First post:). Not sure if other game veterans have replied to this. Therefore i'll just chip in my pov. I apologize in advance if I'm repeating some points.
Over the past few years, I have read hundreds of resumes and interviewed a lot of candidate game programmers. These are my humble opinion on how to score an interview and a job.
- Be VERY, VERY good at C++. C++ is still King in the AAA console world. So you need to impress us with it.
- Be a very good software engineer. Talk patterns, design, architecture, trade offs. Being able to design software (not just code it) is something we all love.
- Do something on the side. Showcase your mad skills and what you have done with just your free time. If you tell us that you wanted this job since the day you were born but you don't know what Ogre is, you must be lying to us.
- Diversify. If all you know is how to render using the latest and greatest tricks, you are just like every other wannabes. Games are so large nowadays, we REALLY need people with other skills. Some areas you may want to explore: Distributed computing for mass online servers, content distribution system, massively scalable database architecture, multi-user collaborative dev tools, multi-terrabyte data crunching, distributed server profiling, tracing, debugging. Multi-core programming, optimization, crash reporting, profiling, data collection.
I've also dealt with Digipen before. What they output is usually more 'focused' than the rest of the candidates comes with more relevant skills. Their resumes also look nicer. Having said that, none of the stuff that attracts my eyes are exclusive to a Digipen degree.
Slashdot Mirror
First post :). Not sure if other game veterans have replied to this. Therefore i'll just chip in my pov. I apologize in advance if I'm repeating some points.
Over the past few years, I have read hundreds of resumes and interviewed a lot of candidate game programmers. These are my humble opinion on how to score an interview and a job.
- Be VERY, VERY good at C++. C++ is still King in the AAA console world. So you need to impress us with it.
- Be a very good software engineer. Talk patterns, design, architecture, trade offs. Being able to design software (not just code it) is something we all love.
- Do something on the side. Showcase your mad skills and what you have done with just your free time. If you tell us that you wanted this job since the day you were born but you don't know what Ogre is, you must be lying to us.
- Diversify. If all you know is how to render using the latest and greatest tricks, you are just like every other wannabes. Games are so large nowadays, we REALLY need people with other skills. Some areas you may want to explore: Distributed computing for mass online servers, content distribution system, massively scalable database architecture, multi-user collaborative dev tools, multi-terrabyte data crunching, distributed server profiling, tracing, debugging. Multi-core programming, optimization, crash reporting, profiling, data collection.
I've also dealt with Digipen before. What they output is usually more 'focused' than the rest of the candidates comes with more relevant skills. Their resumes also look nicer.
Having said that, none of the stuff that attracts my eyes are exclusive to a Digipen degree.
My $0.02