Tbh, I never want to work for a game company ever again (unless I'm running it of course)

Awesome! We are on the same boat now!

General tech industry interviews are more annoying than game industry btw, and you have experienced some of those at Microsoft. They want people with a particular set of skills with X years of recent experience. One example is this one company that builds game engines using Java. I have worked on Java professionally for like 6-7 years, but I wasn't using Java in the last two years. They flat out rejected me. Like, flat out rejected my resume! They didn't even want to call me in for an interview.

Here's some insights about these employers:

People are picky, but they don't really know how unqualified they actually are to be picky. This is why you see job description with bazillion requirements. They don't know what they want, they vaguely know what kind of person they are looking for, but they can't make a decision. So they just throw in the most impossible qualifications. They want the best, likable, person they can find who's willing to take the bait.

If you are applying at a hot startup company (e.g. Twitter back before it went IPO), this can get worse as ego will bloat their little heads thinking they are a hot piece of a company. You gotta be as "cool" as them. The definition of cool is up to whatever they feel at the time they interviewed you.

If you are applying at a company that's as behemoth as Microsoft or Google, then you are at the mercy of whichever department interviewed you. Their expected set of skills might be different than that of your resume. Expect the worse. I have had an artist interviewed and rejected me. A fucking artist who didn't even ask me any technical questions rejected me. Obviously he didn't like me. What could I do?

Employers buy skills, they don't buy potential. They buy what you can present at your resume and interview. Even if you have done your best to present yourself, sometimes people expect different "type" of person. I have interviewed many qualified candidates, but my coworkers didn't like them. They vibed you. "Can I get along working with this guy?", "Oh he talked to much", "Oh he is too opinionated". "I don't like his hobbies". "I like cats and he said he loved dogs. I don't like dog people", "Oh he doesn't have a Facebook account. He's got something to hide."

Whatever random crap that's going on in their heads. You can't control these.

The best thing you can do is to do your best presenting yourself. If they don't like you, then fuck them, you move on. End of relationship. Did you know one of cofounders of What's App applied for a job at Facebook and Twitter but got rejected? Technically unqualified? Hardly. Whoever interviewed him at Facebook and Twitter didn't like him.

Accept the fact that there are millions of personalities out there. Job interviews aren't just about a set of skills, it's also a match.com. If they personally don't like you, they will come up with lame reasons, within legal boundaries, why to reject you, which I am sure you have grown tired of.

Moving to "Breaking In" forum, since it seems to be a better fit for where this discussion has been going.

This industry is so ridiculously cut throat and unforgiving, that it's amazing that people are so willing to tolerate it. That's my opinion of both gaming and non-gaming companies alike.

Welcome to real life.

This is true of ALL professional fields. Look at doctors or lawyers or politicians or actors or accountants or any other professional to see what a high profile screw-up can do to your career.

It can be difficult, and I want to be sympathetic. I know, I've been there. Layoffs are common in tech industries. Often there is no fault involved and very little notice (unless you happen to be watching the right things at the right time, or overhear a whispered conversation). One day the entire team is called into a meeting and the bomb is dropped: you are all now unemployed.

It is very hard, painful, and can take months and sometimes even years to recover from the psychological blow. But life goes on, and as difficult as it may be, you need to find (or create) a new job.

1. Gaining Experience. We're all familiar with the most common catch 22, right? No experience == no job, and no job == no experience.

Yup. This is universally true. The answer commonly is to look for soft skills, for applicable transferable skills, for non-obvious experience, and for non-professional experience you can highlight.

2. What Counts as Experience. Another thing I learned is that virtually nothing that's done outside of the professional world counts as experience.

Yup. You could learn this the easy way by reading on career sites and job-hunting books, or you can learn it the hard way as you did.

You list some specific projects you did. Be sure to mention those since there is a point where hobby projects reach the magnitude of professional projects. To many employers these projects do carry some weight, but obviously an unreleased incomplete hobby game carries much less weight than a completed professional game.

3. Experience == Skill? After my resume began to get bloated with QA positions, as stated earlier, I'm seen as an average manual tester with no real technical skill beyond that.

