Paradropping into a game
This week I was paratrooper dropped into helping out some friends with a game translation gig. A deadline was rapidly approaching, some 70k Japansese characters in a handful of days. In typical situations you’d budget as much as two weeks time for a single person to work through this at a comfortable pace. But here, production had been delayed due external issues, and the only card left to play was crashing the Gantt chart with mercenaries.
A small group of about 5 freelance translators were called up, offered money, and they’re dropped in with no context deep into the middle of a fictional story. They’ll split up the script, glance at any prior material that’s available, and translate up a storm. It’s the card you don’t usually want to play for obvious reasons. There’s a very high risk that the different sections are translated in different styles and the quality of the work drops noticeably. But, it needed to be done. All we can hope for afterwards is for the editing and production team to smooth the inevitable discrepancies in style over.
For a full-time translator, the pace I worked at: somewhere around 8k-12k Japanese characters per workday would be considered unsustainable. Over the course of a month or two, severe burnout would set in. The kind of burnout that is extremely dangerous for a freelancer that needs to complete contracts on time to keep paying the bills. The whole team only agreed to go this fast because we were only going to be engaged for something like 5 days.
In doing translation gigs for 15 years now (longer than I’ve worked in data), I’ve only been called for three of these missions. They’re always exciting and fun to me because I was well rested each time. Plus, since we’re asked to work on very tight deadlines on short notice, the pay per Japanese character is higher than the typical base rate.
The money from this surprise contract will probably go towards replacing my crappy 8 year old vacuum with a proper nice one instead of subjecting it to more wonky repairs on my broken workbench. It’ll be a welcome upgrade.
Working in DS let me have this ridiculous amount of privilege
I’m luckily in the group of people with side gigs where I’m paid well enough at my primary job that anything I do on the side is largely optional, certainly not a situation my parents were in decades ago. Yes, there will always be a new use for extra income, but it wouldn’t be a problem if I stopped tomorrow. I’m sure that there are people out there where second gigs are necessary for whatever reason, even in a highly compensated field like data science.
Just as luck had it, Vicki happened to tweet about how she feels lucky about falling into a career in our field. I feel a very similar sense of amazement.
To put some context around all this, if I was a full time translator, paid at the inflated rate (for the type of work) I had on this short contract, I’d have to translate over 2.5 million characters to match my base salary. A typical mystery novel is somewhere around 100k-200k characters, so we’re talking 10+ books a year. That’d be working every single weekday for a year at an unsustainable 10k/day.
Plus, there’s self employment taxes and expenses, plus the time needed to find more work. So it’s not actually equivalent in the slightest. But because none of that applies to me, I get to translate as a hobby.
That’s nuts.
Living in a state of being a paid amateur brings all sorts of perks. I can largely take breaks as needed (no gigs during the first hellish 6 months of the kid arriving, etc.). I can pick my projects. That’s a luxury which most pros aren’t able to do.
Observation: Having side gigs seems common(-ish) to me, it doesn’t seem very healthy
I’ve been living within the tech/startup bubble within NYC for 15+ years, so this is an admittedly very skewed view, but it seems that everyone around me has at least one side thing going on, if not more. Some are small things like doing some consulting work or building web sites, others are making new apps, etc. Some are tied to hobbies, and some are clearly just extensions of their work.
I’ve heard rumors that this is less true in other places in the US and the world. But, since the millennial generation has a very stark wealth gap with prior generations, and the living conditions for apartments in NYC are rather… cramped… the pressure to scrape together more income seems endemic in my little circle.
But just because everyone is burning the candle from both ends doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s likely horrible. People already can put in long hours at their main job, and then pile on EVEN MORE in search of “personal growth” and extra money.
Finding uses for our own time
Why am I writing about all this in what’s ostensibly a data science related newsletter? Because the sad reality of things is that tons of people, data scientists included, will boast about having “side hustles” these days. I think that’s a pretty bad state for the world to be in. Rest is more important than hustle porn. We shouldn’t be encouraging people to rush headfirst into burnout.
I worry that there are people out there who feel like not having one is somehow leaving them behind. I see this most with students and people looking for advice. “Should I do Kaggle? Should I master [5 full academic disciplines]?”
I just want to scream “NO NO NO! HOLD IT!”
