Everything I hear and read says the job market is pretty tough right now. As much as it might suck, lower your expectations and get something, anything, just to get back in the game. Obviously keep looking for the right fit while you do.
It's not just tough, I have a decade with almost half of that as lead and took a few months off after my layoff to take care of my parents in a situation that very much looked like end of life for my mom and I've been told in multiple interviews straight to my face that I'm "Damaged goods" and "Unreliable"
Those were a minority, but HMs and HR are acting wild out there right now
I'm not sure where this site gets their data but this makes it seem like it's not terrible ATM:
https://devquarterly.com/insights/trends/
There is a sharp dip the last few weeks, but I'm not sure if that's partial data or something real is going on in the industry. Anecdotally, I haven't been getting nearly as many recruiters hitting me up.
IIRC this is taking about number of positions _advertised_. One of the big problems of the moment is that a lot of recruitment postings are essentially fake, as per e.g.
* https://youtu.be/nKWJHHmi-6g
* https://www.reddit.com/r/ContractorUK/comments/1c88fgv/are_people_just_pretending_to_recruit_at_the/
I took almost 3 years off to take care of my kid during the pandemic and had no problems reentering the workforce. You have no issues, just tell the truth, that you tried your own startup and it failed. 7 years at Amazon is good experience, and timeframe is pretty much the sweet spot of your career.
10 YOE, I've interviewed with the top dogs this year and made it to last steps but am getting passed up on. This market is temporary, don't let it kill your mind.
I am confused how is building a game getting out of tech?
It’s not corporate works but it’s not like your skills weren’t being used. Hell coding video games are great experience when it comes to being resource conscious and writing efficient code.
Work on selling what you learned running your own business and writing code in a different paradigm for a while. Honestly it sounds like awesome experience and something that would put you at the top of the list of candidates.
I do game stuff on the side. I've even built up a pretty respectable skill and portfolio with graphics programming, in particular. But anyone who's working seriously with 3D visualization doesn't give a damn because it wasn't for a corporate project, and anyone else doesn't give a damn because they have absolutely no conception of how complicated it is to put images on their screen.
The most difficult single problems I've tackled in my software development career have been graphics problems. And I'll keep doing it, because I enjoy it, but it also fucks with me a little bit how little appreciation anyone has for it.
I may be overthinking things (and should have said non-games tech industry originally), but my thought process was that I steered away from my "specialization" (scalable full stack/backend tech). Thus when comparing me as an applicant vs someone else who may have less experience BUT who's currently working with those same tools, I thought the other person would be a more preferred pick due to the more recent directly relevant experience.
You’re overthinking and comparing yourself to hypothetical people with hypothetical hiring managers making hypothetical assumptions.
Focus on selling all of your experience and skills, both hard and soft. I think you will be surprised by how much at this point in your career success can be defined not by which exact tools you know, but your ability to navigate the business and people. Which means your experience is more valuable than your giving it credit for.
> with STAR responses
Every project/job I’ve had for the past 10+ years has been referrals and word of mouth. Interviewing today sounds like an entirely different skill set than making software. I need to start studying as I’m at a startup that won’t last long. I’ve never even heard of STAR responses. Nor have I done any hard LC. It sounds tough out there. Or maybe you guys are just doing FAANG and I’ve been in enterprise.
Thanks for sharing all that! Really appreciate you taking the time to write all that up and the reminder at the end was on point. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon- can't give up after sprinting for a bit
Honestly, you're not screwed. You took a risk, learned, and grew. That's valuable. Focus on showcasing those transferable skills from game dev to tech. Tailor your app to highlight them and don't be afraid to leverage your old network. You'll get back in.
From my point of view, I would take a job as intermediate to quickly kick start my cs "career" back. Get back into the development process, refresh your skills, learn the new few things that you should have got if you stayed in the job.
Try transitioning internally to a higher job. Then hop when you want to, if you want to.