Employers are trying to answer two questions during the hiring process:
1. Will you do the job well?
2. Will you fit in?

That is all.

Your experience is strong evidence to both of these. If the experience you show them is that you are good at QA tasks, then you show evidence that you can do a QA job well. It seems you are are looking for a PROGRAMMING job, so you need to provide evidence that you can do a PROGRAMMING job well.

4. Keeping Up. ... As far as performance goes, sometimes it was my own inability to stay focused on non-coding tasks, so I can blame myself for this pattern in some places, notably my first two positions in the industry. The 2nd two were a bit more ridiculous. But enough about that. These are things that I probably could have had more control over in one way or another, if I had been a bit more mature. The rest I'm about to mention is out of my hand(s) for the most part.

It may seem odd to some people, but in the professional world it is not only important to be productive, but also important to SEEM productive. Managing other people's perception of you is critical to success.

You can be highly productive and you can be finishing a lot of grunt work. But if your managers and co-workers look at your history and see a messy desk, constant struggles, complaints, or some high profile item that was not managed well, they will not think positively of you. All those tiny successes you keep to yourself will be invisible. It doesn't matter how good you are at grunt work if you complain and moan and only find problems.

Others can be moderately productive, but focus instead on finishing the high profile work. They can ensure that when a big task is complete that those around them know the work is done. They can be mindful of what they say, projecting a positive attitude. That does not mean being a "yes man" who agrees with everything, but it does mean understanding there is a time and place to go with a plan and invest heavily in a positive appearance, and a time and place to point out flaws within plans.

5. Pay and Worth.

As many people have written on many career sites and books, and I've pointed out in many posts, salary is not what you are worth. Salary is what you negotiate.

I have seen people with similar skills and similar work histories with radically different salaries at the same company. Some of them come in during a hiring glut and then don't bother negotiating pay, accepting the initial low offer made by an employer. Others are hired when their specific skills are needed, and through skillful negotiation are able to work out a salary package far better than their peers. As a side note, two groups tend to not negotiate pay very often: according to several studies women only negotiate their pay about 1/3 of the time even though in other situations these same people are excellent negotiators; the second group who rarely negotiate their pay are individuals don't value their work or feel inadequate or have low self worth, many entry level game developers fit this group and inadvertently lower the value of the entire field. Understand your worth to the company and negotiate hard for your salary.

6. Cheapest Person Possible. Employers want to have the best employees for the cheapest payroll.

Yes and no. Employers want a good team that can make a lot of profit. Most businesses understand that seemingly highly productive individuals, seemingly positive individuals, and those with other strengths are very often worth a higher cost.

7. References. I tried to tell them that this was only once, and at an ON CALL job with a very high turn over rate, so there was no way I could provide a valid reference because not only does that test lead not work there anymore, I never knew his name either.

Yes, sometimes that happens. Keep applying at other companies.

The general advice (although it doesn't help here) is to just give them the name of the company and the name of the individual. A reply can be short and simple: "My manager was {name}. I have no idea if he still works there. That was many years ago and we have not kept in touch." Let them contact the company that used to employ you. Most likely they will only get the minimum required by law, just the dates that you were employed and if you left on good terms.

8. The Interviewing Process. Now this is what really bothers me. The one thing I hate most is actually getting a job.

Everybody hates it.

Those who keep up with literature know that even the most skilled interviews are only slightly better than a random selection.

Reading the rest of your comment, it seems like you misunderstand the purpose of the interview. You are not interviewed to be selected. You are interviewed to be rejected. The employers are looking for any reason they can find to remove you from the job pool. Since the employer already knows that they could probably get a good candidate by just selecting someone at random, they are looking to bias the pool in their favor by shrinking the pool by looking for any faults they can find and eliminating them. Looking for any traits they think might be an issue, look for any attitudes that remind them of any bad attitudes they have seen, and remove them from the running. It is nothing against you personally, it is just the way the process works.

This is why you must interview at lots and lots of places. Keep hunting. The job hunting process looks like this:

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Yes.

There is nothing against you personally, it is just that they have a single job opening and one hundred applicants. Keep applying and eventually you will reach a yes.

