10 ms·

Yep. I've had a portfolio of full video games I've coded and released on my own, as the sole programmer, that could be played on the web, had my name credited o

Yep. I've had a portfolio of full video games I've coded and released on my own, as the sole programmer, that could be played on the web, had my name credited on the title screen, and you could even see the code on some of them, and I proudly included the link on my resume. Never brought up during the interview process, I was still expected to take the coding tests, and if I did a little poorly on one question I almost always got passed, even though the games I made had plenty of things going on, and some were even finalists in game contests (one hosted by Microsoft, even). I don't bother keeping up a portfolio anymore (I am working on a new personal site again, but not to put on my resume).

Hermel 5y ago
Maybe you should have applied with smaller companies that don’t have bureaucratic hiring processes yet?
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  Most small companies copy the bureaucratic hiring processes of the larger ones at this point.
  - bob1029 5y ago
    I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. Some of our best employees are the ones who came in with the fewest credentials and the most to prove. There is no candidate I would refuse purely on the grounds of credentials. We are much more interested in side projects and work ethic than formal certifications or other pieces of expensive paper.
    - ivanbakel 5y ago
      >I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. But how are you meant to know "when it makes sense to"? I imagine that lots of small businesses are run by owners who don't necessarily have the confidence to strike a new path in every facet of the business. If you're investing a lot of time and effort innovating on your product/service, it can also make sense to import a tried-and-tested hiring model wholesale from somewhere else. Of course, in a less generous sense that could be maligned as "cargo-culting", but if at the end of the day the planes show up (you make good-enough hires), you're not going waste time introspecting on the process.
    - ithkuil 5y ago
      One of the most common modern hiring "bureaucracy" I saw being applied in small companies/startup is the rule that candidates must be selected by their peers. There are many reasons this policy is appealing. One is that there is a growing recognition that managers aren't meant the be too technical and gauging the technical skills is thus delegated to those people who actually know the tech (namely the devs). The other reason is that it's assumed that in order for a team to work well together you need people who like and respect each other, and this often means answering the question "would you like to work with this person?". This policy backfires in many ways. It entrenches the existing culture and often doesn't easily allow to raise the seniority level of an existing company. I've been in many interview where only junior members where perplexed about some minor shortcomings about the candidate but they were the majority and the general sentiment was that if the devs noticed a red flag, it must be because manager and senior staff focused too much on high level stuff that was easy to fake, but luckily the juniors caught the impostor!... I was looking in dismay how one good candidate after another got rejected. Fixing this kind of problem took a tremendous amount of effort.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Usually they copy them wrong and dont know why its not working
- cableshaft 5y ago
  Happens at smaller companies too. I just finished a round of job interviews, and interviewed at several smaller companies that didn't give a shit, they had their own pet processes for hiring and didn't care about anything I did beyond the most recent two jobs. At one of them the guy was the epitome of what I would call "friendly condescending", spending half the interview pontificating on why the vast majority of developers don't understand what they're doing and should spend all their free time having a deep philosophical understanding of their work and suggesting I might be amongst those idiots (I'm really not doing a great job of selling it, he went on and on elaborating all the ways in which all developers but him were lacking and how he couldn't find anyone worthy of working at the company), but with a smile on his face the entire time. To be fair he did call himself "the asshole at the company" during the interview, though. The two job offers I got were from larger companies, but I talked to some younger guys working there that liked video games and sci-fi novels and going to a summer camp hosted by a popular 80s/90s band and DSLR photography, etc. and being able to talk about those things even a little bit may have helped them get excited about me, actually :) Also helped I did well on their coding tests, though.
golergka 5y ago
I've worked in gamedeve since 2007 and interviewed a lot of people. Small games portfolio doesn't matter, because small games, just like beginner tutorials from Unity, don't teach you skills necessary to work on a large-scale project with multiple developers. When you're working on small-scale projects, you can follow bad practices and don't hit their limitations. However, if I would be interviewing a game designer and not an engineer, this portfolio would have been incredibly relevant.
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago
  Does this also apply to junior roles? I would expect a portfolio of small games or some tech demos is the best you could expect there.
  - aloner 5y ago
    No, small side projects will definitely help you stand out when you're applying for a junior position since you don't have a lot of experience yet.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Sure, but neither do binary searches and balancing trees. If writing a 10000 line game is not like working on a million line project, writing a 100 line algorithm is even less so. And yet, some recruiters value coding tests more. In fact, practices in competitive coding are almost the opposite of what you need in large projects. You need to get a result as fast as possible, and the code is thrown away in the end. Readability, robustness, reusability, none of these matter, descriptive names are a waste of time, so is freeing up resources. Competitive coders are usually good coders in general, simply because they care, but so are people with side projects.
SlowAndCalm 5y ago
I am similar (putting my WebGL games on my portfolio) and I've found it's actually a pretty good filter of employers for me. If they bring it up and are willing to have a discussion about it, it's always a good sign. There's a wide range of topics to talk about that can relate to the possibly more boring requirements of the job. If they are dismissive of them, it tends to be an early sign that they are unable to think of things in a broader or alternate context. These are also the interviews that tend to have questions with right or wrong answers, even if the questions have multiple solutions and warrant discussion.
- z3t4 5y ago
  If you are over qualified, like having published several games on your own, it's not like they don't think you can do they job, they might think you will get bored and miserable.
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    I've personally come across this dilemma when hiring people. My own take is that's none of my goddamn business and if the person is the most qualified for the job then it's theirs for the taking.
    - vanviegen 5y ago
      Or you could perhaps discuss your concerns with the candidate... They may have a good reason for applying to this specific job.
      - krageon 5y ago
        "I want to work here because I need money to eat and you seemed like a safe choice"
        hef19898 5y ago
        Valid enough reason if you ask me.
throwawaylinux 5y ago
I've made lots (thousands? hundreds at least) of commits to the Linux kernel and have been working on it since pre (git) history, have developed a number of novel concurrent data structures / algorithms for it. I decided to talk with a FANG recruiter a couple of years ago who must have scraped my name from mailing list or commit histories. Despite first making it clear by email I wasn't interested in a job interview at the moment but was just curious about some things, on the call they pretty soon demanded to know what I thought the best Big O notation was for a sort algorithm. They were rather insistent that I answer them this before they would move on and spend much more of their time explaining why they contacted me or answering my questions. Fortunately I hadn't wasted a lot of my time at that point either. Strange, rude, entitled behavior. Sadly, they probably do hold real power over graduates and new developers, and those without jobs or much experience, or just those who dearly want to work for these companies. So they can get away with treating people like this, putting out these drag nets, paying no real interest or respect to any individual (at least not until they think their canned questions have filtered out most of the useless scum).
- arethuza 5y ago
  A couple of years back I managed to have three job offers at the same time - all of which I turned down. One recruiter got really angry with me, one basically disappeared the moment they heard I wasn't immediately accepting their offer and the third had a sensible and mature conversation about it. Guess which one gave me a good impression of their company and who I might work with again?
  - codeOnMaster 5y ago
    I'm curious why you put in the effort to apply to several places and passed up on all the offers.
    - arethuza 5y ago
      They approached me, I had interviews with each one thought about it and and on reflection once I found out more about each company and the roles decided I was better off staying where I was at the time. At the time the company I was working for had some commercial trouble (not related to me) so I thought it was wise to be informed about what opportunities were available but I wasn't desperate. Since moved somewhere else and am very happy with my new role.
jbluepolarbear 5y ago
I’ve interviewed a lot of candidates and I make it a point to review their portfolio. It helps me target my interview to focus on subjects they’re familiar with. Your portfolio should be on your resume. Videos are a great way to show off your game.

