The factory I've been working at for the past nearly 5 years recently opened up a couple of IT positions and I got one, and I start this week. I had only ever planned on being at this place for a year since that's how long I thought it'd take for the site to pick back up enough for me to generate a full time income from the site again. That of course never happened and 4+ years later I'm still at the same place. More recently I was doing some job searching and considering just pursuing a career that wasn't Vizzed and not long after this place opened up those 2 IT positions, which is something I was hoping they'd do for as long as I've been there.

The place I work at is in town and I've been working weekend shifts this entire time. This allowed me to focus on Vizzed during the weekend and also allowed me to be at home with my kids while they're home schooled or out of school during summer break (I'll be sending them back to public school most likely though). I've got a lot of anxiety in general and driving into an over populated city, which is where all the jobs are nearby (Twin Cities to be exact), just wasn't something I wanted to do so it's awesome that I'll be able to finally be utilized where I work.

The reason they finally opened up IT positions was because a company bought out the company I work for and so the IT guys from the company that previous owned us left and now the new company needs a new team. It's a Taiwanese company and our place makes circuit boards and this is their first factory in the US. They basically want a fresh start on everything and this gives me the opportunity to bring to life all of the ideas and visions I had for the place (those ideas being shot down in the past due to me not having a title worthy to do such tasks). I'll basically be in charge of everything software related. It's going to offer me a lot of opportunity to not only utilize and keep fresh the skills I have but also allow me to further develop those skills.

Anyways, here's how this affects Vizzed. I'll be working more hours than before and I'll also be working primarily during the week. I haven't had weekends off with my family in almost 5 years so I'm excited to have that with them. Because of this, I'll be doing very little development during the weekend and I'll be doing very little development during the week. They're going to allow me to have a very flexible schedule so I'm going to try and have it so that I have 1 day off during the week with that day being the day I work on Vizzed, which will hopefully be Mondays.

In other words, I'll be spending and investing less time on the site. Earlier in the year I was averaging around 25-30 hours on the site, lately I've been investing on average of 20 hours. Now I'll probably be investing 10 hours into the site so I have to make that time count (some weeks might be more). Thankfully I have an awesome staff so they'll definitely save me a lot of time which will help me focus on things that only I can take care of. If the site ever picks back up again, and enough to generate a full time income, I would for sure quit my job and focus primary on Vizzed again but until that happens, I'll have to just deal with spending 10+ hours on the site a week.

There are 2 positives that come out of this at least.

I'll be obtaining skills potentially beneficial to the site which might give me an opportunity to do things on the site or for the site that I wasn't capable of before (you know, maybe I'll develop the skills to make my own RGR Plugin or to be able to work on the current).

The other positive (kind of 2 actually) is that I'll be making more money at my job and this means I'll have a budget to host competitions again with cash prizes (not as big of a budget as in the past but a budget none the less). I eventually stopped hosting competitions due to the lack of participation and the lack of participation was a combination of less traffic on the site (and therefore less interest) and no longer having the budget for cash prizes. So I'll definitely be hosting competitions more often. Having a budget again also means I can invest money into various scripts for the site and also hire people to work on various things.

Congratulations on getting the new job! I'm hoping that, at the very least, the job can be able to help you express yourself a bit more than your previous position. At least when you say that you can be able to pitch your own ideas now to help push the company forward is a good thing. As for Vizzed, feel free to use all of the time that you need. Like you said, you've got a good staff by your side that can be able to help you out with some of the jobs and hopefully give you less to worry about when your free time comes around to work on maintaining this website. Here's hoping for the best on everything in your future, job wise, website site and life wise.

Congrats on the new job! I don't know how to explain it but every time you have to start spending less time on Vizzed I feel sad for whatever reason I mean it doesn't even feel that long ago I read your post about having to start working a job but I guess life goes on. Competitions returning is really exciting and I hope you having more budget for people working on things will help reduce the load on you some.

Congrats on the job and don't worry about anyone who objects to it. If they care so much about the site they can offer to help with it, at the least do some moderating.

Davideo7 : Wow that's awesome and very interesting indeed! I didn't know that you were so spent on vizzed to the point of hardly having any time with your family, you should make sure to balance that carefully as it can (sometimes but not always) cause your children to get upset and very annoyed when your distant with them.

Hopefully your new job may be able to help you find a solution to the rgr plugin, as that was the only way I could play games on this site as html5 is too crappy to even tolerate, to be brutally honest ha ha!

Well, if these aren't interesting news!

It's awesome you can finally get the position you've been desiring for years, and how it will change your schedule will also be immensely beneficial for your family time. I know you've had it rough in the last years due to your shifts, hopefully you'll be able to make up for the lost time.

It's nice to see you could be able to increase your skills and manage even more parts of the site without having to rely on anybody else. And finding a solution to the RGR would be just too awesome, that issue has been plaguing the site for the last year and a half. And the return of competitions could be interesting too, let's see what can we come up with on that regard.

