Ask HN: Is this common in the gaming industry?
I recently applied for a junior software engineer position with Crytek(Germany).
As a first line of assessment they had given me a coding test to be completed within a week, the HR lady gets back to me after a day to tell me that I have only 2 days to complete it. No big deal, as I had already completed it the same day, I submit it.
Next after a couple of days, I was asked to attend an international telephonic interview with 4 senior programmers. Unfortunately for the interview, there were some technical problems from their side which resulted in a telephone call where I could hear their conversation but they could not hear me.
Shockingly, as they were trying to fix the problem for an hour without realizing that I could hear them, I overhead them making racial jokes/taunts at me.
Without giving any further thought to what just had happened, I emailed the HR to request a re-schedule of the interview but I have still not received any reply. I am thinking they might have dropped my application for the fact that it maybe too much hard work for them to assess me.
what I would like to know from those of you who may have a lot of experience in the industry, is this something common, that one should expect when you interview in the gaming industry regardless of the company being an AAA games developer.
To be honest, I was shocked and appalled by the lack of professional courtesy.
76 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadCommon or not, I would steer clear of any employer that behaves this way.
That might mean you have less options in the gaming industry if such behavior is more common.
The easiest way to influence change on this issue is to name names and make sure everyone avoids them like the plague.
Think about it this way, if the company you want to work for behaves this way -- then maybe you don't want to work for that company in the first place.
I definitely won't buy any games from them in the future.
I'm sorry that you had to experience that, but not surprised.
The fact is when you are starting new in the industry (like me) such a thing can quite easily be very demoralizing and be a deciding factor to not continue in the industry.
When people say only work in gaming if you can't imagine doing anything else, they mean it. The work is hard, the hours are long, the people are "colorful" and most gaming companies are completely disorganized, even by startup standards. Read "masters of doom" and realize what is depicted in that book is practically industry standard, including the egos, yelling, screaming and off-color humor. Some see those things are a bonus. Some don't.
The upsides are the technical problems and the coolness factor. To a certain extent, gaming has ruined me for web development. After coding a solution to efficiently visualize an EXPLODING PLANET, it's hard to get excited about creating yet another social network.
The gaming industry is infamous for having killer 80 hour work weeks & sexist culture.. if this is your first exposure, I recommend working in a different industry that will appreciate and respect you then making some games on the side with your friends.
Moreover, the indie option has always been at the back of my mind.
I do not know anything about German law. But for reference, if this had happened in the US, I would recommend that you contact an employment law attorney, because as you described it you might have a basis for a lawsuit. (Only a lawyer could tell you for sure.)
(games industry is worst industry)
Honestly, though, even if it were common, I would still not want to work on a team like that, and not just for idealistic reasons (if you allow things like that to happen you're just letting the industry continue to be racist, sexist, etc): that behaving from a team you'd be working with would reflect poorly on your career and your future, as the explicit racism would likely also exist implicitly in performance reviews, compensation, and future recommendations.
If it made the interviewee feel unwelcome at the company, there is no possible explanation that would make this ok -- the simple fact that they feel excluded is what makes it not ok.
Making people feel excluded, or even doing or saying things behind closed doors that would make people feel excluded if they knew about them, is part of the problem that makes people who are not part of the majority feel unwelcome in a company's culture, and in the industry as a whole.
Joking around in sometimes very non-politically-correct territory is not at all uncommon in the game industry, but it is also not that uncommon in lots of other industries. The things people say when they think they aren't being heard are generally very different from what they say when they know they're being watched/recorded. The typical butt of jokes in just about any industry is whoever isn't in the room.
To be honest, I wouldn't worry much about racism. I'm not saying it isn't an issue with some folks, but on the whole, if the game industry is anything, it's a meritocracy. If you've got a fucking cool demo, you can open just about any door with it. Many people of profoundly different colours, nationalities, sexes (including indeterminate), behaviours, and smells have paved the way for you.
It's very unlike film, for example, where there are strict hierarchies of who you are and aren't allowed to talk to, and contacting the right people is extremely difficult without the right introduction.