9. Continuous Long Term Unemployment.

Yes, it is an unfortunate bias. It goes back to the comment above about the two things employers look for. The reasoning inside the employer's mind is that if other people have passed over you for so long there is probably a reason for it.

There are several great solutions for getting over that.

You already mentioned that you do contract work. You can fill that with many kinds of small projects, even volunteer projects.

Many small businesses will overlook employment gaps. Look for small businesses rather than big businesses.

Network. Make friends at a company. The majority of jobs are filled by direct placement by someone you know. I used to have the stats offhand, but no longer have the exact number; the majority of jobs are 'found' by somebody who knows somebody. You are far better off working your social networks, your facebook friends, your friends-of-friends-of-friends. One hour of working the social network is worth about ten hours of hunting job sites and direct applications at various companies. The individual has an incentive to paint you positively because usually they get a small recruiting bonus, you have an incentive because it gives you an 'in', can usually bypass most HR filters, and can often negotiate better pay.

A peaceful life in the mountains of western Hungary is sounding nicer and nicer by the day.

I'd go for my own personal island in the Caribbean surrounded by enormous piles of money, but I totally agree with the thought.

On 1 hand I completely see where you're coming from, however, my experience has been (mostly) the opposite.

I avoided the games industry (despite it being a passion of mine) to focus purely on the business side of things, and skills that are considered valuable. I've worked for large companies in high positions (Just under CTO), and startups as large positions (CTO), and currently work in a very critical area (HIPAA data involved).

Simply put, you need to minimize the QA work on your resume, and add your personal projects to it. I have a few years of experience I simply leave off my resume because it's less impressive than the other parts of it.

I've had my fair share of interviews that have gone like you described, where I appy for a senior C# / SQL role, and they just ask me 2 hours of questions about PHP/Java. Simply put, you usually get that crap at larger companies. Smaller companies are usually much better with stuff like that.

Make another copy of your resume with your QA jobs cut in 1/2. Add in fluff around what you want to do (High performance C# optimization/ILE level debugging). Apply to a smaller company in your area, and you should do much better finding a job.

The only bad experience I had with a smaller company was the founder hiring me to make an application for people who were illiterate to order food at a foreign hotel chain. I completed it in 6 days (30 minutes +- the estimate I gave the owner). He thanked me for my work, the customer said they loved it, and then the owner told me he didn't think I was right for the company, and he wanted someone else for the next project. Thinking back on it, they never even gave me my final pay check.

Austria actually has a very active game development scene, both in the traditional publisher/developer space as well as indie games. My experiences are actually strictly from Vienna

Wow, I just realized how my post came across, totally apologize. First I made typos on Austria, then it felt like I meant that there are no jobs in Austria, though in all fairness, as per the OP, I was following the line of agrarian jobs and nothing related to IT.

That being said, very interesting to know there are developers and publishers in Austria (given that I may land there on a slightly more permanent basis one day!).

Well, can relate to part of that. Haven't had to move jobs that much and actually to this day never had troubles finding a job, but yeah, sometimes, you could take that keyboard, smash it against the screen until it breaks, rip that screen off the desk, walk over to the window, and throw the screen out of it, like in the cool old office security camera vids from the 90's.

I think everyone has this moments... you just got to chill then and always remember: it's just a damn job, you just do it for the money.

Agreed on the thing about payment and getting more for less... we have a saying here in switzerland that the current young generation is "generation trainee": so many people seem to bounce between trainee positions and never get hired full time, lots of employers think its cool that they can hire trainees for half the pay (but they still expect the 100% of the skill and determination of a normal employee).

This also means it is increasingly hard to get a fair payment as an older employee, as there is always a younger one ready to work for less.

And about the hidden requirements: I applied for a Senior Java Developer Job recently. Java J2EE, Websphere, Web Stuff (HTML, CSS, Javascript), and if possible Unix dev skills.... this is basically the exact same Job I am doing at my current company, just better paid and with more responsibility. And with 10+ years of development expierience I shouldn't have a problem applying for a senior position, no?

