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Reader Comments (24)

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 2:08AM Railgun said

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lol UK.

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 8:39AM s ls said

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lol indeed... silly uk
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 2:08AM Premature ejaculation man said

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Gimme about a year. Unless they want a lot of previous experience...

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 2:27AM MarkezJM said

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Lack of previous experience... While a valid line of reasoning to *some* extent, I would posit this excuse is one of the worst things to happen to modern mankind.

I'd prefer things were this way: "Well, I see that your previous experience has been limited to being a clerk working the register at the local Jack in the Box, but I honestly think you could honestly bring a fresh attitude to being a commentator on our Monday Night Football telecasts."

But here in the states it seems to be this way: "Well, jeeze, Jim, looks like you've been an account executive for a freshwater fish food distributor for a number of years. We do saltwater here, pal. Seafood. I really don't know if you're skill set is appropriate or applicable to us as a seafood distributor. Different ballgame. We'll, uh, keep your resume on file though."

It's possible the world might fail if things were as liberal as in the first example, but you get my drift. Christ it's late, I think I need to go to bed.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 4:07AM briax87 said

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It's as if most companies expect you to get your experience somewhere else. How can someone get experience with developing games if most game companies expect you to have game dev experience as a requirement?
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 4:24AM (Unverified) said

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Modding or Indie-development.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 7:13AM PoisonedAl said

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What Sagan said. Just make sure it's something you can handle yourself in a timespan. If you have to work with others, make sure it people you cna physically kick up the arse if they fall behind.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 7:36AM (Unverified) said

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Brain, it's like that for every job, I work in a call centre at the moment because nobody would employ me. I have a Degree but everywhere that wants people with degrees want someone with experience and everywhere that doesn't need experience don't want someone with a degree. It's rather depressing!
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 8:59AM (Unverified) said

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I think the real problem is that it has become hard to fire someone (at least in the USA, don't know about elsewhere). When a company has to worry about being stuck with a bad employee and being unable to get rid of them out of fear of lawsuits or whatever else, it makes sense that they don't want to take any chances.

However, this also leads to another problem, where some douche gets a job he's not good at, the company won't fire him for whatever reason and then he gets a good job at a different company because he has "so much experience!" Repeat this too much and you end up with an industry full of incompetent fools.

At least we have layoffs. That helps to an extent.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 11:52AM (Unverified) said

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Every day I give thanks to my lack of college experience for giving me the opportunity to work in the exact same fields with 4 years head start on them without a debt hanging over my head.

When I weighed the options, going to school was a one way trip to debt and loss of experience. I'm not saying school isn't necessary, but in my case, I landed a job better than most of my friends who have their degrees.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 3:29AM (Unverified) said

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Well duh. About six years ago when five of the six studios in my local city collapsed due to a financial crunch in the UK, and I ended up getting a job in Europe rather than simply sending my CV around locally, I knew this would end up coming back to bite the UK Industry in the ass.

Short of a few oblique references during the 'Cool Britannia' campaigns, the UK government has never been interested in the games industry in the past and is unlikely to change its mind in the near future. Finance, Law and Manufacturing are the only industries that penetrate the haze of fog around Westminster.

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 5:56AM xxxsam said

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considering manufacturing went bust 20 years ago and finance went bust last year, that leaves only law... which admittedly is doing fine afaik...
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 4:03AM (Unverified) said

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i have plenty of commercial programming experience, plenty of game experience... and these people are claiming finding programmers is hard? you know what is really hard, trying to find a studio that is even hiring... having looked all across the country in January, i found one studio hiring and after sending in my CV and calling them, i never heard back from them. so its not that programmers are hard to find, its just that studios cannot be arsed looking

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 4:19AM (Unverified) said

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Yeah, this makes little sense considering the amount of devs currently on the dole.
Maybe they finally obeyed their fathers and took up a proper trade, plumbling, or pest control, or something, instead.

Or HR do their typical moronic advert "5 years of PS3 programming experience required".
Anyone who's looked for an IT job know what i'm talking about.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 10:36AM (Unverified) said

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Developer shortages?! What a load of bull.