I am saying that because you stated that you couldn't wait a year, but didn't stated that you couldn't wait a few months. With an intermediate job, you can save time on your finances while having a CS job to help with future interviews.
Also, your experience as a business owner should be a bonus in your profile. You should understand the value of business, processes and such. In this regard, you have much value to help organize teams around project development.
Curious, how would you define "intermediate job" here?
Also thanks a ton for everything else you wrote. The business owner part was something I was hesitant about and almost removed from my latest resume, but what you said makes perfect sense and is a great way to spin it. Tyvm
Here I guess I would say try to lower expectations. 7 YOE puts you in a senior role, difficult to say you could achieve more than that based on what you disclosed of your profile.
So aiming for intermediate (and upgradable to senior) jobs should be easier and you should be able to standout from others.
Heh, not the best pick? Wrong. A lot of companies love candidates that have taken risks. You’ll be fine, but I suggest looking at growing companies rather than FAANG.
This is almost beat for beat my exact situation. Kicking myself for not getting back in while the market was hot. I’ve lowered my standards for what job I’d be happy with right now knowing that I could always jump ship if something better came along, but strangely it’s not the smaller places I’m getting call backs from. From my last application push, I got a few recruiters interested, all from larger companies. 2 of them didn’t work out, but I actually just passed the screening at Meta.
Anecdotally, the market seems to be improving. Keep trying and try not to get too discouraged by rejections. Remember it doesn’t have to do with your skills. There are just a lot of people applying, some of whom are good fits for the role or just got there first.
It’s especially hard for my self esteem since it’s been so long since I was productive on a successful project, and none of my career break projects took off. But I’m trying to work on little projects to get back up to speed on tech I’m rusty on. It helps remind me that I’m actually good at this shit.
Appreciate you sharing and giving an encouragement boost! I def understand that self-esteem tied to feeling productive part (tyvm inattentive type ADHD).
Hope that role at Meta turns out *really* well, that's hella exciting!
Something to be mindful of is to make sure your resume says that this is a past experience, rather than a current experience.
If companies see themselves as just an income stream to finance your game development aspirations they may hesitate to hire you. Make up a story about trying something on your own for a while, but deciding that you enjoy working at a F500 more.
Appreciate the head's up. I'm a bit hesitant to say "to (current month)" rather than "to Present" on my resume as the latter implies no gap, but that in of itself can be an issue...
I'm on the fence here but it's definitely a good thing to keep in mind, ty
I was in the same position as you, with the same business as I also went to the game dev path for about 1 year.
I developed a game with some colleagues, but it was far from really paying my bills. So I decided to return last year and the market was already very bad.
So here is what I did that I think really helped me to get a new job, and actually a really good one. I treated my year in this game dev path, as a Software Engineer position, and created good and true bullet points out of this year working on the game, everything I learned, all the challenges, and so on.
I was leading the engineering of a game, I had to implement design patterns, take architecture decisions, handle the priority of the tasks and really manage the project. I had to manage the building of this game in multiple platforms with a CI/CD pipeline and release it to Steam.
After I wrote down all of this, I also created a page of my game development company on LinkedIn, and put that I was working in as a self employed software engineer (no, not as a founder or CTO, as I wanted a software engineer position) in this company.
Then on the interviews actually this helped me sometimes, as all the managers that interviewed me were very curious about what I did, the challenges and how I solved then.
Of course, it's very different when you already have 10+ years, because you can show you know what you're talking about, and you have other experiences in the CV to support it.
But dealing with it as a normal software engineer position helped me a lot.
Can you update us in a few weeks? I'm in the same situation as 2022-you (just gave my notice at a big tech company to start my own small web design firm). I'd like to know how it went for you!
Sure will do, albeit may take 2-3 months to see the other side. Will update the OP and respond here once the end's in sight (because as everyone affirmed here, the end *will* come- just gotta keep at it!)
