Michael Ivey

I’d love to know if anybody has a go-to resource/strategy for mocking technical interviews? I’ve always been a fan of Pramp, and it’s been great for behavioral interviews. But more recently, I’ve been trying it for front-end interviews, and my experience has varied wildly. The worst being, I had to leave a mock interview because my peer just started coding silently for almost thirty minutes and would shrug off any questions I asked 😮   I mostly just need that practice with a real human being. My biggest struggle right now is that my brain acts a bit differently once I’m in a real interview. I overthink things; I try, and usually stumble, to come up with the best solution off the bat, which I recognize is not what you're supposed to do. I think I just need to slowly break down that barrier through consistent practice. Anyway, I hope your having a great Monday, and I wish you all luck in your interviews 💪 #interviewing #pramp

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💔 Dear Arch, It’s Not You, It’s NixOS 💔 Hey fellow devs, After many years of a tumultuous, love-hate relationship with Arch, I’ve found someone new—NixOS. Here’s the breakup letter I never thought I’d write: Dear Arch, It’s been a wild ride, hasn’t it? From the sleepless nights of tweaking and tuning to the thrill of finally getting everything just right… only to break it again with the next update. You taught me patience, resilience, and how to Google obscure error messages at 3 AM. But, let’s be honest, our relationship has been more rollercoaster than romance. I’ve found someone new, and their name is NixOS. Before you get upset, let me explain: 1. No More Drama 🎭: With NixOS, I finally have the stability I’ve been craving. My system is rock-solid and predictable. No more surprise breakages right before a deadline. It’s like switching from a soap opera to a documentary—still interesting, but way less stressful. 2. Clean Breaks ✂️: Remember all those times I messed up our setup, and you made me pay dearly for it? NixOS understands that I’m human and lets me roll back changes effortlessly. It’s like having a time machine (DeLorean not included) for my OS. I can finally breathe easy knowing I have a safety net. 3. Organized Chaos 📚: My new setup is neat and tidy, thanks to NixOS’s declarative configuration. Everything is in one place, and it just works. No more hunting down random config files scattered across the system. It’s like Docker for the OS or like Marie Kondo came and organized my entire Linux life. But Arch, it’s not just you I’ve moved on from. I’ve seen the alternatives, and trust me, it could be worse. Let’s talk about the others: • Windows 🪟: Sure, it’s popular, but it’s like dating someone who insists on rearranging your furniture every month and installing bloatware without asking. The constant updates and restarts? No thank you. My productivity can’t handle that kind of disruption. • Mac 🍏: Polished and pretty, but the price tag? Ouch. And don’t even get me started on the proprietary ecosystem. It’s like being in a relationship where you have to buy their branded everything—chargers, dongles, even apps. Plus, where’s the fun in not being able to tinker under the hood? So, Arch, while you’ll always have a special place in my heart for teaching me the ways of the Linux ninja, it’s time for me to move on. NixOS offers the stability, simplicity, and sanity I need to keep my developer life running smoothly. This isn’t goodbye forever. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll come back for a visit. But for now, it’s time to say, “I use NixOS, btw.”

Hey Greenhouse Software, why have you changed your UI and user flows (moving elements from place to place) without having an onboarding or tutorial? Your change has impacted my current recruiting flow. I have doubled the number of clicks than with the old UI. I am less efficient than before. I am open to discussing this with your product/UX people to provide input.

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This one is gonna go down in history as the Chicken Churn! Yesterday we got a colorful inbound message on Intercom from a tester, they were really worked up at a game that made a chicken noise when they didn’t accept a rematch with another player in a PvP game, and they noped right out of a paid playtest! (what an insight!!) Curiosity, bias to action, intuition or whatever you want to call it kicked in and I decided to check out the recording 👀 My own biases of who that player was were totally off, and their reaction in the video didn’t really match up to the message. But sure enough they had asked the community team to be removed from the test. After watching the video I was stunned at how natural that churn point felt, obviously we made the call to pay the player out and sent it to the Erez free of charge (it’s 7 minutes long), then got a lovely email back this morning! When Christian and Marvin onboarded me they made sure to communicate their vision of happy customers and it's great to see this playing out and confirmed! #playtesting #PlaytestCloud #GamesUserResearch #Retention #GameDevelopment #CustomerFirst

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Lots of people changing jobs or on the hunt at the minute. Some useful tips to be mindful of from Amanda here. Even though you'll understandably be focused on landing the new role as smoothly as possible, these aren't unreasonable expectations at all and much easier to tackle up front than to deal with after the fact.

