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Discussion (30 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
The part about filters in interviews resonated with me because of a recent experience. The place I work has been interviewing for new developers and the team lead asked me for my opinion on one of them. Overall seemed like a good candidate. But when I took a closer look at the assignment and the solution, I noticed that while technically the solution was good, the candidate had ignored a bunch of requirements outlined in the assignment.
At first I was willing to give him a chance, but when I gave it more thought, I realized that one of the biggest issues I've had with colleagues was them not reading the issue they're given, not understanding it, not fulfilling the requirements given in the issue and/or outright ignoring what's written because they independently decide they know a better solution (without consulting anybody), which turns out to be worse because of reasons which might not have been outlined in the issue, but still lead to the given requirements.
I pointed this out and felt it was a big red flag that, in a best-case scenario, this candidate was still unwilling to follow or incapable of following clear instructions. The candidate wasn't invited to the next round.
You would know best, but it struck me that one reason to skip parts of a take-home interview assignment is that it was taking far longer than it "should". A sufficiently senior candidate should have noted this but (I'm feeling charitable towards junior candidates this lazy Sunday afternoon) maybe that's something that's a reasonable thing for them to learn in a real job.
The struggle with being self-taught is that you don’t know what you don’t know. This is probably even worse in areas like Unity, where the coding part is sort of a sideshow to the main event. Nowadays the problem is you lack the discernment to evaluate AI output.
I wrote The Conputer Science Book (https://a.co/d/01e62STx) to act as that basic building block and help orient self-taught developers.
What did come out from the blog post though:
- OP writes really well
- OP has learned to be very honest with themselves (and I hope not too self-critical now)
- OP seems really good at delivering things people like, even if they’re a bit cobbled together
All of which are very valuable and harder to learn than programming fundamentals tbh.
yes, but he knew. i mean he should have known that he used stuff without knowing why.
i am mostly self taught too, and i agree with your statement, but i don't see an excuse for using stuff and not trying to understand why. i mean sure, when i follow a tutorial , at first i'll copy things i don't understand, but do that a few times, understanding should eventually come. that's how i learned how OO programming works. i followed the motions for a while, and one morning i woke up and it clicked. if you keep using something without understanding it, then it is time to ask questions. what is this thing that i keep using? how does it actually work, and what are other ways to solve the same problem?
things that i don't know are things that i never came across. i just recently had an interview that asked me questions where i honestly had to respond: i never touched this issue in my programming career so i can't give you an answer, just my best guess. but i never had a situation where i kept using something without eventually understanding why.
I suggest an edit to fix the typo.
I believe this is one of the most humbling but also maturing moments in career and adulthood.
Interviewing a marketing manager is dominated vibes and optics, and driving that clarity about what their actual skills are is an uphill battle. With a software engineer I can usually get there in a few minutes.
But many creative activities are susceptible to avoiding harsh realizations. And tfa was about the creative side of gamedev.
That doesn’t mean that engineers are better than English majors. If anything, technical people should have more respect for great creative talents, because those people got almost no feedback and still figured out how to become great.
The expected answer is something like LTV/CAC.
FTFA:
> If I had AI in 2019, I would not have lasted 3 years before the interview crashed me. I would have lasted longer, and the crash would have been worse.
1. Much of the core lesson in this article has nothing to do with Unity specifically, and applies to self-taught programmers in general; and
2. This person has a vested interest in making you believe learning Unity is especially difficult.
The issue was compounded by the author getting a lot of positive feedback on their game, because people respond to how the game looks, not the code.
For the solo indie approach that's not really an issue (many such cases!), but getting a job is a separate beast.
The goals of getting a job in the industry, and making a game people love, have completely different requirements, with surprisingly little overlap.
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As for the latter (game industry requirements) I read this article a while back.
https://lazyfoo.net/articles/article11_top-ten-mistakes-game...
There's a great list of Fundamentals halfway through. Though I have no frame of reference for how reasonable it is. (Is the average game dev really expected to implement a rigidbody sim from scratch?)
This is the exception not the rule however. If there's one unifying thing about games that succeed despite major issues with the code its that the developers tend to have extensive experience playing board games and can make a compelling gaming experience without having a game with all the bells and whistles.
Do you have data supporting that? My favorite games (Factorio, Noita, Song of Syx to name a few) all share in common devs' passion and expertise. I don't have any example of a good game with shitty code.
So he sat me down and explained: "Don, your job is TURD POLISHING. If you can just make your turd nice and shiny, we will ship it, and everybody will be happy with you, because that is what we hired you to do."
But then at least he gave me a few weeks to clean up and overhaul the worst code. The moral is be careful what you ask for, or you might have to be the one who shovels out all the shit.
https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/TDSEditTo...
https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/Comprehen...
Just played Fallout 2, and there's still unpatched game breaking bugs in there.
At least on the web, with frameworks and stuff abstracted into magic services or libraries, you can go really far without knowing what you’re doing. At what point does not knowing the lower level stuff start becoming a hard ceiling?
It does seem like a trap, although you might nit have had the raw technical skills for the job they applied (by the way why wasn't he screened out early rather than on the take home task?),
They clearly have a lot of the skills around game design.
The trouble is that they also didn't have the high level skills that someone who does have the low level technical skills might need from a lead!
I'm not entirely sure on the take that AI would make it worse. If they are satisfied with the kind of game they make. Then they could continue to make games for many years.
I do think it's right that Game Developer companies want technically highly skilled people. My favourite thing about AAA gaming is the feeling of the constant cutting edge.
On the other than, I don't see why they couldn't have a long and fruitful Indie career.
And this was before AI. Imagine the amount of people who will never be able to answer similar questions. I am going to maybe have a bad take, but if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be working in the field until you do. It's not okay to wing it into new roles with more responsibility.
On the other hand, most people aren't curious enough to ask.