Hermel 5y ago

Maybe you should have applied with smaller companies that don’t have bureaucratic hiring processes yet?

epicureanideal 5y ago
Most small companies copy the bureaucratic hiring processes of the larger ones at this point.
- bob1029 5y ago
  I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. Some of our best employees are the ones who came in with the fewest credentials and the most to prove. There is no candidate I would refuse purely on the grounds of credentials. We are much more interested in side projects and work ethic than formal certifications or other pieces of expensive paper.
  - ivanbakel 5y ago
    >I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. But how are you meant to know "when it makes sense to"? I imagine that lots of small businesses are run by owners who don't necessarily have the confidence to strike a new path in every facet of the business. If you're investing a lot of time and effort innovating on your product/service, it can also make sense to import a tried-and-tested hiring model wholesale from somewhere else. Of course, in a less generous sense that could be maligned as "cargo-culting", but if at the end of the day the planes show up (you make good-enough hires), you're not going waste time introspecting on the process.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    One of the most common modern hiring "bureaucracy" I saw being applied in small companies/startup is the rule that candidates must be selected by their peers. There are many reasons this policy is appealing. One is that there is a growing recognition that managers aren't meant the be too technical and gauging the technical skills is thus delegated to those people who actually know the tech (namely the devs). The other reason is that it's assumed that in order for a team to work well together you need people who like and respect each other, and this often means answering the question "would you like to work with this person?". This policy backfires in many ways. It entrenches the existing culture and often doesn't easily allow to raise the seniority level of an existing company. I've been in many interview where only junior members where perplexed about some minor shortcomings about the candidate but they were the majority and the general sentiment was that if the devs noticed a red flag, it must be because manager and senior staff focused too much on high level stuff that was easy to fake, but luckily the juniors caught the impostor!... I was looking in dismay how one good candidate after another got rejected. Fixing this kind of problem took a tremendous amount of effort.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Usually they copy them wrong and dont know why its not working
cableshaft 5y ago
Happens at smaller companies too. I just finished a round of job interviews, and interviewed at several smaller companies that didn't give a shit, they had their own pet processes for hiring and didn't care about anything I did beyond the most recent two jobs. At one of them the guy was the epitome of what I would call "friendly condescending", spending half the interview pontificating on why the vast majority of developers don't understand what they're doing and should spend all their free time having a deep philosophical understanding of their work and suggesting I might be amongst those idiots (I'm really not doing a great job of selling it, he went on and on elaborating all the ways in which all developers but him were lacking and how he couldn't find anyone worthy of working at the company), but with a smile on his face the entire time. To be fair he did call himself "the asshole at the company" during the interview, though. The two job offers I got were from larger companies, but I talked to some younger guys working there that liked video games and sci-fi novels and going to a summer camp hosted by a popular 80s/90s band and DSLR photography, etc. and being able to talk about those things even a little bit may have helped them get excited about me, actually :) Also helped I did well on their coding tests, though.

