Darkened Software

10 years ago I was just was just finishing up a project with the 3DO company, not wanting to go through another dev cycle with I got an interview with Microsoft for the Direct X team.  At the time I was very big into openGL, but saw the potential in DirectX and wanted to be on the new leading edge of graphics.  They flew me out for the big interview but when I got there I found out that an internal transfer had already taken the position I was interviewing for.  At MS it is common they interview you for multiple positions and they still wanted to interview me for some Direct X Development Test spots.

Although not what I wanted after a full day of interviewing I had convinced them that I would be a great Development tester.  Slightly upset that the position I wanted was not available I stopped on the way back to the airport and got my hair dyed blue.  At the time I did not understand the rest of the benefit’s of working at Microsoft so I did not consider the offer letter enough to move out of CA and start doing testing again.

If I had known then what I know now I would have dropped everything and gone to work with them in an instant.  This company literally has everything a computer geek could want.

1. You have access to more information than you could ever hope to learn.
   • ms library has access to every ebook and most tech and marketing books ever published.  You can check them out for 3 weeks and have 50 checked out at a time.
   • You have access to almost every consumer report and any marketing research ever done.
   • You have access to IEEE, AMC, and every knowledge database ever collected.
   • You have access to the people that originally wrote a lot of the the software you use.
   • They have more email lists, blogs, docs, meetings, round tables, video’s, industry committees and learning groups on any topic you could imagine.
2. You have access to 30,000 very smart engineers that are willing to help you learn anything you wish, it is like the biggest college on earth.
3. You have free or almost free access to all the software and hardware Microsoft produces.
4. You have one of the best medical plans ever heard of.
5. You have access to one of best fitness club in the world.
6. You have access to the best legal team that you can also use for personal counsel.
7. You have access to a billions of lines of source code from every project Microsoft has ever done.
8. The amount of resources you have for a project is unreal.  If it gets backing it is almost unstoppable force.

So one of the great thing about going through a full interview is then you are in the system and the recruiters never loose contact with you. Anytime a position comes up that fits your resume they contact you right away.  Finally they called me up with a job I could not refuse.

In 2 weeks I have had more hardware resources dropped on me than I have in my entire career.  Been exposed to 2 different engines and more source code than I have seen in my entire life ( which is hard given how much time I spend on source forge ).  Checked out 2 dozen books from the library, downloaded Rosetta Stone for Japanese and finally had access to all game sales numbers imaginable for the first time.

I have gone from spending most of my time to trying to get resources to now trying to prioritize what tech / resources I want to learn / utilize next.  From trying to figure out what the publisher really wants to picking projects and features our team will help out with next.  From trying to just get access to information to trying and scope what information is most important to me so I do not get overwhelmed.

During orientation they discussed how the industry average for getting ramped up to full productivity was 3-4 months and at Microsoft people said it was much closer to 9 months.  Originally I laughed, but now I understood why.  You will reach your standard productive rate within your normal time line but here that is just the beginning as the bar is much higher.

Was recently talking to a college grad working there and it became clear he was squandering the mass opportunities he had lucked into.  Not sure you can ever fully appreciate it with having suffered in the under funded and disorganized world of normal software development.  Only then can one understand what it means to have everything you need and you are the only limit in what you get done.

Some time ago I interviewed at Sony based on the recommendations of a friend who had joined their R&D department and was really loving his new job.  Their R&D department at the time only need a hard core graphics specialist but they had some other positions that they wanted to interview me for.  So I took a day and went to see what things were all about at Sony.  Most of their jobs were doing some sort of lead tech support for other developers so I expected I would get grilled on:

• Tech & coding skills
• Customer support
• Documentation
• Time management skills

After an entire day of interviews I had not had any questions on anything that was not tech & coding.  In fact many of the questions were so esoteric that I do not believe they were really looking for a programmer but a PS3 manual with a better personality.

eg. Interviewer:   How many instructions would this take on the cell processor

float temp = (bool) 0;

Me:  Not sure, why would you ever cast a bool to a float?