You can leave the bulk of the job to us staff, we may not be numerous but we're hard workers and we'll do whatever is in our hands to help this site out. Good luck on your new job, and hopefully we'll get more good news coming relatively soon!

Congratulations!

We all wish you the best in your new position, and the new opportunities and openings in life that may flow forth.

Please know that each one of us has joined your site and community for a reason. I can say with clarity that my appreciation for your hard work and dedication knows no bounds. I've spent hours playing games in the RGR I would never have personally discovered.

At the end of the day, best of luck to you and keep fighting the good fight. We're rooting for you!

I've got no questions, just wanted to swing by and say that I hope the new job goes well for you. With all the experience behind running Vizzed that you have under your belt, I'm sure you'll be a much more valuable asset to their team this time - and in turn will allow you to obtain new skillsets that may be relevant to Vizzed. It's a shame that you'll be spending less time on the site but I think you'll end up being correct, in that the time you do spend on Vizzed will count for more once you start learning more at your job.

Good luck with everything.

I don't poke around here a lot anymore, but that's great news David. I hope you really enjoy your new position and you make more money and have greater peace in your life. You are a talented guy and I'm glad you found a new outlet for those talents.

I should point out that once my kids go back to school, my time on the site more than likely will increase to around 15 hours a week (which will be in the beginning of September).

And the time I do invest on the site will hopefully be 75% community related and 25% development related.

And in case anyone is wondering, the factory I work at is called TCLAD (previously known as 'Bergquist, a Henkel Company' before the purchase). The company that purchased the factory is called Polytronics (they changed the name of our factory when they bought us). It's been a pleasure working with the Taiwanese people.


DavidMcC1989 : I think it'll give me new perspectives and ideas for Vizzed. Who knows, maybe some of the content I make for them will be reusable for Vizzed in some way.


SonicOlmstead : I agree that it is very sad. I would love nothing more than to work on this site again full time and I still have hope that it'll happen again some day. I have an entrepreneur mindset and tend to do my best work when I'm working on my own stuff since that's when I bring the most passion to what I'm working on.


Blazer 31 : In the past couple of years I've been able to prioritize time with my kids. It is very important to me. However, time with my wife hasn't been what it should be due to us having opposite schedules so I'm most looking forward to having weekends with her again and spending time as an entire family again, which is something we haven't done much of in the past 5 years.


EX Palen : I'm hoping this doesn't end up putting too much of an extra work load on your plate but I could look into creating or purchasing any tools to assist you if needed.


G789 : Thank you


Minuano : I've become a jack of all trades thanks to Vizzed and that knowledge definitely helped in my interview.


Sword Legion : It'll be really nice to not have to live from paycheck to paycheck. We've been behind on bills and house payments for the past 6 years. It'll be great once we start getting caught up financially and get some of our debt eliminated.

This sounds like a net positive honestly. You've already cleared up a lot of the issues the site had been having the last couple years. I'm sure some optimizations could be made, but there's nothing blatantly broken. (For the most part.) I do believe it would've been better if you had the necessary skills to maintain the RGR from the get go, I feel like needing to hire a dev has been a major block. Plus, if you could develop something of that magnitude yourself, you may be able to come out with something else to drive traffic.

We'll all be here for you David.

Congrats! Hope you enjoy your time with the new job, been thinking of getting into data science myself with the new Google programs.

pennylessz : You're right. It would have saved me a lot of money and more updates would have been done to the RGR Plugin. But it also would have meant less updates to the site overall since that would have been a very time consuming task. We'll see though. At this point it'd probably be far more efficient to just learn Javascript more thoroughly and all of the technologies involving Javascript to be able to make my own browser based plugin (requiring no downloading of any sort).

DoctorDB : Programing and IT related stuff is in huge demand, especially if it's dealing with technologies like Java and Javascript. If I were to give anyone any advice, it'd be to become a Full Stack Developer. The jobs are in such demand that some jobs are paying people to learn the skills.

Congrats! You can finally earn something from the skills you have.

Just an update on my activity.

So my new position has been keeping me busier than I anticipated but I think that'll slow down in the upcoming months. Also, since my kids only have a few weeks left until they go back to public school, I've been trying to spend as much time with them as I can. All of this has resulted into me only spending 5-10 hours a week on the site. Once they go back to school, I will probably be doing 10-15 hours on the site a week.

Davideo7 : Woot woot! Congrats, David! Good for you.

So happy for you, David! The financial stability will take a TON of stress off your shoulders, I'm sure, and I hope that weekends with your family without the extra burdens of 3rd shift stress and financial pressures will open up a whole new level of peace and joy for you and yours. Really excited for you!! <3

Edit: realizing that I don't know if you're still on 3rd shift, lol. Regardless of whether or not you are, I'm sure this will be a great move for you.

Davideo7 : congrats david. wtg

Davideo7 : that is my background with IT work myself, david. but, I do it with headset to solved the problem with their computer stuff as well.