If you can happily get through life with just 1 job, I’m very happy for you. You’re not weird, nor lazy. There are many other ways to spend your time than more work.
Similarly, the famous and visible people that have likely made you think about taking on more work are, as I wrote once before, not typical. Visible people often also gain access to more interesting opportunities for side gigs.
But you’re doing it!
Yes, I am. But it’s not because I’m hungry for money or a workaholic.
I get myself into these messes because I’m unusually prone to hyper-focusing on topics that catch my attention. I’ve thankfully managed to redirect most of the energy into having it be a positive contribution to my life, but it’s definitely not a neurotypical trait. I caught myself staying up until 4AM on a weekday learning about electrical engineering recently. I’m writing this article and it’s past 2AM.
But even with a brain that won’t stop, I make a point of avoiding “work” outside of work. Most of my projects start as hobbies, meaning I derive pleasure and enjoyment out of doing them. It’s a form of rest, even though it involves a lot of learning and active practice time.
Cooking delicious food from scratch is fun and healthy use for a task I already have to do
Translating lets me practice telling wonderful stories without having stories of my own to tell
Newsletter writing gets thoughts and frustrations around work out of my head and organized into text
Photography lets me play with complicated equipment and make art, same with audio/video recording and woodworking
None of these were ever really motivated by “man, I want to go pro so that I can make some money!” I’ve worked at restaurants and translation houses and know wedding photographers. I don’t want that hard life. But I just obsess long and hard enough over my hobbies that I get to the point that people occasionally will give me money for it. The passion came first.
Take care of yourself and your family first
The one thing I don’t understand amidst all the ridiculous talk about everyone getting side hustles these days is how all the unpaid work at home is excluded from the calculus. If I sit down and list out all the stuff that needs to be done just to have life go on, it’s a huge amount of time. It’s time that every household needs to spend, either by having members do the work, or spending money to get it done.
While it’s hard to put an exact dollar value on keeping the house from falling apart or making sure everyone’s fed and dressed because no one’s writing a check to you, it’s a significant debt that accrues and eventually comes due when ignored.
People don’t usually talk about this work in public because you don’t win magical internet points for eating normal (not an Instagram photo) dinner and sleeping enough, but everyone has to deal with this stuff and we should be attributing the value it deserves. I don’t get it.
When I spend the 2-3 hours to wrangle the kid to sleep (halp) and the 1-2 hours to make dinner and eat it, I’m making sure my life doesn’t implode, which is generally considered a necessary thing.
Side gigs don’t have to be within “your field”
If you’re looking for ideas on things you can do by searching “[field] side gig” or similar, you inevitably will see tons of things on the internet that specifically talk about going deeper into [field].
If you’re a tree climber, use your tree climbing skills to climb poles for money! Makes sense.
This bias exists purely because it’s easier to give advice with a starting point than without. Going deeper into a field, by competing in Kaggle, starting a consultancy biz, writing an app, write and teach, etc. are all easy to suggest based on existing job skills we have. I can’t recommend to 100% of all my readers that we all run off to become medical writers because some weird article with bizarre hourly rate quotes said so. Someone might hate typing after all.
Luckily, we work in data. We’re the most likely to have to cross organizational boundaries and talk to people from all over the place, about almost anything, to understand their data and their needs. This means that experience in any field, including “random unrelated hobbies” can be valuable.
Working with gamedev folks taught me how to interact with creators (artists, composers, etc) and contract workers. Planning out a game Kickstarter taught me more about project budgeting (and international shipping, dear gods int’l shipping…) than I ever want to know. Hosting online conferences and organizing Meetup events taught me to work with vendors and event planning. Working booths at physical conventions was a giant lesson in physical logistics. Having photo/A/V knowledge comes in handy in our heavily produced social media universe.
This stuff isn’t useful every day of my life, but I at least have context now when the supply chain manager is pulling their hair out and is coming to me to look at their data, or when I take this newsletter into VR blogging or something.
Next week I’ve got an article percolating in my brain about “sessions” (like, in Google analytics) which should be fun, or traumatic, depending on your familiarity with the topic. A continuation of some of the questions I’ve received previously. After that I haven’t decided yet, happy to take ideas from you, email or ping me on the twitters.