellers around the country.
jval 13y ago
I feel like there's a lot of articles like this, which kinda make it seem like life is easy as an entrepreneur, or that successful business just happen. I feel like this mentality is behind the explosion in early stage financings relative to late stage financings. I know that as an early stage founder that I am part of the problem, but I often stop to think about whether what I'm doing is really that valuable or if I should just join another company in growth phase. I think the 100th engineer at Facebook would have had a lot more impact than most of the failed founders today. I just think that being a founder is a harsh experience that you have to learn from many times over in order to get right, and that even when things go well there's no guarantee of a money pot at the end of the rainbow. I think you really need to have motivations other than cash to truly convince yourself that what you're working on is worth waking up for every day. I think if you have that motivation inside you then being a founder is a great experience. Thinking you should just leave your job for an instant moneypot is just silly though, IMHO.
- shellehs 13y ago
  Nope. See this Programmers salary report : http://www.programmer.com.cn/14918/ http://www.programmer.com.cn/14918/ CNY 3k - 5k , that means USD 400 - 800. Nearly 1/5 programmers in China live in this salary. What USD 500 can buy in America?
CitizenKane 13y ago
This will probably be buried, but this conversation needs some serious context and the article title really needs to be changed to "Game Programmer Quits Job To Sell Street Food, Doubles Salary in China". Programmers are almost notoriously overworked and underpaid in China. Working 10 to 12 hours a day for $1000 a month is quite common. It's possible to make more money working six hours a day for half a month working as an English teacher. The view in Eastern Asia is that a programmer is akin to a machine that you hand a specification and code is produced and hence the low pay. You could trade programming in China for a large number of other careers and double your salary. It's not a particularly usual thing. If you were to trade this for a software development position in the US or Western Europe it's going to be a much different story. Culturally speaking, it's seen much more like and engineer or craftsmen rather than a labourer. Switching from a position like this in the US to selling food is much less likely to see the same kind of return.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
INTPenis 13y ago
I know a programmer who quit his job and became a janitor, apparently doubled his happiness. Just because you have the logical mind for something does not mean it will make you happy. I often feel like I lack the logical mind for working in IT but I freaking LOVE the work.
CurtMonash 13y ago
If the young woman in the pictures is the girlfriend mentioned as part of the deal, I understand his choice even better.
tracyma 13y ago
As a game developer in china, We use this story to self-mockery.We work more than 50 hours a week, without girlfriend, without high pay.But We know one day When we has to leave we have another choice. He he~
scourgen 13y ago
Hey guys, It's just an advertisement
anothermouse 13y ago
I don't know why so many people are saying that it needs to be made clear that this is in China, and that it doesn't apply elsewhere. I'm a programmer in Finance in London, and a good day rate for a Senior contractor is 600GBP/day. I have a good friend who started out doing "grilled chorizo in a ciabatta bun" at a London market, and easily made 1000GBP his first day. Now he uses employees to man that stall, and has moved on to the next idea, at a different locations doing something different to allow him to do something that appeals during different seasons. By now I imagine he is easily making double what I do.

258 points by sushi 13y ago

ziko 13y ago

Strangely enough, this idea has gone through my mind a couple of times, for a completely different reasons though. Mortality is closely connected with the hours we spend sitting each day. So that's one reason. The other one is that after working so hard and saving up enough for the rest of your life, you need something that is much more stress-free. And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.

Fargren 13y ago
While sitting is correlated with mortality, I don't think it's been proved that it causes it. I suspect the relation between the two is more complicated than that. As far as stress free... Interacting directly with many customers can be a trying experience. I think it can be a lot more stressful than an office job for many people.
- ziko 13y ago
  I'm not saying you'll be dead in 5 years time if you spend more than 12 hours a day sitting on a chair programming. But it adds up if you're doing that your whole lifetime and neglect healthy food and physical activity. Of course it differs from person to person but I think you see my point. Regarding stress free comment... I guess it depends on the person in question. Besides, when you finish for the day, you really finish for the day and that's the most important thing. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Smart people will put health before entrepreneurship, especially if it prolongs their life and not just in the sense how many years will they have to life.
silencio 13y ago
> And selling something so basic as food is exactly that. I dare you to take a food safety course. I sweat bullets just thinking about what might happen in the tiny chance that a customer gets sick from eating my food even after all the ten million precautions that were taken. Then I dare you to run a reasonably high volume restaurant during peak lunch/dinner hours. :) Forget all the other stresses like how it's really hard to find good burger flippers in the bay area, even for $14/hour plus tons of overtime 3x meals and more. And the health inspector breathing down your neck giving you a 99/100 for something that has nothing to do with the safety of your restaurant. Compared to my development work, running a restaurant is a whole different set of stresses and just as bad, all the time.
rwallace 13y ago
Bear in mind that while selling food worked out well for the guy in the article, most game programmers don't need to make a move that drastic. For most game programmers, the right move is to just get out of the game industry and get a programming job in some other sector where the ratio of supply to demand is healthy enough that you can stick to reasonable working hours and have some time to spend outdoors.
rayiner 13y ago
> And selling something so basic as food is exactly that. There is very little that is as stress free as being a programmer. Certainly not the food industry. My wife's cousin is a chef. Her job is terribly interesting, but she works 80 hours a week to make 1/3 as much money as a programmer and has to deal with tremendously demanding situations (cooking at peak dinner service).