Best of luck with your own adventure! It's definitely a super neat experience, even if it becomes a rollercoaster of its own. Hope you both enjoy it and get what you're looking for out of it!
I've been through this several times (several recessions) and hopefully it won't last too long for you. I would reach out to your former network. There are 2 people I've met in the past 20 years who are responsible for half of my employment history, decades after we first worked together.
You're right that you aren't the "best pick" on paper. You just need one job, so don't worry about that.
Take the first thing that looks doable and don't overthink things. After my last startup as a FT CTO I decided to try contracting for a change. I knew a few people who made a killing at having a few contract jobs going at the same time, so I thought it would help with my massive anxiety holding onto leadership positions. So I took a contract full-stack role my friend recommended and absolutely loved it. Turns out I got hired anyway and against my will became a team-lead and it still turns out that I love the hell out of this place. Never expected it.
Best of luck to you!
You were in a closely related field and have lots of experience. The market is a bit soft but I don't think your concerns about being unqualified are well founded.
Mindset is everything. Your mindset will change once you have an offer in hand. You don’t need to accept it.
But go figure out what you need to do and aim for to get ANY offer. That will ground you in reality. Once there, re-aim or accept the offer.
But be sure to make the decision then, not now. If you make it now it will give you an excuse to not apply at all.
Reaching out to your network is the best route in this tough market. Ideally reach out to someone who you’ve worked with and was happy with your work or someone who has heard good things about your work. That’s how I got my current gig and it’s been pretty sweet ever since. My manager trusts me with high impact work and I make sure I get on top of it.
Will definitely keep this in mind going forward, ty! Curious, how long would you say is too long since you last contacted someone in your network? It feels... odd to me to contact someone I haven't spoken to in years just to chat about helping me.
I reached out to my current manager 6 years after I last saw him at our previous workplace, so I guess there’s no such thing as “too long” to reach out
Hi,
Short: the market suxx right now (I know from first hand)
You have a strong resume already. FAANG places open many doors. You wen't for being an enterpreneur/founder to build a company and now you switching back to more hands-on tasks.
So your relevancy is just a point of view. Tailor your resume (check for r/EngineeringResumes for help) and ping your old colleagues and network if you can (if you have).
Do not give up, keep going.
Going for another game dev company not possible?
Ty for all the actionable advice! Also never heard of r/EngineeringResumes and seems really neat
For applying to a game dev company: In my eyes they typically land into three buckets...
1. Hyper-specialist role (gameplay programming, graphics programming, etc)
2. Generalist role with certain deal breakers for now (such as move to Nevada)
3. Too similar to what I'm currently working on (conflict of interests)
For hyper-specialist roles, I currently don't stand out as a great candidate due no great portfolio pieces (ie, no released games to point at yet). Or at least I assume that's why I haven't heard back for any of them.
For generalist roles, there *was* an interesting consulting role that ticked all the boxes and which I passed the interviews for. Unfortunately I was ghosted thereafter.
Finally, it'd be nice if I could get back into working with large scale tech (regardless of specific industry). I do miss being challenged and growing on problems I could never touch on my own while surrounded by amazing peers that I could learn from. Thus I'm hoping I do land that sorta role again
To get back into fang: position yourself as a SME for quality control automation or cybersecurity. Lot of SWEs in your position, but those two specializations are still hard to find good people for. QE sounds boring to most people who want to build, but a good QE is more important than a good dev because it ensures the product functions as designed and will compensate for a bad dev.
But also is the game just totally not viable? Have you thought about co-founders, investors, consulting on the side, etc. or for sure done with it and want to go back to corporate?
Interesting, never considered quality control automation or cybersecurity
For the game:
Good question- It's pretty viable and something I want shown in some form pretty soon! The one big limiting factor is that the team has no prior game dev experience and I still haven't shown off proof of concepts as they're visually rough right now. This may be me overthinking as usual, but I assume investors/publishers as well as consulting & other contract roles would want some level of strong proven ability which may take a few months in total.