Interviewer:  You wouldn’t, but if you did how many instructions would it be?

Me:  Not sure, on the PS2 they had an Zero register so it would have been 1 instruction but since your asking I am sure that is no longer the case.

Interviewer:  See he does not know.

This in my mind clears up a lot of stuff, if they do not value customer support, documentation or coding samples to even ask about it in a interview then it is no wonder they are so badly know for the poorest developer support in the industry.

Contrast that to the interviews at Microsoft I recently went through for similar positions.  The first half of the day was all about tech and coding but they asked relevant questions about algorithms, error checking, comments and architecture.  Second part of the day was all about dealing with customers, creating white papers, writing good sample code and other tasks.  Last part of the interview was about what makes great games and user experiences, tech trends and how it will shape the games of the future and last how to communicate and let people know how to take advantage of it.

Perfectly clear why in one generation Microsoft has taken over the console market, they understand what is real dev support is and know that supporting the dev teams has to be the one of the core’s pillars in getting the best games.

I have gone to 100′s of pre-interview resume reviews with other programmers to discuss our thoughts on a candidate and determine what everyone will quiz them about.  I am always still amazed how everyone can read the same resume and have completely different take on what could possibly be good or bad about this candidate .  It is a different trigger for everyone, sometimes if anything is a little vague or over sounds overstated people get turned off and suddenly the interviewee  is fighting an up hill battle.

Be very careful with the resume wording because given the chance people will often interpret it completely wrong…

Even if you write the clearest resume possible it is not even close to 100% so you still have to then anticipate all the ways they could take everything on your resume wrong and and figure out how you are are going to convince them of the right story on the phone or during the live interview.  Is it a pain, yes.  Is it right, probably not.  But you literally have to be prepared to defend everything on your resume to make the interview go well.  Some people will always come to the interview assuming the worst about the candidate and you will have to change their mind about every point.

Lets hit the examples:

Worked for company X for a long time.

You might be thinking that it shows loyalty to the company, dedication to your job and that your not a quitter during tough times.  You might also be rightly thinking that is shows how valued of a employ you were, you survived 8 round of layoffs and your position was never in danger.

Others might see X years and think that means you have no ambition at all.   They instantly think you are one of those  people that found a place to hide and have just been collecting a paycheck for X years.

Defending working at a company for a long time, sounds silly right?  When they comment that you about working for a company for a long time.  Don’t just answer yes.  If you started during the beginning, talk about how you helped grow the company and it was pride thing. If you got shares then talk about the ownership responsibility.  If you did not have the above then talk about the great projects you got to work on or great friends you made or how much you learned there.  Make sure they believe you had reasons to stay and now have a even bigger reason to leave.

Have a bunch of grind tasks on your resume.

Say you have done UI, TCR’s and some of the other grind tasks that people do not generally like to do.  You might think this shows you are willing to take one for the team and do what is needed to get the game out.  You might even think is shows you are not a prima donna and will not be bitching all the time.

Others will see it and think that you must not have any real skills if you have been given grind tasks.  They will automatically rank you intern status because that is usually who they give those tasks too (yet they wonder why they often fail first submission).

Defending grind tasks.  If you were on a time line explain that the project could not afford to be kicked and had to get through first time, it was an insurance policy thing.  If you were doing other tasks as well explain that the grind tasks were in addition and you are really a super man in human cloths.  If you were really only doing UI / TCR’s then explain how you were building tools and infrastructure so it would be less work for those that followed you. Point is to make sure they do not believe that you were tasked with grind work against you will or that you were not happy with it.  Make it seem like it was a challenge or accomplishment.

There will be a second part to this topic as there are many more potential issues.  Big take away should be to read your resume over and try to predict how people could take it wrong and be prepared to talk them down from that position.  The thing is they will not ask you to defend your work experience, they will just drop an off hand comment on something and you need to detect it and then take over the conversation till you get your point across.  Missing these small hints in the conversation means people will be leaving the interview with bad thoughts still and you have lost.

