I'm going to reach a decade of commercial programming in about 2 months. Doing the same job. Now I seriously love programming. Really. But after a decade of doing the same thing you aren't quite so sparkly. And I could easily shove their terminal up some people's smug ar*es.
My advise? Skip between programming jobs if you can. You will only get jaded if you don't. And loyalty went out with the dinosaurs and when your grandad worked in the pits. Trust me. That or do your own business. Now. While you can live with losing everything because you don't have much anyhows.
And personally I wouldn't do game programming as a living. The deadlines must be hell, you are only as good as your last game by the look of it, and programming houses go bust all the time. But the main reason would be it sounds really boring once you get past the initial thrill of writing a new game. I mean there are so many different things that can happen in a game that it will easily get very boring testing and fixing each tiny part. Especially if you have lived (and played) with the game for the last year or two. And double especially if you aren't working on, say, Halo 2.
But I have to love the money
Cheers
I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