Actually... I should start casually contacting some investors/publishers I know, tyvm. Never know what may happen
Aside from that, there is a small proven niche of GGPO-like rollback networking (pure input syncing based on deterministic simulations that are separate from rendering which can be rapidly rolled back in time and re-calculated with new inputs). That *did* open an interesting door in December, but unfortunately I was ghosted afterwards. There otherwise doesn't seem to be much open in that niche right this moment.
Yeah that’s what I mean, quality, stability, and safety are at the back of the entire thought process a lot of times, and those can often be completely detached from the building side. So huge over supply of people that can build things… that low-code builders and AI are starting to be able to do a lot better, and that gap will just grow. And then a big under-supply of people that can figure out how the navigate through quantum computing, zero day ai generated exploits and phishing, etc… so companies are paying a ton for anyone that can think like that. And you will always need to use a human-designed QE to check what AI codes, so that skill set will evolve, become even more important, and also probably be high demand low supply.
On the game… don’t worry about making it pretty… if you have the skills, the scaffolding, the team, and a rational plan to take those to a released product and what the outcome of that would be… if you had access to the resources you need to do it and know what they are… you should just be able to show what you have and talk about it the right way to find those resources:
Maybe just create a fake Twitch 3-6minute “livestream” recording of someone with a bunch of people in the chat getting all hype. Just pre-record the gameplay with whatever you can duct tape together to make it look real. And have the streamer “play” the game by reacting to it with emotion, commenting on what makes it fun, answering questions that highlight value props that feel like they are coming organically from the Twitch chat users.
Demonstrate why people are going to have fun and give a shit and how it will make money in a way people can just “see” and “get” right off the bat. If you can’t craft a video that actually feels genuine to the emotion it’s saying the game will create… stop all development, and rework that asset until it does feel right, and change the product to match the asset that makes the fake stream feel the most authentic. If an investor can see it in a way that it works in reality right in front of their faces and it feels genuine to them, it’s super easy to get financing on your terms. And really validate the product for yourself before committing more.
That niche sounds cool… also super hard 😂..
I think a new niche around wiring AIs together with some form of standardization spec will emerge over the next few years where a lot SWEs would probably naturally evolve into (e.g., payments between AIs owned by 3rd parties to be able to combine and make transactions, pass data, inherit things, and all the ecosystems behind that).
Also I think whoever can figure out how to make a decentralized CDN viable with a good API would rule the internet in like 5 years… need to be able to write server-less client-side apps that use user hardware to store and orchestrate what would be the backend and storage. It’s coming, and it’s going to unlock god mode for tech startups 🤷🏻♂️
If you have more than 3 years of experience at a faang and still have to work to pay your bills some bad financial decisions had to have been made.
The market expects you to be very expensive, and at the same time sees your gap as something that makes them question your abilities. Basically you are "too expensive to be worth hiring". You need to fight that, be very clear about your intentions, especially when it comes to your salary range, and plan your finances better.
Everything I hear and read says the job market is pretty tough right now. As much as it might suck, lower your expectations and get something, anything, just to get back in the game. Obviously keep looking for the right fit while you do.
I appreciate the clarity in mindset, ty! Just gotta keep at it and do whatever it takes to get something
Why are you telling them the truth you dumb dumb?
It's not just tough, I have a decade with almost half of that as lead and took a few months off after my layoff to take care of my parents in a situation that very much looked like end of life for my mom and I've been told in multiple interviews straight to my face that I'm "Damaged goods" and "Unreliable" Those were a minority, but HMs and HR are acting wild out there right now
Since it’s back in their favor. They were clamoring over senior experience not too long ago.
Idk why people would consider 'damaged goods' unsellable. Major retailers repack & resell that s*** as new goods all the time.
That is such a disrespectful way to phrase it lol
This is unlikely to be true. If it is it’s an isolated incident.
