Well, my first rejection came from Spacetime Studios.
It was really disappointing because two of the company’s founders are Anthony Sommers and Cinco Barnes, two old friends of mine from Origin. So it’s almost like a “Ex-Origin employees make good” studio and I would have loved to have been a part of that.
Also, they are doing some pretty cool stuff…
But I knew it would be tough to get a position there when I went to their open house. They were mobbed by about two hundred people – artists, designers and programmers – and I saw several people there I knew were more experienced than me.
I will say that the programming test for Spacetime was actually pretty fun to complete, because it involved actually implementing a subsystem based on a design document instead of answering C++ trivia questions. (I remember once being asked what private inheritance was. I answered the question correctly, but for crying out loud has anyone in the history of programming ever used private inheritance?)
Anyway, good luck to the Spacetime guys…I wish them all the best.
Bummer. Yeah, I heard it was crowded at that recruitment party.
Heh. I wonder who owns the rights to the implementation of said subsystem? =)
Anthony,
I wish you the best of luck with your job search. Getting laid off sucks.
You may not remember me, but I came by your desk when I was interviewing at Aspyr in October specifically to compliment you on this blog. (I was the Age of Empires guy). I was impressed with your dedication and passion, and encourage you to keep pressing on. I wound up not going to Aspyr but to Valve instead (I felt really bad having to tell Glenda that, but then I would have probably been in the layoffs had I gone there).
It’s getting rough out there – A lot of the the people I got to know in Austin were probably there at that open house too. And Dallas is not looking any better. We are probably looking at one h*ll of a recession, so do all that you can to protect yourself and your family in these difficult times ahead.
Again, it was nice meeting you.
-Mp
Aw, thanks Matt. I wondered why I didn’t see you again after we spoke. And frankly, when you talked about my blog, I thought for sure you had me confused with someone else 🙂
nope. I had been reading your blog for a while, though never commenting on it. Seems like there was something way back you wrote about Age of Empires (how it worked?) that I wanted to correct…
I’ve been watching the indie scene pretty closely for the last few years, wondering if I should jump in. (Answer: not for profit). It interesting because my first impulse is to engineer my stuff as if it was for much bigger games — one way in which my experience doesn’t help.