JonSkeptic 13y ago

For the TLDR crowd: >We had no idea that we'd sell so much—we sold 100 shaobings in a day, business is only getting better and better." said the programmer. "We already earned enough for an apartment and now we're saving up more money. We hope to get married next year. The story has a happy ending. It's nice to see people, if not doing what they love, then at least loving their newfound life. And that's the whole shaobing.

JPKab 13y ago

The streetfood business is awful in the long term. I hope he can quickly move into a brick and mortar restaurant. Depending on the municipality, streetfood vendors get nailed by all sorts of random fines, get shunted around to various "permitted areas" which may or may not have lots of foot traffic, and the worst part: the low barrier to entry. Competitors can come in super quickly, and when they do, they can lower the total revenue by just a few percent for all other vendors in an area and kill profitability.

simpleglider 13y ago
He's in China, so that's less of an issue.
- pilom 13y ago
  So the fines may be less of an issue, but I feel like there are more possible competitors and probably even less of a barrier to entry.
- leishulang 13y ago
  you sir, do not know China.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Are those the Chengguang knocking at my cart?
- dak1 13y ago
  It's really more of an issue: http://english.sina.com/china/2013/0717/609718.html http://english.sina.com/china/2013/0717/609718.html http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/190358-protests-after-street-vendor-is-killed-by-chinese-urban-officers/ http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/190358-protests-after-street...
bluekite2000 13y ago
A vendor moving from a street stand to a restaurant is essentially what lean startup is. I wrote a post about a coconut man on the steamy sidewalk of saigon here. http://datdiary.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/lean-startup-vietnamese-style/ http://datdiary.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/lean-startup-vietna...

Spooky23 13y ago

This is just the upside of running your own business. Summer food trucks have been a fixture in my city for decades around the state capitol. Some folks make a great living doing it. My favorite was an older couple operating a small hotdog stand... they made a ridiculously delicious meatsauce and basically worked a 35 hour week in the summer in the Northeast, and a similar schedule for a couple of months down South. They owned a nice house in city, were active in the church and community, and were genuinely good people, who made a great living selling hotdogs, mostly to government and Verizon workers. But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer.

freyr 13y ago
> But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer. Small business owners should be able to plan ahead for rainy days and the slow season. Squirrels can do it. Humans can too.
- untog 13y ago
  Unexpected health issues? That's a little more tricky.
  - nodata 13y ago
    And what does an American employee do about unexpected (long term) health issues? (For short term issues there is insurance, whether in the form of savings or actual insurance.)
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      Long term care insurance.

dak1 13y ago

The numbers in the article don't quite add up. Shao bing is cheap food... usually 1.5 or 2 renminbi, maybe 2.5. If they're selling 100 a day, every day, at 2.5元/each, that would be 250元/day and ~7500元/month. 7500元 is only about $1220. So even if the article is only assuming revenue per month (and not profit), they still have to increase their price or sales (or some combination) by 267% to hit the $3,259/month mentioned. If you're talking actual profit, which would be a more adequate comparison to his previous salary, then it's probably closer to a factor of 5.

msvan 13y ago
I used to buy shaobing with all the extras at my local street vendor, usually added up to 8元 in 2012 Beijing prices.
solarmist 13y ago
They probably sell more than 100 a day now. "We sold 100 a day." I can imagine for a popular cart selling 100 items is usually done over a lunch, then something similar in the evening again.
Mikeb85 13y ago
Street vendors in Canada can typically sell well over 100 of anything on a nice day, I imagine in China with the greater foot traffic and culture of street food they're selling a lot more. I read the story as them thinking that when they sold 100 per day when they started was validation that their plan was going to work.

suyash 13y ago

The guy should open more street food stalls and scale this business if it is so profitable.