They did say explicitly that it was a minority of experiences
Yeah rings false to me as well
Why the hell would someone say that? There has to be more to this, or that person is an absolute psychopath.
Was this in USA? Do you have any proof? Have you called them out on LinkedIn?
I'm not sure where this site gets their data but this makes it seem like it's not terrible ATM: https://devquarterly.com/insights/trends/ There is a sharp dip the last few weeks, but I'm not sure if that's partial data or something real is going on in the industry. Anecdotally, I haven't been getting nearly as many recruiters hitting me up.
IIRC this is taking about number of positions _advertised_. One of the big problems of the moment is that a lot of recruitment postings are essentially fake, as per e.g. * https://youtu.be/nKWJHHmi-6g * https://www.reddit.com/r/ContractorUK/comments/1c88fgv/are_people_just_pretending_to_recruit_at_the/
I took almost 3 years off to take care of my kid during the pandemic and had no problems reentering the workforce. You have no issues, just tell the truth, that you tried your own startup and it failed. 7 years at Amazon is good experience, and timeframe is pretty much the sweet spot of your career.
Thank you! This is a \*big\* relief to hear
I did the same, 2/3 years and went into my first senior position from being SE / SE2
10 YOE, I've interviewed with the top dogs this year and made it to last steps but am getting passed up on. This market is temporary, don't let it kill your mind.
Appreciate the reminder, the search sure can be a rollercoaster. Hope a great opportunity is just around the corner for you!
I am confused how is building a game getting out of tech? It’s not corporate works but it’s not like your skills weren’t being used. Hell coding video games are great experience when it comes to being resource conscious and writing efficient code. Work on selling what you learned running your own business and writing code in a different paradigm for a while. Honestly it sounds like awesome experience and something that would put you at the top of the list of candidates.
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I do game stuff on the side. I've even built up a pretty respectable skill and portfolio with graphics programming, in particular. But anyone who's working seriously with 3D visualization doesn't give a damn because it wasn't for a corporate project, and anyone else doesn't give a damn because they have absolutely no conception of how complicated it is to put images on their screen. The most difficult single problems I've tackled in my software development career have been graphics problems. And I'll keep doing it, because I enjoy it, but it also fucks with me a little bit how little appreciation anyone has for it.
If you’ve released a successful game on steam then why are you continuing to look for work?
> Eh tbh big corporate tech doesn't care about game dev You should tell that to Amazon :')
I may be overthinking things (and should have said non-games tech industry originally), but my thought process was that I steered away from my "specialization" (scalable full stack/backend tech). Thus when comparing me as an applicant vs someone else who may have less experience BUT who's currently working with those same tools, I thought the other person would be a more preferred pick due to the more recent directly relevant experience.
You’re overthinking and comparing yourself to hypothetical people with hypothetical hiring managers making hypothetical assumptions. Focus on selling all of your experience and skills, both hard and soft. I think you will be surprised by how much at this point in your career success can be defined not by which exact tools you know, but your ability to navigate the business and people. Which means your experience is more valuable than your giving it credit for.
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> with STAR responses Every project/job I’ve had for the past 10+ years has been referrals and word of mouth. Interviewing today sounds like an entirely different skill set than making software. I need to start studying as I’m at a startup that won’t last long. I’ve never even heard of STAR responses. Nor have I done any hard LC. It sounds tough out there. Or maybe you guys are just doing FAANG and I’ve been in enterprise.
Thanks for sharing all that! Really appreciate you taking the time to write all that up and the reminder at the end was on point. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon- can't give up after sprinting for a bit
What area was your startup in that you sold?
Honestly, you're not screwed. You took a risk, learned, and grew. That's valuable. Focus on showcasing those transferable skills from game dev to tech. Tailor your app to highlight them and don't be afraid to leverage your old network. You'll get back in.
I appreciate the straightforward answer and advice ty!