golergka 5y ago

I've worked in gamedeve since 2007 and interviewed a lot of people. Small games portfolio doesn't matter, because small games, just like beginner tutorials from Unity, don't teach you skills necessary to work on a large-scale project with multiple developers. When you're working on small-scale projects, you can follow bad practices and don't hit their limitations. However, if I would be interviewing a game designer and not an engineer, this portfolio would have been incredibly relevant.

ImprobableTruth 5y ago
Does this also apply to junior roles? I would expect a portfolio of small games or some tech demos is the best you could expect there.
- aloner 5y ago
  No, small side projects will definitely help you stand out when you're applying for a junior position since you don't have a lot of experience yet.
GuB-42 5y ago
Sure, but neither do binary searches and balancing trees. If writing a 10000 line game is not like working on a million line project, writing a 100 line algorithm is even less so. And yet, some recruiters value coding tests more. In fact, practices in competitive coding are almost the opposite of what you need in large projects. You need to get a result as fast as possible, and the code is thrown away in the end. Readability, robustness, reusability, none of these matter, descriptive names are a waste of time, so is freeing up resources. Competitive coders are usually good coders in general, simply because they care, but so are people with side projects.

SlowAndCalm 5y ago

I am similar (putting my WebGL games on my portfolio) and I've found it's actually a pretty good filter of employers for me. If they bring it up and are willing to have a discussion about it, it's always a good sign. There's a wide range of topics to talk about that can relate to the possibly more boring requirements of the job. If they are dismissive of them, it tends to be an early sign that they are unable to think of things in a broader or alternate context. These are also the interviews that tend to have questions with right or wrong answers, even if the questions have multiple solutions and warrant discussion.

z3t4 5y ago
If you are over qualified, like having published several games on your own, it's not like they don't think you can do they job, they might think you will get bored and miserable.
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  I've personally come across this dilemma when hiring people. My own take is that's none of my goddamn business and if the person is the most qualified for the job then it's theirs for the taking.
  - vanviegen 5y ago
    Or you could perhaps discuss your concerns with the candidate... They may have a good reason for applying to this specific job.
    - krageon 5y ago
      "I want to work here because I need money to eat and you seemed like a safe choice"
      - hef19898 5y ago
        Valid enough reason if you ask me.

throwawaylinux 5y ago

I've made lots (thousands? hundreds at least) of commits to the Linux kernel and have been working on it since pre (git) history, have developed a number of novel concurrent data structures / algorithms for it. I decided to talk with a FANG recruiter a couple of years ago who must have scraped my name from mailing list or commit histories. Despite first making it clear by email I wasn't interested in a job interview at the moment but was just curious about some things, on the call they pretty soon demanded to know what I thought the best Big O notation was for a sort algorithm. They were rather insistent that I answer them this before they would move on and spend much more of their time explaining why they contacted me or answering my questions. Fortunately I hadn't wasted a lot of my time at that point either. Strange, rude, entitled behavior. Sadly, they probably do hold real power over graduates and new developers, and those without jobs or much experience, or just those who dearly want to work for these companies. So they can get away with treating people like this, putting out these drag nets, paying no real interest or respect to any individual (at least not until they think their canned questions have filtered out most of the useless scum).

arethuza 5y ago
A couple of years back I managed to have three job offers at the same time - all of which I turned down. One recruiter got really angry with me, one basically disappeared the moment they heard I wasn't immediately accepting their offer and the third had a sensible and mature conversation about it. Guess which one gave me a good impression of their company and who I might work with again?
- codeOnMaster 5y ago
  I'm curious why you put in the effort to apply to several places and passed up on all the offers.
  - arethuza 5y ago
    They approached me, I had interviews with each one thought about it and and on reflection once I found out more about each company and the roles decided I was better off staying where I was at the time. At the time the company I was working for had some commercial trouble (not related to me) so I thought it was wise to be informed about what opportunities were available but I wasn't desperate. Since moved somewhere else and am very happy with my new role.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago

I’ve interviewed a lot of candidates and I make it a point to review their portfolio. It helps me target my interview to focus on subjects they’re familiar with. Your portfolio should be on your resume. Videos are a great way to show off your game.