dubcanada 13y ago
Or! He could save his company and start a video game company! All jokes aside, unless you have a very good knack or special offering, scaling might not work so well. You have to train people to be just as good as you are, some people go to specific food trucks for the people.
lrobb 13y ago
Sounds like the parable of the mexican fisherman: An executive from America was standing at the pier of a Mexican village, taking a much needed vacation. It was his first in more than 10 years. He noticed a small boat docked with just one fisherman on board. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The executive complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman replied, “only a little while.” The executive then asked, “why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The fisherman replied, “I have enough to support my family for a little while.” The executive then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.” The executive scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15-20 years.” “But what then?” The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.” “Millions.. Then what?” The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

thenomad 13y ago

"The biggest asset any businessman can have is a hungry crowd." A rare example of an adage which still works when applied literally.

netcan 13y ago

The game programmer part is a bit of a juxtaposition. Hearing that a good living can be made selling traditional street food in China is interesting though. That's some sort of sign.

__--__ 13y ago
These kinds of stories pop up every so often. There was one in '05 about a programmer who became a bicycle messenger in SF[1]. I think as programmers, we often get so absorbed in our own thing that we don't see there's a world of opportunity outside of programming work. [1] http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548

tocomment 13y ago

What are other promising businesses programmers in the US can start?

winter_blue 13y ago
The article is about programmers in China.
- netcan 13y ago
  This sounds like a nitpick, but it's not: The article is about a programmer in China. This one guy might be (probably is) particularly good at making & selling street treats.
pilom 13y ago
Cutting spending and keeping my programming job instead of starting a new business has worked out really well for me. Passive investing of my savings earns me $500/month and I don't have to do any work at all. Other options for those outside of SV is landlording. In some mid-west cities you can earn over $10,000/year/house after all taxes and expenses (including saving for long term expenses like roofs). Not exactly traditional small businesses, but honestly, both options have much higher probability of success (or at least not losing all of your money like restaurants)
- aestra 13y ago
  Landlording can be very profitable in some areas or a huge money pit in some areas. My parents did it for years and barely broke even, or lost a ton of money if you include labor costs. Plus you get people waking you up in the middle of the night when they lock themselves out.
  - pilom 13y ago
    I agree entirely with the fact that real estate it is very hit or miss. But worst case scenario (assuming you have insurance) is you have to sell the house at a depressed price and take a loss on your time. With a restaurant (where 50%+ are out of business in 3 years) you rent the space, lose all the money you spent on rent, and on food and on employees etc. Very easy to lose everything with a restaurant, but you need to be fairly unlucky to loose more than you put into a house (i.e. you bought in 2007) That being said, saving lots of money and living off of dividends is the way to go.

lazyjones 13y ago

The title is slightly inaccurate / misleading. He quit his job and now runs his own business together with his girlfriend (i.e. they both work). Her part in this is not negligible, perhaps she is the main asset of the company. (I don't know why this gets modded down, but let me clarify: his old salary is his personal income. The "doubled" salary is the income from his business, apparently the combined salary of both of them - so it's misleading to say that he "doubled his salary")

stackthatcode 13y ago
Your point about having his girlfriend's labor as a huge contribution to his venture is pretty correct. I don't think it down plays his success at all... but it's certainly a significant contributor. If my wife would embrace my madcap ideas and work on them full-force, it would be quite awesome.
shellehs 13y ago
This title could attract more traffic. Programmer is a good topic, and double salary as well. Your point is correct. But people will ignore the key.

SeanDav 13y ago

The game programming industry is pretty well known as being the "sweat shops" of the tech industry. Not at all surprised about this story.

LekkoscPiwa 13y ago

The average age of the US farmer is 58. In Japan it is 68. There is less and less land available for agriculture. Less and less fresh water (agriculture uses 90% of fresh water in the US). The weather gets worse by the year to produce food. On the other hand there are more and more people in the world. So supply is diminishing while demand is high. That's why food is more and more expensive almost every quarter. All these smart folks at Stanford are wasting their time studying IT, law or finance. Too much competition. Study agriculture, be rich. Farmers are going to drive Maserati's in the future not successful software developers or Wall Street crowd.

