Excuse the stupid title. Steve Martin, the comedian, apparently said this at some point and there is a book about it (I can recommend). I don't remember exactly what was said in the book but it is something I often think of in relation to my career. If I just reach a certain level of expertise in my craft I would no longer have to have companies “take a chance on me" or reject my application early on because it is not readily apparent that I'm more fit for the task than any other application. So the question is how I can reach this level and how I can then convince other people.
I don't currently have a job in the games industry and I'm not 100% certain I want to pursue it long term but I want to be the one taking that decision and not having that decision be outside of my control because I am unable to get a job. Anyways, I'm a software developer with a few years experience. I've been into gamedev for maybe a bit over a year and I've prototyped stuff in the big engines, as well as done some OpenGL stuff. The couple of times I've gotten close to a job it has become apparent that my (perceived) skills were not enough.
I know there are many experienced devs on here and several who are taking part in evaluating candidates (from what I've gleaned). What would you say makes a candidate stand in the way “we have to hire this guy”?
The main thing I can think of is to have a bunch of stuff on Github. But for that to work the people hiring would have to spend time looking through a bunch of code which they likely don't have time to do. It seems it would have to be something visually striking or a repo with lots of stars for someone to be impressed.
Another thing I can think of is to run a blog and post some thoughts about software development in general along with discussing some problems. But that seems like quite a bit of extra work in comparison to just pushing to a git repo. And it also wouldn't necessarily give that much of an indication of my skill IMO as much as to my personality and written communication skills.
A third thing is to read a lot and maybe try to implement something. I guess this is what I've generally done in the past, but I rarely end up actually implementing the stuff I read about since it would take a lot of time and would in the end mostly be copy-pasting anyway.
A fourth way would be to create tutorials of course. I guess that would serve the double purpose of showing skills and could be a source of side income. But again that's a ton of work for something on the side.
That leaves what problems to actually work on. Let's say we limit it to gameplay and AI (and perhaps rendering), what would be good things to show off? Should I implement a bunch of generic gameplay systems? Should I create a complete but small game (this would obviously require skills outside of programming)? Should I use an engine like UE or should I create my own?
I guess I'll end it here. Just want to say that I realize doing anything of the above is better than doing nothing. It's just that my time is limited due to working full-time (and often overtime) that I would want get the most "bang for my buck" out of the time I have available. I could surely do all of the above but it would take me likely close to a decade of my free time so it seems like I should try to be smart about my time. I also realize that a candidate with previous gamedev experience would always be preferred over one without that experience. I do as well realize that no one would hire me unless I did well in the interviews, but I do believe that someone having this “wow-factor” from the start would be far more likely to actually get hired than someone, like me currently, who has little to show off.
