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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

The story is informative -- VR games don't sell well, except if you can time to new hardware -- but the math behind the $42.5k number is dubious.

Can I value all my hobby projects at $60/hour too? Over a million USD accumulated losses during my adult life so far...

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> The story is informative -- VR games don't sell well, except if you can time to new hardware

I disagree - the story doesn't really tell you that. All the story tells you is that OP didn't really do any research (see "As far as I’m aware, Fruit for the Village is the first VR clicker game to exist as a published title." - maybe there's a reason), didn't publicise his game ("I really only showed it off in the 6–8 weeks before it launched"), and made a pretty crappy game (see steam links - 3 reviews, all bad, one was even free. Game breaking bugs not resolved 6 months later). Any one of those things should be enough to sink a game in the current market, but all 3, and you're just asking for failure

Today I learned I lost at least $60,000 playing Sid Meier’s Civilization...

It's taking "opportunity cost" too literally.

Sure does make for a nice click bait title though.

You can, and if you are self employed you can capitalize those losses under various circumstances. If you have even the slightest inclination to create something you think might sell one day, you probably should, if only for the purposes of establishing a tax basis for what you create. (This was a lesson learned somewhat expensively for me.)

I'd be happy with $60/hr for my day job.

Currently making $17/hr pre-tax and it is liveable in my suburban area. With overtime which is generously available at 1.5x pay, I could afford to raise a family even, and this job feels much more stable than other tech industry jobs I've had in the past.

I currently work for Star Gas, which is a northeastern USA based company that delivers heating oil to over 600,000 customers with revenue of about 1B per year (but razor thin profit margins of about 55m per year).

What is the cost of living? That seems rough almost anywhere to support a family. What do you do?

> That seems rough almost anywhere to support a family

Plenty of families in the UK survive off much less than that. Median income in the UK is less than it...

I started out in customer service making that rate, and I've also done sales and billing adjustments at the company for the same rate of pay. Those roles are more like "internally advertised", whereas customer service is externally advertised because of the high need for these roles and the relatively high turn-over rate in the position because of the type of work (shouting customers who are angry about price or tardiness of service lol).

My half of the rent and utilities is currently $1000 a month. A car payment, phone payment, insurances of various kinds and some food and entertainment spending cap out at about another grand per month, so $2000 total. With no overtime and after taxes, you start out at about $2200 a month in post tax, very reliable income. If you are willing to do 10-12 hour days, you can pull in about $4000 a month with no college degree and, to my experience, no crazy office politics or externalities.

It might not be enough to support a stay at home spouse, 2 kids, 2 range rovers, a large mortgage, vacations and shopping, and a robust family medical insurance plan, but it is definitely enough for a normal apartment in a normal suburb, driving an older vehicle and enjoying some westernized habits like eating at a restaurant or doing lots of christmas shopping :)

Thanks for asking, because I actually left tech sales completely for this field instead and I am pretty happy with the forced change of industry so far (oracle laid me off!!!)

Thank you for sharing these details! I value the insight into how diverse the "making ends meet" dimension can be, even among people connected to tech in some way.

Thanks for asking, it was a pleasure :)

I've lived off of less than $300 in Thailand and Chile before, but that's basically enough to afford only food and a room... and in my case in Chile, food and a tent in the mountains!!

Especially post-tax.

What hourly rate would you have charged someone else to build those hobby projects for them as a contractor?

If you actually try to sell it as he did, yes.

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