nrb 13y ago
Or, the engineers and developers make the hardware and software that is inevitably replacing all human labor in agriculture.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
  An IT startup dealing with agriculture could be successful. There are these companies like the one that produces water purification systems and chemicals in China that are just pure gold to invest in. (Chinese have horrible, horrible water quality even for the purposes of agriculture). As China is becoming richer and richer doing basic stuff like this may turn out to be much better place to be than spending years competing for VC money with 10% chances of success.
  - pnathan 13y ago
    Climate Corp in Seattle does ag insurance with Clojure. Pretty cool people.
cabalamat 13y ago
> Farmers are going to drive Maserati's in the future Or people who own farmland?
rubinelli 13y ago
Farmers are getting older because small-scale farms are disappearing. Agriculture is an incredibly hard business, and unless you have scale, one bad year will wipe you out. Now, those few that do have more land than some sovereign states and the machinery to work it are making some serious money, so working for them is a perfectly viable career strategy.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

wxspll 13y ago

It's just an ad, not fact.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

lcedp 13y ago

Well, as saying goes: if you want different result, try something new. Also, if you click the Chinese link in the article you'll find a video.

bonede 13y ago

wtf? 20k a month just by selling 'shaobing'. This is just another shitty marketing 'news' for a MMO called "Yuan zheng"[1] [1]http://yz.q1.com/ http://yz.q1.com/

maglos 13y ago
It's rare for some to share their earnings, it invites competition.

knv 13y ago

Does she/he really like street food better? If so all the best to him/her.

parfe 13y ago

I really dislike these type of stories. Basically saying "Investor buys lotto ticket; outperforms DJIA by 5 billion percent." Or a more realistic example, the stories that flow when gas prices spike. Like the person with the diesel engine running off waste grease from restaurants. It's nice this person found a profitable niche but the concept itself doesn't lend itself to even linear growth.

Mikeb85 13y ago
Obviously if an investor was that bad, they shouldn't be an investor. Running a diesel engine off waste oil is a great idea, more people should be doing it. And no, food businesses don't scale well, but that's ok, because if you're efficient, and your food is good, you can make a decent living for your whole life.
- pyre 13y ago
  > Running a diesel engine off waste oil is > a great idea Once enough people are doing it, it will be classified as a fuel and politicians will be tripping over themselves to regulate and tax it. Also, at some point there won't be enough waste grease to fuel the market, and the prices of unused vegetable oil will go up possibly limiting its use for food.
  - vecinu 13y ago
    To add to this, has anyone actually tested the diesel engine to make sure it meet all emission standards? How safe are the fumes to be burned around cities? Remember when we found out lead in gas was unsafe to be inhaled from exhaust pipes?
    - dubfan 13y ago
      From Wikipedia: "Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have successfully completed the Health Effects Testing requirements (Tier I and Tier II) of the Clean Air Act (1990)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_biodiesel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_biodie... Either way the tetraethyl lead situation was completely different. It was very clear early on that the stuff was extremely toxic. Lead was already known to be toxic, and workers at the refineries were dying left and right due to exposure.

joshuaellinger 13y ago

The joke at Origin Systems (back in the day) was: "We train people for well-paying jobs in the computer game industry." It was funny on several levels... if you didn't work there.

angersock 13y ago
RIP Origin bros. :( EDIT: I assume that joke is funny in the same way that you'll find "The Liberated Democratic Free People's Republic of Chernarus"?
- joshuaellinger 13y ago
  Yep. I never had the 'honor' of working there. One of my brother's did.

rdouble 13y ago

Strangely enough, when I lived in Japan the guy who owned the takoyaki cart near my office surprised me with perfect English and a Californian accent that he had picked up as a game programmer in the USA in the 90s.

Mikeb85 13y ago

I used to work in the food industry, in fine dining restaurants (which are notorious for long hours, hard work, and mediocre pay). Alot of my friends left to start food trucks, street stands, etc... Keep in mind where I live (a cold part of Canada), you can realistically only sell street food for 4-6 months out of the year. They would all make $60,000 to $100,000 in a season, and now a few of them have brick and mortar restaurants to their name. I worked a street food stand for a festival awhile back, we made $3000 in a day (split 2 ways). Street food doesn't scale too well, and there are a whole slew of downsides, but if you can figure out an efficient way to make tasty food, you can make a lot of money and there's only a small barrier to starting out (likely less start up cost in China).

seivan 13y ago

This is what happens when our field is overrun with MBA's and other scum.

