perry_blueberry said:
There is this: https://rejected.us/​​​ . Some of those are ridiculous.

There are a few good ones in there.

One I recall hearing about, but sadly can't find right now, was the story of Google rejecting a networking specialist saying he did not the protocol, when the guy was the one who actually wrote the protocol and had his name on the RFC. He recounted during the interview he disputed the canned answer the recruiter gave. After writing about it on his blog a reply was a mea culpa from the company.

It happens. Sometimes they make great stories. Sometimes they're just painful rejections.

@dpadam450 That's very impressive as college student in only 3 months! From the upload it looks like you did this 12+ years ago. I guess the industry would be expecting more these days considering hardware improvements and all the knowledge and free assets that are available now that weren't available at that time (the web was very different in 2010 as I recall!). I guess the expectations would be higher for someone like me as well since I've already worked a few years as a software engineer.

Do you think this demo would still be turning heads today if you were in the same situation (genuine question, as I've said I have very little idea what the people hiring are expecting)? I've seen some people recently with pretty impressive portfolios write about how hard it is to even get an interview.

frob said:

There are a few good ones in there.

One I recall hearing about, but sadly can't find right now, was the story of Google rejecting a networking specialist saying he did not the protocol, when the guy was the one who actually wrote the protocol and had his name on the RFC. He recounted during the interview he disputed the canned answer the recruiter gave. After writing about it on his blog a reply was a mea culpa from the company.

It happens. Sometimes they make great stories. Sometimes they're just painful rejections.

I think I read about that one in coding horror perhaps. From what I recall it was a recruiter who was checking off things of a form and refused to acknowledge that the answers on there might be incorrect. I remember another one on there, slightly related, where an experienced engineer was asked to solve fizzbuzz. He ended up misunderstanding the requirements on purpose to include all sorts of challenges with edge cases. Not sure how true that story was, but as it was told he of course didn't progress further with the company.

I honestly think if I was holding an interview based on some pre-conceived problem I would be excited if the interviewee claimed the answer was incorrect or challenged some other part of the interview. But that certainly doesn't seem to be how most interviewers operate. I get the feeling sometimes that businesses are looking for engineers who fall in line and do their work without questioning the problems or requirements themselves.

Yes. You don't exist in a vacuum and other people involved make all the difference.

A huge company with contracted interviewers will use a script that excludes the unqualified but also often excludes the most qualified. Smaller companies and specialized recruiters are better for the experts.

The same applies for other candidates. You don't exist in a vacuum. If you have a great demo then show it off. And even if you do, you don't know if someone else has one that is even better. In my experience it is pretty rare from entry level, some will have a Unity or Unreal game that helps them through the initial screening, but when they do that just moves them up the stack for the interviews.

Sometimes there are 50 applications and only five get called for interviews, so you want to be good on paper. Sometimes there are only five applications so everyone is called. Sometimes they have room for three new workers, sometimes only one. All of these are outside your control, so no need to worry about them.

@perry_blueberry

perry_blueberry said:

I appreciate the bluntness. I think time will tell how much I want this and how big my interest actually is.

It's just incredible hard to guess what some company expects.

Sure, but perhaps again you're too focused on “this one weird trick” which will guarantee you a job, if you can just guess what it is. But it doesn't work that way. Each company is different, and each role at a company is different. You can go a long way to understanding what they want by looking at the job description they're hiring for. You can go a bit further by looking at their released projects, and other information about the company. You can even ask them outright and act on their recommendations, if you receive them. But you can't guarantee anything. All you can ever do is tip the odds in your favour by accumulating relevant skills and expertise.

I've made “complete” games just by following tutorials. I guess I could do something similar with another game idea, but it just doesn't strike me as something a hiring manager/engineer would find particularly impressive.

Why are you second-guessing what they are looking for?

Or, to phrase this more personally - why are you, someone struggling to get into the industry, doubting my suggestion, as someone who hires in the industry?

Again, every company and role is different, so what I look for in a new hire is not necessarily what the next company looks for. But that's just how it is. There's no weird trick that you just have to find that will unlock the doors, no magic wand you can wave.

The reason many of us like to see complete games on a portfolio is because we want to know that you have a broad range of expertise. This makes you useful as a junior/entry level developer who will not usually be expected to specialise, but will usually have to do bug fixes and go to various different parts of the code depending on the needs of the project.

I guess I'm also struggling with knowing what I want to get out of gamedev. On the one hand I really like learning about new technology for its own sake and gamedev has some of the most interesting software/technology.

Honestly, depending on what you mean by ‘new technology’, you may not get to do much of that in gamedev. I'm intrigued as to what you think of as interesting? If you have something specific in mind then that's a good candidate to build your portfolio around, and to pitch for jobs with.

being highly involved in the the overall picture and the artistic parts is enticing as well from a long-term perspective.

Just don't expect too much of that from your first gamedev position! :D

perry_blueberry said:

I honestly think if I was holding an interview based on some pre-conceived problem I would be excited if the interviewee claimed the answer was incorrect or challenged some other part of the interview. But that certainly doesn't seem to be how most interviewers operate. I get the feeling sometimes that businesses are looking for engineers who fall in line and do their work without questioning the problems or requirements themselves.

I would be excited if the interviewee correctly spotted an error in our test, but that's rare. The examples above are from ‘big tech’ companies who have very generalized testing requirements and they're more focused on thinning the herd than on finding the perfect engineer. They pay well so they attract good people, but also lots of bad people. It's very different at smaller companies, where there will still be more applicants than roles, but where there can be a much more personalized hiring process.

But, you also have to know your place - if you're joining as a junior, or entering the industry for the first time, it's not for you to “question the problems or requirements” unless those problems or requirements make it impossible for you to do your job, or unless you can see a good way to solve the problem and meet the requirements in a better way. There are likely 2 or 3 engineers senior to you who will have signed off on the task you've been assigned, and usually other departments have a stake in the task as well, so by the time it gets to you, it's usually past the decision stage. You're being hired as an engineer, not a designer, project manager, or technical director. You have to decide whether that is good enough for you.

Credibility is only needed for wrong answers.