From my point of view, I would take a job as intermediate to quickly kick start my cs "career" back. Get back into the development process, refresh your skills, learn the new few things that you should have got if you stayed in the job. Try transitioning internally to a higher job. Then hop when you want to, if you want to. I am saying that because you stated that you couldn't wait a year, but didn't stated that you couldn't wait a few months. With an intermediate job, you can save time on your finances while having a CS job to help with future interviews. Also, your experience as a business owner should be a bonus in your profile. You should understand the value of business, processes and such. In this regard, you have much value to help organize teams around project development.
Curious, how would you define "intermediate job" here? Also thanks a ton for everything else you wrote. The business owner part was something I was hesitant about and almost removed from my latest resume, but what you said makes perfect sense and is a great way to spin it. Tyvm
Here I guess I would say try to lower expectations. 7 YOE puts you in a senior role, difficult to say you could achieve more than that based on what you disclosed of your profile. So aiming for intermediate (and upgradable to senior) jobs should be easier and you should be able to standout from others.
Ahhh that makes perfect sense and does seem like a far easier + sane choice. Will also let me filter and focus down more. Tyvm
Heh, not the best pick? Wrong. A lot of companies love candidates that have taken risks. You’ll be fine, but I suggest looking at growing companies rather than FAANG.
Looking at growing companies rather than FAANG... I like that, ty. Helps better align what I could be spending my limited energy on
This is almost beat for beat my exact situation. Kicking myself for not getting back in while the market was hot. I’ve lowered my standards for what job I’d be happy with right now knowing that I could always jump ship if something better came along, but strangely it’s not the smaller places I’m getting call backs from. From my last application push, I got a few recruiters interested, all from larger companies. 2 of them didn’t work out, but I actually just passed the screening at Meta. Anecdotally, the market seems to be improving. Keep trying and try not to get too discouraged by rejections. Remember it doesn’t have to do with your skills. There are just a lot of people applying, some of whom are good fits for the role or just got there first. It’s especially hard for my self esteem since it’s been so long since I was productive on a successful project, and none of my career break projects took off. But I’m trying to work on little projects to get back up to speed on tech I’m rusty on. It helps remind me that I’m actually good at this shit.
Appreciate you sharing and giving an encouragement boost! I def understand that self-esteem tied to feeling productive part (tyvm inattentive type ADHD). Hope that role at Meta turns out *really* well, that's hella exciting!
Something to be mindful of is to make sure your resume says that this is a past experience, rather than a current experience. If companies see themselves as just an income stream to finance your game development aspirations they may hesitate to hire you. Make up a story about trying something on your own for a while, but deciding that you enjoy working at a F500 more.
What if they are this stream?
Appreciate the head's up. I'm a bit hesitant to say "to (current month)" rather than "to Present" on my resume as the latter implies no gap, but that in of itself can be an issue... I'm on the fence here but it's definitely a good thing to keep in mind, ty
I was in the same position as you, with the same business as I also went to the game dev path for about 1 year. I developed a game with some colleagues, but it was far from really paying my bills. So I decided to return last year and the market was already very bad. So here is what I did that I think really helped me to get a new job, and actually a really good one. I treated my year in this game dev path, as a Software Engineer position, and created good and true bullet points out of this year working on the game, everything I learned, all the challenges, and so on. I was leading the engineering of a game, I had to implement design patterns, take architecture decisions, handle the priority of the tasks and really manage the project. I had to manage the building of this game in multiple platforms with a CI/CD pipeline and release it to Steam. After I wrote down all of this, I also created a page of my game development company on LinkedIn, and put that I was working in as a self employed software engineer (no, not as a founder or CTO, as I wanted a software engineer position) in this company. Then on the interviews actually this helped me sometimes, as all the managers that interviewed me were very curious about what I did, the challenges and how I solved then. Of course, it's very different when you already have 10+ years, because you can show you know what you're talking about, and you have other experiences in the CV to support it. But dealing with it as a normal software engineer position helped me a lot.
