I can’t even say I’m looking for an “alternative” to Facebook either, because they no longer give me what I want. Even if I dig through the menus to find the friends-posts-only feed, it’s still literally ~30% ads. There just isn’t any genuinely interesting social network any more.

I thought MeWe was going to be the next thing, but it never really got that much traction in my friend circle, and now they’re all in on some blockchain weirdness.

Given the opportunity, I wouldn't change my path. The career path I took shaped my life, my circle of friends, even my family. Now that I'm here, I wouldn't trade all that for anything.

But there have been... challenges. I wouldn't advise a new SWE college grad to follow that same path.

Those companies do exist. I have it on good authority that Valve is one of them, for example. But it's a short list.

Any games company I would consider would need to be hiring people they want to be *part of the company*--not people they need for a specific project. And they would need to regard crunch as a response to an unforeseen hardship, not a normal part of development.

Now if I do find myself job hunting. I'm open to it. I don't have anything against the games industry specifically, but I do have specific quibbles against the culture of crunch and hire/layoff cycles that so many companies consider a normal part of doing business.

Will I ever go back to games? Well, first of all, let me confront the implicit assumption so common to the games industry that you need to be job hunting every few years. I love my current position and have a clear advancement path. I could realistically work at CNN until I retire.