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Games industry DESPERATELY needs to unionize. Since December my LinkedIn feed has been a sea of people looking for work because they've been laid off, due to the "business strategy" of laying people off when you want to look more profitable in Q1 of the next year, or just "trimming the fat"/ "improving efficiency". I won't say my experience was exactly like this necessarily, but I was recently laid off in January, though I haven't marked myself as looking for work due to many reasons, partly being the lack of jobs, all the bots and spam on this website, and the crushing damage to my self-confidence. Either way, NO ONE should be made to feel this way. I've even heard of people getting laid off mid parental leave, or while they're on vacation with limited internet access, THIS IS DESPICABLE. What's worse is in this industry we all experience imposter syndrome, and anytime this happens you can't help but think we're terrible at our jobs, if only you'd worked harder, spent more of your own time improving your skills, you would be essential enough to the company to keep on, but they still could let you go, so it doesn't even matter. CEOs or in general the entire C-suite of people should be held accountable and publicly shamed. If your business strategy is to hire as much talent as possible, realize you can't keep on all that talent, and then lay them off, then you are incompetent, and should not be given a pat on the back for at least giving severance, when you're just following the lowest requirements of the law. The people who you've laid off are people who have built your company and kept the lights on. You can't just use the excuse, "that's just the way the industry is", that's a weak excuse. There are industries that experience frequent lay offs but have a union and support, such as some plants in the auto industry, and the workers have fought hard for years so that they would have those benefits and salary top-ups. Of course that's not always the case and things could be better, but we shouldn't just sigh and be like "it is what it is", and keep trying to work within the system when the system is broken. I'm just mad right now, for myself, but mostly for my friends, and people I don't even know that work in this industry, because I know these devs are hard working people that are constantly learning and trying to improve, and they are now doubting all their skills and feeling like they're not good enough. As for the people who make these mass lay off decisions a regular occurrence, I would like to say something that may even hurt my career and job opportunities, but deserves to be said, and which many devs would like to say or even scream, Fuck you.

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I have been seeing a lot of negative postings lately about the job market, and I wanted to offer some insight to those seeking a new position. 1. It is a numbers game. It is literally like pulling the handle on a slot machine. The more pulls of the handle, the more likely you will eventually get a "hit" (a response to your resume.) Some people will get a new position immediately. Some people will have to wait a while longer. (Just like watching the person next to you at a casino getting a winning slot pull, and you are a $100 in before hitting a bonus game.) 2. You are going to get more rejections than inquiries. This is part of the process. Unless you have the "3 key skills" that are currently hot, this is how it is going to work. 3. No matter when you apply for a position, and no matter your profession, there are always going to be about "3 key skills" that are currently in demand. Technology and industry trends change roughly every six months. If you happen to have the right words on your resume, you are going to get some traction. Most people need time to catch their skills up to the ever changing market. This isn't a negative reflection on you, this is how it works. Your skills are always going to be slightly behind what is hot in the market right now. Particularly in the technology sector -- that new coding language, paradigm, API, is the bright shining object that gets someone's attention. If you have been working for a company for a while, there is a very good chance you are using an older tech. Companies don't change tech stacks overnight. 4. It is easy to become discouraged, but I have a philosophy that I found that works. When I see a job posting, even if I am not a 100% fit, I apply anyways. I always say to myself, "When in doubt, apply." Rejections are free and easily discarded. But you just never know what might be on your resume that will make you stand out to a particular hiring manager. 5. Always be learning. Your Linked In profile is your business card. If you are currently not employed, take a course, and get it posted to your profile. You always want to be viewed in the light of a constant learner. 6. Job searching is a process. You cannot speed it up. There are no shortcuts. Sometimes the market is "tight" and there are not a lot of opportunities available. This is not a reflection on you. It is reality. The job market is much like the real estate market. Sometimes it is a buyer's market (in favor of the employee). Sometimes it is a seller's market. (In favor of the employer.) It varies depending on the economic circumstances of the time. 7. Diversify your skillset. You have core skills that are needed for your profession. Develop tangential skills that will differentiate you. 8. Apply! Set goals for yourself. Something like, "I will apply to x companies each day." It isn't as though you are sending out paper resumes with stamps and killing trees. Persistence, and tenacity are your best allies. I hope this helps.