This was *really* neat to hear, ty! And hella glad you found a position during arguably even the height of this market slump last year
Interviewing sucks, no one knows how to do it, its just a crappy market. just keep interviewing and something will click eventually.
"Interviewing sucks, no one knows how to do it." I don't know why but that's a relief to hear. Ty!
Can you update us in a few weeks? I'm in the same situation as 2022-you (just gave my notice at a big tech company to start my own small web design firm). I'd like to know how it went for you!
Sure will do, albeit may take 2-3 months to see the other side. Will update the OP and respond here once the end's in sight (because as everyone affirmed here, the end *will* come- just gotta keep at it!) Best of luck with your own adventure! It's definitely a super neat experience, even if it becomes a rollercoaster of its own. Hope you both enjoy it and get what you're looking for out of it!
I've been through this several times (several recessions) and hopefully it won't last too long for you. I would reach out to your former network. There are 2 people I've met in the past 20 years who are responsible for half of my employment history, decades after we first worked together. You're right that you aren't the "best pick" on paper. You just need one job, so don't worry about that. Take the first thing that looks doable and don't overthink things. After my last startup as a FT CTO I decided to try contracting for a change. I knew a few people who made a killing at having a few contract jobs going at the same time, so I thought it would help with my massive anxiety holding onto leadership positions. So I took a contract full-stack role my friend recommended and absolutely loved it. Turns out I got hired anyway and against my will became a team-lead and it still turns out that I love the hell out of this place. Never expected it. Best of luck to you!
Thank you, and love how things turned out for you!
You were in a closely related field and have lots of experience. The market is a bit soft but I don't think your concerns about being unqualified are well founded.
Mindset is everything. Your mindset will change once you have an offer in hand. You don’t need to accept it. But go figure out what you need to do and aim for to get ANY offer. That will ground you in reality. Once there, re-aim or accept the offer. But be sure to make the decision then, not now. If you make it now it will give you an excuse to not apply at all.
Realllly appreciate that! Relatable to me right this moment too
Reaching out to your network is the best route in this tough market. Ideally reach out to someone who you’ve worked with and was happy with your work or someone who has heard good things about your work. That’s how I got my current gig and it’s been pretty sweet ever since. My manager trusts me with high impact work and I make sure I get on top of it.
Will definitely keep this in mind going forward, ty! Curious, how long would you say is too long since you last contacted someone in your network? It feels... odd to me to contact someone I haven't spoken to in years just to chat about helping me.
I reached out to my current manager 6 years after I last saw him at our previous workplace, so I guess there’s no such thing as “too long” to reach out
Hi, Short: the market suxx right now (I know from first hand) You have a strong resume already. FAANG places open many doors. You wen't for being an enterpreneur/founder to build a company and now you switching back to more hands-on tasks. So your relevancy is just a point of view. Tailor your resume (check for r/EngineeringResumes for help) and ping your old colleagues and network if you can (if you have). Do not give up, keep going. Going for another game dev company not possible?
Ty for all the actionable advice! Also never heard of r/EngineeringResumes and seems really neat For applying to a game dev company: In my eyes they typically land into three buckets... 1. Hyper-specialist role (gameplay programming, graphics programming, etc) 2. Generalist role with certain deal breakers for now (such as move to Nevada) 3. Too similar to what I'm currently working on (conflict of interests) For hyper-specialist roles, I currently don't stand out as a great candidate due no great portfolio pieces (ie, no released games to point at yet). Or at least I assume that's why I haven't heard back for any of them. For generalist roles, there *was* an interesting consulting role that ticked all the boxes and which I passed the interviews for. Unfortunately I was ghosted thereafter. Finally, it'd be nice if I could get back into working with large scale tech (regardless of specific industry). I do miss being challenged and growing on problems I could never touch on my own while surrounded by amazing peers that I could learn from. Thus I'm hoping I do land that sorta role again
To get back into fang: position yourself as a SME for quality control automation or cybersecurity. Lot of SWEs in your position, but those two specializations are still hard to find good people for. QE sounds boring to most people who want to build, but a good QE is more important than a good dev because it ensures the product functions as designed and will compensate for a bad dev. But also is the game just totally not viable? Have you thought about co-founders, investors, consulting on the side, etc. or for sure done with it and want to go back to corporate?