Actual talent and what you do with your time is so important to the game industry that it eclipses just about everything else, including professionalism. I'd definitely get used to that. They really don't want to interview you. They want to make games. They don't want you to do tests. They want to make games. They just want to know whether you're a fucking bad-ass coder, to see whether they want you to make games with them. If you can prove this in some other way (a great demo/game w/ source), you can also drop any pretense of professionalism and tell them you're not going to do their tests or interviews. Great coders with demonstrable proof of same are in such short supply that you will still be seriously considered at most places.
All is not lost, though! Maybe OP can go back and apologize for telling people about the racist jokes the Crytek people made at their expense. Wait, no, that's entirely ridiculous.
You know, I'd rather be with friendly "racists" who have not fired anyone over their alleged "racism" than anywhere in Tech, where one seems to have to be conforming to the party line even outside the work in order to keep the job (e.g. Adria Richards incident).
Making racist jokes devalue a person. How can you respect them as an employee if you devalue them as a person?
""When you think "racist," there is a non-negligible chance that you envision something completely different from the situation that actually occurred here.""
What, exactly, does that mean?
Are you going to tell me about how you make racist jokes all the time, but it's okay because you have a black friend?
No, run..not walk..run from the game industry.
You should make $80-90k fresh out of college
Big demand. If you're smart and you know you're smart, demand 120k
After that, be a hero! and not a zero!
Money isn't everything, some people just want to work in the gaming industry.
(edit: adding more)
That said, making any sort of racist joke (presuming it's properly racist) about the person you're ABOUT TO INTERVIEW and during the interview is just plain bad form. It's a good indicator that that company isn't the one you should be interested in anymore. My two cents.
There is nothing better.
Work on some cool level-of-detail streaming. How can we massive streaming worlds?
Think of Carmack when he was a pup!
However as someone who has been on the other end of those calls I am saddened that you were treated to such an unprofessional and disgusting display. When you contacted HR to reschedule did you mention how the interviewers treated you with such disdain? I would hope that their HR and legal departments take such behaviour very seriously (and HR probably have no idea what happened).
Personally I would take this experience as a bad sign for this particular application and not pursue the job any further (would you want to risk dealing with that every day). BUT you should make sure HR and senior management at Crytek are aware of what happened - it sounds as though US law may well have been broken (and probably european law also). Hopefully they will respond to you in a positive way.
Despite the games industry getting a bad rap don't let this put you off. The hit driven and creative nature of the industry does mean that sometimes the wrong people get put in positions of power and responsibility, but there are many well run companies out there where you'll be able to contribute to exciting products and work with skilled and passionate peers.
When you get into the interview process remember that you are interviewing them as much as they are you. If the job or company feels wrong you can and should respectfully pass on them and keep looking for the perfect match.
Be persistent, be professional, sell yourself and you'll do great!
* higher wages all around, illegal to work without health insurance, law-mandated minimum paid vacation (24 days), all (real) sick days fully paid
Also, i don't get where you get the "hidden implication" bit from. I'm outright stating that it is a fact that while german engineers may not be better people, or developers, or engineers, they have a lot of advantages pushing them beyond peers from less fortunate countries.
However, the reason I'm bothering to reply here isn't that, it's to say that you may simply want to reconsider aiming for the games industry. I know working on games sounds sexy, and I wanted to do it once too, but I landed a gig in the games industry once, and it made me realize that developing games is not really any more fun than developing any number of other software products, but it has the huge drawback that there are a bazillion people who want to work on games bad enough that they will settle for a shitty salary with shitty working conditions working on a shitty game. These are the candidates you're competing against, so this is the candidate you will become.
Come to the US. The game industry is tough and pays shit, but if anyone actively makes racial slurs DURING AN INTERVIEW you're getting a payday via lawsuit.
First off, no one is going to believe you, and everyone will seek to explain it away and inpugn your credibility. But even if you somehow have audiovisual evidence that proves your claims conclusively and you have a slam dunk court case, there's zero chance that you're going to make enough money from it to cancel out the income you will lose from making yourself effectively unemployable to anyone who runs a background check on you. If you're on record as a troublemaker that sues their employer, no one will hire you.
I don't have much experience looking for work with normal employers, so I can't give you anything firsthand about how pervasive this sort of thing is, but what you describe seems abnormally bad.
One thing to note: AAA development (at least in the US) is known for terrible working conditions. If you want to go into game development, make sure you get a good idea what the studio you're applying to will actually expect before you accept a job.