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100,000 wishlists is a big number, but what does it mean when it happens after launch? Some context: It's a matter of public record that our game released under challenging industry and publisher circumstances a few months ago, but it launched nonetheless! And there were great folks in all camps supporting it and I would say the team moved through this period not too worse for wear. However, the element that was most impacted by this turbulence and our complicated situation was the games lack of marketing leading up to, and at launch. Our game's release was much quieter than we'd dreamed it would be. DESPITE that, however, and thanks to the individuals above who did their absolute best, people found our game. People are still finding it! Positive reviews have helped, but my thesis is that it's small and medium streamers and content creators (who found the game organically) who have helped our game spread. We have streamer settings baked in to Lil' Guardsman - we imagined it being a great experience for streamers to effectively co-play with their audience. We did an appreciation post over on X this week (https://lnkd.in/gf6wBuNK) that went wide because although they're clearly an essential piece of the gaming marketing ecosystem, I don't see small and medium-scale streamers invested in or even really considered by many titles. But certainly for LIl' Guardsman, these folks are our bread and butter! We hit 100k wishlists on Steam yesterday, which is a crazy number to me (in the grand scheme it might not be, but to me it is!). At launch we were just over 20k. The fact that that number has trended up so much since must be tied in to the amazing streamers playing LG. There's lots written about the wishlist conversion rate at launch, but I'm curious what it means when that number grows so much later. I'm sure it gooses the Steam algorithm, which feeds the beast. I'm also hopefully the wishlisters are waiting for sales! Maybe the data is out there, but I'd be very curious about what a wishlist boost beyond launch represents, and I will be super curious how that number impacts the long tail of our li'l game!

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Horrible news to hear about KeokeN Interactive having laid off their entire team today. In a statement published on X, CEO Koen Deetman and managing director Paul Deetman said the Netherlands-based studio was forced into the decision after exhausting all possible options for completing planned projects or taking on other work. To those affected, please find a comprehensive list of resources, below: 🥇First, Discipline Games Jobs Resources: Over the past weeks I have created 9 (at time of writing) Games Jobs Resources to find jobs in a wide range of disciplines: 🎨 Art, Animation, VFX and UI: This resource contains around 1,000 jobs worldwide across all links. Link: https://lnkd.in/eKAHK7VF ⚙ Engineering and Programming This resource lists just over 1,800 jobs worldwide across all links. It also talks about interview tips and questions to practice. Link: https://lnkd.in/eYdxANFM 🕹 Quality Assurance: This resource lists over 450 QA jobs worldwide. This post also talks about the craft of QA and contains tips and interview practice. Link: https://lnkd.in/dwwVjZuc 📑 Game Production: This resource lists around 400 jobs worldwide. It also contains info about game production as a whole and GDC talks. Link: https://lnkd.in/gxDvFM-Z 📢 Marketing & Community: This resource lists around 400 jobs worldwide. It also gives an intro into game marketing and community management. Link: https://lnkd.in/e5MuViug 🎶 Audio and Sound Design: This resource lists around 190 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/eSkPSsWf 📠 Studio Support, HR, Recruitment and BizDev: This resource lists around 290 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/ePG57_7v ⚙ IT, Helpdesk and DevOps: This resource lists around 140 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/e8ZsuiZh 🎮 Game Design: This resource lists around 440 jobs worldwide. https://lnkd.in/dCv_hQXv 🥈 Second, the Ultimate list of Video Games Career Resources: This should be your one-stop shop for all information. My dear friend Amir Satvat maintains these documents, he is a legend for doing this - please check them out: https://amirsatvat.com/ 🥉 Third, do not give up. Ever. No matter how dark things may look right now, I KNOW you will get through this, you have got this! 👊 Remember you are not alone. If you need help, advice, or even an ear to listen, we're here for you. Always! ➡ A request to my community, please can I ask you to repost this post to your colleagues and friends, so that we can get as many into jobs as possible! And please comment if you or your studio are currently hiring - let's help each other! Much love ❤️ #layoffs #gamesindustry #jobsingames #keokeninteractive (source: https://lnkd.in/eWK2PgvX)

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Our latest jobs update 👇

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Here is an example of true leadership and strong principles: Hidetaka Miyazaki of FromSoftware is committed to preventing studio layoffs ‘whatever it takes.’ The sentiment by Satoru Iwata, former president of Nintendo, echoes this philosophy: ’People who are afraid of losing their jobs are afraid of making good things.’ This quote truly encapsulates the fearlessness needed in leadership within the gaming industry. What are your thoughts on how leadership can influence creativity and job security in gaming? #LeadershipInGaming #GameIndustry #JobSecurity #InnovationInGaming #TrueLeadership #FromSoftware #GamingCommunity #CreativeCulture #BusinessStrategy #EmployeeWellbeing https://lnkd.in/drAMuDdv

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Info on Union happenings & Layoff Support Kit 2.0 from Mayank!

