Hiring and resumes - Valve and then Stray Bombay
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ส.ค. 2024
- Answering a discord question, let's chat about hiring and the process and please let me know what you experienced that worked?
Discord
discord.gg/straybombay
The Anacrusis on sale
store.steampow...
At Respawn, we're somewhat bound to the EA hiring procedures, but I do think that my team has done a really great job making the testing process more equitable. Audio can unfortunately be a little bit 'pay to win', especially when you are just getting started. If you are in a position of privilege and can afford to invest into sound libraries, recording equipment, and plugins, you probably don't need to put in as much work as someone else in order to get a solid portfolio together. The annoying reality of the craft is that we need those resources to do our job effectively.
Our sound test is designed to be done in a single evening and we provide all of the candidates with the same pool of resources. We also review all of the submissions blind, so we have no idea which candidate did each one. Our team has become more diverse, is getting along better, and has been more effective ever since implementing these new hiring practices.
Hiring is never going to be perfect, especially under the umbrella of a giant corporation, but it's been really eye opening to see how big of an impact even these little changes can have!
incredibly cool insight, i bet looking through all the portfolios must be exciting! checked out your linkedin and saw your team worked on jedi survivor. so damn cool
Interesting - thanks for sharing.
Hiring is really difficult. There's a lot of people out there that I truly believer are the most capable candidates for the jobs they're applying for but they don't get them because interviewing in itself is underappreciated & IMO at the same time an overrated skill. After being around it for 10 years and seeing some people work out and others not so much... what I've discovered for myself is that it's not about credentials, accomplishments, your resume, your list of proficiencies.. but what is most valuable to me is identifying what kind of learner the person is. It's usually the person who goes far and above out of their way to learn things outside of a work environment. Their desire to become better is so great that they take an active role in improving themselves. The other half is identifying ego & ability to collaborate. I will take the inexperienced dev who is willing to learn over the experienced dev who is difficult to work with every single time.
All of my jobs (of which only one has been a paid position) have basically been the hiring practice you described but with the steps out of order. Everyone I'm going to work with I've already basically been working with me for a long time before I get asked to officially join. The wonders of the open source video game modding world.
Some of the most talented developers i ever met, the kind of people who can build an entire project back to front by themselves and do it WELL never end up working for a studio because they're generalists which are considered juniors in most roles. They usually end up in other industries instead while working on their own projects in isolation because theirs no startups or funding where they live.
I have never met the best person you described.
I did a screening with Valve a few years ago and got dinged unfortunately. No feedback but it was a legit ding, I got flustered and made mistakes. Also the "did this person actually do what they say they did" was totally the vibe I got from the interviewers, it wasn't until much later that I realized I have a bad habit of talking about my contributions in the plurality 'we did this, we did that', instead of "*I* did this, *I* did that, this is what *I* am proud of" etc. And I think if my friend was going for an interview there I'd probably say "Be clear about you and what you've done, not your team, and have passion about something", but that's just my hardly informed take. In general though I think it's correct, I've interviewed a ton of people where yeah on paper sounds fine, but there's just something not believable about what they're saying, and it feels pretty evident. Ultimately I think everyone can talk about ideas or what someone else they know did, but sometimes you can just tell the extent of their actual contributions.
A lot of people complain about Valve not pushing and making more games, the fact that they comfortably dragon sit on their resources and do not pump new games, but even before Gaben said "Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever" people don't understand that coming across a fun, engaging, scalable, replayable. doable idea is rare and takes a lot of effort, and from my understanding from outside the company, Valve does iterate a lot of ideas interally a lot, just that not a lot of that gets out to the public, because it is not good, or at least at the standard they hold themselves up to.
Working at an engineering firm in the Pacific Northwest, our hiring system is strict: It's usually 3 or more people interviewing, first it's technical questions related to activities they'll be doing which includes basic, advanced, and "expert" level questions. If the candidate has specialty skills such as safety systems or PLC programming, we'll get someone into the interview to field questions related to that. This will weed out 75% of potential candidates. Then it's leadership questions - asking for examples of management achievements, delegating work, and "what if" questions of various scenarios. Then we provide them a chance to ask questions about the company, industry, or day to day activities. Our hire rate is pretty low, but I think it ensures we're getting an experienced candidate.
thanks for sharing
Do a video on #fixtf2
tf2 is a dead legacy game and there are better class/hero shooters to play today
LIES!!!!
@@Raecast weird how you have tf2 in your channel description.
I get why from a company’s perspective getting lots of time and interactions between candidates and everyone on their potential team helps them feel better about a hiring decision, but my god is it disrespectful to candidates time when everyone expects it. Obviously right now is a particularly bad time to be looking for a job, but to even get to an offer can be 4 or 5 or 6 interviews, coding assignments, take home tests, multi person panels where you’re setup to fail because there’s already a preferred alt candidate. it’s pretty dehumanizing and often seems to leave roles open for months anyways. Obviously I’m not saying hire assholes that rub folks the wrong way, but it seems like a race to the most nitpicky hiring is pretty hostile to talent, and doesn’t seem like a great way to start a healthy working relationship.
It's definitely a balance
I am a Game Designer who has lead team, was lead game designer and more with almost 3 years of experience, do i have any chance to work at valve and how? thanks a lot for your vids and content, you are amazing my friend
dunno... maybe? depends?
I helped cause the #fixtf2 situation years ago 😬, and I wish to assist in the cleanup as part of (VAC?) security of the game as kinda my way to fight back against the wave of Linux based cheats abusing the lack of fencing.
Valve has shown they dont like developers that have harmed them in the past, especially with the leaks,
and idk how willing they are to hire outside of their homestate of washington.
The requirement to be a social butterfly + location difficulties is kinda like a big gate that keeps me out.
Not a genius dev, or even that good of one,
My guess is that you just have to know if you're the one and go apply,
I probably have that fire in me but not the valve type of profit seeking corperation blob essence.
For me, Ill probably just have to watch the #fixtf2 situation play out from afar and hope they can make a proper Linux Anticheat without me just fine.
(no I dont dev any sussy TOS products any longer, did that when I was younger and I'm a sorry girl
🙇♀)
Gonna continue doing cool Linux and FOSS stuff, perhaps thats a better path for someone interested in just chillin, but it doesnt pay the bills.
Currently working as a Technical Coach for a Datacenter where I have to train my underlings how to use linux, and its been difficult to do so with an overseas team. Am glad my all around wizardry knowledge kinda comes in handy,
I crave a team I can command to do my bidding and make my products