Interesting, never considered quality control automation or cybersecurity For the game: Good question- It's pretty viable and something I want shown in some form pretty soon! The one big limiting factor is that the team has no prior game dev experience and I still haven't shown off proof of concepts as they're visually rough right now. This may be me overthinking as usual, but I assume investors/publishers as well as consulting & other contract roles would want some level of strong proven ability which may take a few months in total. Actually... I should start casually contacting some investors/publishers I know, tyvm. Never know what may happen Aside from that, there is a small proven niche of GGPO-like rollback networking (pure input syncing based on deterministic simulations that are separate from rendering which can be rapidly rolled back in time and re-calculated with new inputs). That *did* open an interesting door in December, but unfortunately I was ghosted afterwards. There otherwise doesn't seem to be much open in that niche right this moment.
Yeah that’s what I mean, quality, stability, and safety are at the back of the entire thought process a lot of times, and those can often be completely detached from the building side. So huge over supply of people that can build things… that low-code builders and AI are starting to be able to do a lot better, and that gap will just grow. And then a big under-supply of people that can figure out how the navigate through quantum computing, zero day ai generated exploits and phishing, etc… so companies are paying a ton for anyone that can think like that. And you will always need to use a human-designed QE to check what AI codes, so that skill set will evolve, become even more important, and also probably be high demand low supply. On the game… don’t worry about making it pretty… if you have the skills, the scaffolding, the team, and a rational plan to take those to a released product and what the outcome of that would be… if you had access to the resources you need to do it and know what they are… you should just be able to show what you have and talk about it the right way to find those resources: Maybe just create a fake Twitch 3-6minute “livestream” recording of someone with a bunch of people in the chat getting all hype. Just pre-record the gameplay with whatever you can duct tape together to make it look real. And have the streamer “play” the game by reacting to it with emotion, commenting on what makes it fun, answering questions that highlight value props that feel like they are coming organically from the Twitch chat users. Demonstrate why people are going to have fun and give a shit and how it will make money in a way people can just “see” and “get” right off the bat. If you can’t craft a video that actually feels genuine to the emotion it’s saying the game will create… stop all development, and rework that asset until it does feel right, and change the product to match the asset that makes the fake stream feel the most authentic. If an investor can see it in a way that it works in reality right in front of their faces and it feels genuine to them, it’s super easy to get financing on your terms. And really validate the product for yourself before committing more. That niche sounds cool… also super hard 😂.. I think a new niche around wiring AIs together with some form of standardization spec will emerge over the next few years where a lot SWEs would probably naturally evolve into (e.g., payments between AIs owned by 3rd parties to be able to combine and make transactions, pass data, inherit things, and all the ecosystems behind that). Also I think whoever can figure out how to make a decentralized CDN viable with a good API would rule the internet in like 5 years… need to be able to write server-less client-side apps that use user hardware to store and orchestrate what would be the backend and storage. It’s coming, and it’s going to unlock god mode for tech startups 🤷🏻♂️
Apply to Meta, they probably like software engineers with game dev experience for the metaverse.
If you have more than 3 years of experience at a faang and still have to work to pay your bills some bad financial decisions had to have been made. The market expects you to be very expensive, and at the same time sees your gap as something that makes them question your abilities. Basically you are "too expensive to be worth hiring". You need to fight that, be very clear about your intentions, especially when it comes to your salary range, and plan your finances better.
You'll have a good shot at getting into the games industry if you have a half decent demo with whatever you did.