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Another big publisher set to fire 600 employees. This post is intended to support those who were recently laid off. Please share it within your community and tag studios and recruiters who are actively hiring. "We'll hear troubling news from the offices of Zynga, Gearbox, 2K, and even Rockstar—a far cry from earlier statements about layoffs from Take-Two's CEO." To combat, I am adding 5 resources below for all impacted professionals : 1) Our flagship Full-stack game programming bootcamp worth $11,000. We're giving course content out on 100% scholarship for anyone who's willing to transition into game programming or upskill in programming. (Mail: community@outscal.com) 2) Join our Discord Community and help professionals who are asking questions related to portfolio building, job seeking, interviews, and broadly their next career step. We have added help roles for programming, Unity, Unreal, DSA, Careers. Pick these roles and only get notified when someone asks questions related to your expertise. 3) Your team is hiring? Here's a list of 900+ professionals who were laid off recently: https://bit.ly/49Ah2vT Do them a favor by sharing this list with your 1st degree connections who're hiring. 4) We now have 14368 gamedev jobs from all over the world. https://lnkd.in/gerWUkc5 5) Become a volunteer: If you're a senior professional, you can mentor these professionals, conduct mock interviews, assess their portfolios and give feedback on what would work for them and what wouldn't. Join by adding your name here: https://lnkd.in/gwPhHen4 Get more out of Game Dev community on LinkedIn 🍄 Amir Satvat is back on LinkedIn with the OG list of resources. 💼 Caitlin Cooke is the fastest source of fresh jobs in the industry (yes, remote jobs too) 🎤 Follow Jordan Mazer for greatest tips and pointers around game jobs & interviews. 🔥 Hailey's feed will keep you updated with everything that's happening in the gaming world. 🔝 Connect with Arin Goldsmith and be part of her amazing #SocialSunday initiative. #games #gamedev #jobs #layoffs

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So sorry to hear about layoffs at Modern Wolf, with 6 staff members being affected. The news broke last night, with my former CA colleague George Willard posting the news, as well as providing information about those also laid off to support re-hiring as quickly as possible. You can find that here: https://lnkd.in/eEXWSgNQ To those impacted by these layoffs, please find a comprehensive list of resources, below: 🥇First, Discipline Games Jobs Resources: Over the past weeks I have created 9 (at time of writing) Games Jobs Resources to find jobs in a wide range of disciplines: 🎨 Art, Animation, VFX and UI: This resource contains around 1,200 jobs worldwide across all links. Link: https://lnkd.in/eu2bjadW ⚙ Engineering and Programming This resource lists just over 1,900 jobs worldwide across all links. It also talks about interview tips and questions to practice. Link: https://lnkd.in/etPj22BE 🕹 Quality Assurance: This resource lists over 450 QA jobs worldwide. This post also talks about the craft of QA and contains tips and interview practice. Link: https://lnkd.in/dwwVjZuc 📑 Game Production: This resource lists around 400 jobs worldwide. It also contains info about game production as a whole and GDC talks. Link: https://lnkd.in/gxDvFM-Z 📢 Marketing & Community: This resource lists around 400 jobs worldwide. It also gives an intro into game marketing and community management. Link: https://lnkd.in/e5MuViug 🎶 Audio and Sound Design: This resource lists around 190 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/eSkPSsWf 📠 Studio Support, HR, Recruitment and BizDev: This resource lists around 290 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/ePG57_7v ⚙ IT, Helpdesk and DevOps: This resource lists around 140 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/e8ZsuiZh 🎮 Game Design: This resource lists around 480 jobs worldwide. https://lnkd.in/dCv_hQXv 🥈 Second, the Ultimate list of Video Games Career Resources: This should be your one-stop shop for all information. My dear friend Amir Satvat maintains these documents, he is a legend for doing this - please check them out: https://amirsatvat.com/ 🥉 Third, If you have worked in publishing, please message me. I am looking for quite a few roles right now! ⬅ 🎖 Finally, do not give up. Ever. No matter how dark things may look right now, I KNOW you will get through this, you have got this! 👊 Remember you are not alone. If you need help, advice, or even an ear to listen, we're here for you. Always! ➡ A request to my community, please can I ask you to repost this post to your colleagues and friends, so that we can get as many into jobs as possible! And please comment if you or your studio are currently hiring - let's help each other! Much love ❤️ #layoffs #gamesindustry #jobsingames #modernwolf

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Unless the person you're messaging is the owner of a company, don't send over business proposals, sales pitches or outsourced hiring enquiries. Simon from the 3d props team is not going to set up a business call with you to discuss your outsourced hires program or "AI replacing QA" proposal. Messaging random staff members, with the blind assumption they can make these decisions, just gives the impression that you have no idea what you're doing.

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Since I've had to update my game Auto Jump recently for mobile. I've started playing with getting it ready to run on consoles. Adding controller support has been fun so far. Current gamedev tools I use are Visual Studio 2022, Graphics Gale, Unity, Unreal Engine, Onenote, and Azure Devops. #gamedev #gamedeveloper #unity3d

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