At least once every year or two I think it is important to take an interview even though you might not looking be looking at moving.  It ensure your interviewing skills are fresh and that you have not lost touch with reality and became irrelevant outside the current company.

If you can not get at least one offer letter a year for more than you are currently making then it means either your vastly over payed or more than likely your skills have stagnated and you need to kick it up a notch.  Even beyond just keeping your public speaking skills in shape there are other reasons to stay in the interview process.

If you can not get at least one offer letter a year for more than you are currently making then it means either you’re vastly over paid, or more than likely your skills have stagnated and you need to kick it up a notch.

Even beyond just keeping your public speaking skills in shape there are other reasons to stay in the interview process.

Reasons to get interviewed:

1. Its good to see how a lot of other places work, so it is often an great learning experience if you do not mind asking a lot of questions.
2. Its good to see what techniques others are using in the interview process to verify peoples skills and see if personalities will fit in.
3. Some times they will ask really hard questions that will make you think, it is a chance to reflect and improve yourself.
4. There is a lot of feedback in the interview process

• If they phone interview you, it means you resume is still relevant.
• If they bring you in for an interview that means you sound intelligent on the phone.
• If they do not walk you to the door right away that means the lowest people at the company think you have skills.
• If you make it to the end of the interview that means even people outside your little world think you can communicate and you have skills the company needs more of.
• If they send you a offer letter that means you really do still have a lot of relevant skills and your personality does not aggravate people in < 1 hour.

Reasons to interview others:

1. Again hear how other places work and borrow good idea’s
2. Meet interesting people, I have kept in contact with people I have not hired just because they were doing interesting things that made me think.
3. See the different mind games that go on in interviews, they present themselves in the best light, and you have to figure out what they might be covering up.  You basically have < 1 hour to figure out what makes them tick, verify their skills and sell them that this is the best place to work.  It is a hard job that only gets easier with practice.
4. Being on the other interviewing side of the process will give you a better feeling for what is going on the next time you have to be the interviewee.

So take a day out of your year to get  interviewed somewhere, it is better to keep these skills sharp while you still have a job vs getting laid off and then blowing the first X number of interviews because you are out of practice.

Reject conventional interviewing wisdom:

One thing I have messed up in the past and I  think many people still mess up today is they believe interviewing with more companies always increases their chances of getting a job.  That is true in a low skill environment when their needs can be meet with the next person that walks through that door and can hold a shovel.  There is no reason for them to waste time interviewing many to find the best person that can hold a shovel; anyone will do.  In that situation only by being in a lot of places will you have a good chance of being the next resume/person they see after they decide they need someone.

But in a skilled industry they do not want the next person, they want the best person for their money and only by being their #1 pick will you end up with a job.  You need to convince 8 – 10 people that you can not only do the job but you will take work off their plates, not be a drag on the team, can grow with the company, will not leave before the game ships and will be useful on the next project.  Plus if your not the last person they interview your impression has to be so good it survive more recent memories about others they have talked to.

In this environment it does you ABSOLUTELY  ZERO good to interview at a lot of places and always be their # 2 or #3 pick.  You are still just as unemployed as the next person that got drunk and did not even show up to the interview…

So do not waste your time mass spamming companies and then coming to these interviews without a full plan to make them believe you are perfect for that job.  If you have no idea what the company really needs given their history and specific details on how you would fill it; you are unlikely to ever be their top pick for the current job.  If you have not through about what they would likely need in the future given where they are given their past course then it would be harder to convince them of your future worth to the company.

Seriously your company specific cover letter and resume alone should have all ready have convinced them you can do this job.  The interview itself should just be for them to convince themselves that their first impression was right, you play well with their team and you should be their #1 candidate.  If your spending your time in the interview figuring out what they do and what they need.  You are now fighting an uphill battle and by the time you figure it out you will not have enough time to convince them of much.  Spend more time researching each spot you apply to and less time doing mass interviews, you will find that you get better offers a lot faster.