Patrick_Devine 13y ago

My first job out of college was writing Super Nintendo games in Vancouver. My starting salary was $28.5K/year in 1994. Had I have been working 40 hour work weeks, this would have been a reasonable salary, but for 80 hours a week (which is closer to what I was working), it was less than McDonalds paid at the time. The difference is upwards mobility. It's hard moving up the corporate ladder while flipping burgers. It was not so hard to turn the game programming job into a lucrative career in software development.

maglos 13y ago
Moving up might have been true in 94 but what about now? How soon are you planning on retiring/dieing?
- Patrick_Devine 13y ago
  Hopefully never. :-D The video games industry is pretty difficult to cut your teeth in though. It's highly technical, it has a ridiculous amount of competition and the software produced has a very short shelf life. If you can make it there, chances are you can make it anywhere.
TimJRobinson 13y ago
It hasn't got much better, starting salary is games usually $35,000 in Australia (in 2008, fairly sure it's still the same now) And you're still expected to work crazy hours and weekends.

mattdeboard 13y ago

Reminds me of the story behind zerocater

mvkel 13y ago

But does he double his net income?

jfb 13y ago

I don't like to think about what I'd do for a good shaobing in Toronto.

itsbpk 13y ago

guess he is better at cooking than programming.

bearwithclaws 13y ago

A nitpick about its translation of "Ma Nong" (码农): it doesn't mean "Number Cruncher". Although the "Ma" is the same character with "Hao Ma" (number), in describing the profession of programmer, it means "Code". "Nong" means farmer ("Nong Fu"). It implies laborious work. The closest translation to it should be "Code Farmer".

marme 13y ago
also nong(农) is the character for migrant worker(农民) which are look down upon in china as poor peasants who come to big city looking for work in manual labor jobs. So it is like calling them a code peasant or something like that. It is really meant as a self depreciating kind of insult. The character nong(农) is always used to describe someone who does menial jobs like manual labor or farming
- scotty79 13y ago
  So it seems like it's Chinese equivalent of code monkey.

dakimov 13y ago

Hardly believable, more like economically impossible when extrapolated to the entire economy and all the nom nom shit sellers around the country.

jval 13y ago

I feel like there's a lot of articles like this, which kinda make it seem like life is easy as an entrepreneur, or that successful business just happen. I feel like this mentality is behind the explosion in early stage financings relative to late stage financings. I know that as an early stage founder that I am part of the problem, but I often stop to think about whether what I'm doing is really that valuable or if I should just join another company in growth phase. I think the 100th engineer at Facebook would have had a lot more impact than most of the failed founders today. I just think that being a founder is a harsh experience that you have to learn from many times over in order to get right, and that even when things go well there's no guarantee of a money pot at the end of the rainbow. I think you really need to have motivations other than cash to truly convince yourself that what you're working on is worth waking up for every day. I think if you have that motivation inside you then being a founder is a great experience. Thinking you should just leave your job for an instant moneypot is just silly though, IMHO.

shellehs 13y ago
Nope. See this Programmers salary report : http://www.programmer.com.cn/14918/ http://www.programmer.com.cn/14918/ CNY 3k - 5k , that means USD 400 - 800. Nearly 1/5 programmers in China live in this salary. What USD 500 can buy in America?

CitizenKane 13y ago

This will probably be buried, but this conversation needs some serious context and the article title really needs to be changed to "Game Programmer Quits Job To Sell Street Food, Doubles Salary in China". Programmers are almost notoriously overworked and underpaid in China. Working 10 to 12 hours a day for $1000 a month is quite common. It's possible to make more money working six hours a day for half a month working as an English teacher. The view in Eastern Asia is that a programmer is akin to a machine that you hand a specification and code is produced and hence the low pay. You could trade programming in China for a large number of other careers and double your salary. It's not a particularly usual thing. If you were to trade this for a software development position in the US or Western Europe it's going to be a much different story. Culturally speaking, it's seen much more like and engineer or craftsmen rather than a labourer. Switching from a position like this in the US to selling food is much less likely to see the same kind of return.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

INTPenis 13y ago

I know a programmer who quit his job and became a janitor, apparently doubled his happiness. Just because you have the logical mind for something does not mean it will make you happy. I often feel like I lack the logical mind for working in IT but I freaking LOVE the work.

CurtMonash 13y ago

If the young woman in the pictures is the girlfriend mentioned as part of the deal, I understand his choice even better.

tracyma 13y ago

As a game developer in china, We use this story to self-mockery.We work more than 50 hours a week, without girlfriend, without high pay.But We know one day When we has to leave we have another choice. He he~

scourgen 13y ago

Hey guys, It's just an advertisement

anothermouse 13y ago

I don't know why so many people are saying that it needs to be made clear that this is in China, and that it doesn't apply elsewhere. I'm a programmer in Finance in London, and a good day rate for a Senior contractor is 600GBP/day. I have a good friend who started out doing "grilled chorizo in a ciabatta bun" at a London market, and easily made 1000GBP his first day. Now he uses employees to man that stall, and has moved on to the next idea, at a different locations doing something different to allow him to do something that appeals during different seasons. By now I imagine he is easily making double what I do.