Topic 1.8.2 Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Career Pathways – The route I took.

Every month, we ask readers to tell us about their careers and their highs and lows. This month, we hear from Troy McGhee.

At university, I did Computer Science and I’ve always been interested in creating software. I feel like a magician because I can write lines of code into a computer and make almost anything appear on the screen that I want. I started my career in the gaming industry. There weren’t too many people who can do what I do as it’s quite skilled, so it was quite well paid. When I was younger, I went a bit mad and bought a ridiculously fast car and a beautiful apartment in an expensive area of Sydney, Australia. I was quite ambitious and saw it as my duty to make the best games on the market. At one point, I ended up as acting manager of the department after the previous manager resigned, but found I was dealing with people a lot more than the actual programming which I didn’t enjoy. This was a real turning point for me because it made me rethink what I was doing with my career. If I didn’t want to go up and end up at the top, what did I want to do?

I decided to take a break from my career and went to Indonesia to do some voluntary work. One of the towns on Sulawesi had just been hit by a tsunami and they needed help with finding shelter for people and dealing with all the damage that had been caused. I taught some English while I was there and helped set up computer systems for the local people so they could be warned of future natural disasters. After that, I didn’t want to return to making computer games. I think I realised that I really enjoyed feeling useful and helping others. As good as the money was in my old job, I didn’t really feel like I was changing the world exactly.

So, I became self-employed and started to take temporary contracts with different software firms and doing some casual English teaching. I liked the balance of creating things on my own, but also meeting people in  the classroom. Now I’m working as a specialist creating educational games for children. I still teach once a week on a voluntary basis which is great because I get to try out my new games with the students and get first-hand feedback. They have no problem telling me if they think it’s boring or not useful, which is great. It has really helped me to make some fantastic software, but now I feel as though I’m doing something useful with my life.