I am a Computer Science student at the University of the West of England (feel free to laugh) and whilst full-time graduate jobs are easy to find there aren't many companies trying to pluck Computing students from here. I can guarantee that there'll be at least 50 graduates per year in this faculty without work for at least a year after they graduate with the recent hiring problems and most of them would jump at the chance to develop games.

The real problem is that these companies are often far too picky because they all believe in ridiculous tests and all want to find the best talent there is without realising that if all companies only hire the best, they'll either.

1) Have the best possible developers
2) Have average developers (most likely)
3) Have no developers.

Hell, if one of these developers could get off their high-horse and attend some job fairs at the lesser-known/local universities they might find fully-capable students who would fill all the spaces they'd need for the next decade.

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 6:40PM (Unverified) said

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I went to Abertay and there was no such problem for graduates there.

The tests I was given from UK companies weren't a patch on what I was given when I looked at moving to Oz.

If you can't pass the simple tests devs give out to see if you're good enough for them, how did you graduate, is your course not up to it? Having a certificate these days doesn't mean have a free job pass.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 6:48PM (Unverified) said

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It's not about trying to pass the tests. It's the idea that development studios need to hire 'the best' when by any logic if everyone is hiring the best then in reality no one is. It's not really down to how good your course is, it's down to how the employer views you and if they've got two near identical CV's, one from Oxbridge and one from Obscureland it's obvious who they'll pick.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 6:56PM (Unverified) said

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It just wasn't about the cv's for us as graduates so I don't agree with you at all.

Whether we got a job was all down to if you got a 2:1 or better in your course, if you got a great score in the studio's test and the body of work you left uni with to show them.

On leaving my course we had rendering, maths, networking and any project demos you had done to show off. Everyone who graduated from that class with a 2:1 or better had a job within 6 months of leaving. Having a good sized industry in Dundee helped but plenty of people moved all over the UK and can now be found all over the world.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 7:17AM PoisonedAl said

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I don't think it's finding the skill that the problem, but finding the skilled programmers that will work for beads and shiny objects. Sadly, most programmers are quite smart, and want money, the selfish bastards!

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 8:25AM (Unverified) said

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That, and they usually lay you off just before or just after the project you're working on is complete.
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Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 3:30PM RedrumnCoke said

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Part of the problem is that companies have access to a large pool of experienced workers in the baby boomer generation. They have not been forced, for quite some time, to hire entry level workers for anything but the lowliest positions, as there is always an experienced baby boomer they can find.

The baby boomers are supposed to be retiring soon, which many speculate will finally open up sought after positions and allow upward mobility for the younger generations (http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/techcareerstrends/a/aging_workforce.htm). However, with the current economic state and the high cost of health care, many boomers will hold on to their positions just to keep the company health plan.

If we could finally straighten out healthcare in this country and get it to affordable levels, then the baby boomers who want to retire could, and then those of us younger workers who can't currently move up because all those positions are filled would finally have a chance to do so.

Here's another relevant article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-20-cover-generation-wealth_N.htm.

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 6:51PM (Unverified) said

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Low pay is a factor in the UK, with 3 years experience in Oz I get around 33% more in salary than I did in Scotland so I left and it turns out that I'm probably low paid here for my experience because my expectations were so low because I moved from the low paid UK.

If tax breaks go staright into producing, training and adequately remunerating good staff then go ahead with tax cuts, if it just swells the balance sheet of companies not producing quality work already (quality work doesn't necessarily mean high review scores/media presence) then it's not going to benefit anyone. Just like propping up bad banks, the industry probably needs a bit of a reset right now.

Posted: Mar 3rd 2009 11:35PM Kif said

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Weird. I would have thought all developers would want tax breaks.

Posted: Jul 16th 2009 9:28AM (Unverified) said

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Are you talking about Sony that its manufacturing has been busted 20 years ago?........
http://www.electrocomputerwarehouse.com

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