Well, in the end they turned me down because I "lacked consulting and workshop management skills"... of course I did, I am a ****ing developer, not your magical unicorn that does it all and has 10+ years expierience as dev AND professional expierience as trainer and whatnot.

And of course the job ad said nothing of these additional skills that seemed to be so important suddenly (to be fair, days later the job advert was changed to reflect that)

The really cool thing? These guys still have their advert up because they cannot seem to find that guy that does it all... time to lower your expectiations, I'd say

Just put up with it and retry again and again.

1. It's not just "a damned job", it's a matter of life and death, eating or starving, shelter or no shelter.

2. Don't you think I've been lowering my expectations already? If they get any lower, then I'll be constantly told that I'm overqualified. Whether it's entry level or senior level, I still get shot down.

3. Agree with the current generation being trainees thing and everything else.

Locally, you are causing an HR issue which is to replace someone good at their field for two unknowns. If a position opens internally and you apply for it, the HR considers the level of risk, and often, they're better off hiring an external person (1 unknown) and keeping you in place (1 known) to alleviate that risk. That is a situation that happens very often in everyday HR (not just IT) and is partially responsible for some organizations lacking internal promotion mechanics.

Yeah, I can't expect an HR person to know any better.

It is not about how good you are, it is about how good you are under working conditions. Your past experiences don't tend to count because they were considered hobbies: direction-less (you could change it as you wished), no deadlines, no stress.

On a sidenote, starting your own company and taking contracts will tend to work far better for your during interviews because you've been dealing with clients, constraints, deadlines and money. That's what I did, and a bunch of interviewers are generally impressed by my achievements in that regard (sometimes even more than my track record as an employee).

Now that I've been around the block a little longer, this makes sense.

Also, can you please elaborate on the bolded statement above? Start my own company and taking contracts? I don't quite understand what you mean. This month, I've been putting more work towards self employment, but I still don't understand.

A carreer plan is your ability to pick jobs in line with what you'd like to do and steer the wheel towards it. If all you have to show for are QA opportunities, it's very hard for an HR to see you as anything else. Have you participated in game jams? Have you take on small contracts (even for shady clients)?

1. Yes, why?

2. Um, yeah. Finding those "small contracts" was hard enough, but yeah.

There are a number of HR jokes on this one actually (and good HRs will openly laugh at these). The thing is that they're often receiving conflicts requirements for the same position and end up with a profile impossible to attain, and it is your job, as the interviewee, to convince them that you're the best they're going to get for this job.

No way they'll find that IT engineer with 25 years experience but who's still in his mid 30s! Especially not at the price of an intern...

You'd be amazed...

Strange. Surely their HR would've kept records of your passing. There was probably more to this ref call than merely confirming your track record...

Oh no, I have to disagree with this one. Like I said, I proved to them that I knew what I was doing and that I had adequate coding skills.

Have you ever considered breaking the 4th wall during problem solving? I'm going to assume that you're ASSUMING that what broke you is the fact the algorithm was not satisfactory, and perhaps that is what they told you, but it is also quite possible that it was lack of communication. They made their requirements known, but not necessarily their preference, and getting more info on the "context" might give you a few hints about what they're expecting to see, and maybe even they're actually interested in seeing how you interact with them during the process and won't be interested in candidates that will go to the board, and do the job, without feedback at any point. See what I mean? Obviously, I wasn't there, but I'm trying to find potential issues beyond your coding abilities that would need to be improved.

No, I don't see what you mean. No matter how well I "communicated", I didn't get the job, unless I got it perfectly the first time. When I interviewed at amazon, I was given two coding questions. Both were easy enough (to me) to the point where I was able to quickly write them out on the board in less than a few minutes while saying next to nothing the whole time. I got that job. That position at Microsoft was the same way. I simply wrote it, and nailed it on the first go, while saying little.

Afterwards, I took this advice since I noticed I've been failing the whiteboard left and right. No matter what I did (i.e. talk it out, explain ahead of time, flow chart, etc.), if I didn't nail it correctly the first time, then I wouldn't get the job. Period.

So as much as people say this, I have to call BS on it.

36$/h is ANYTHING BUT appalling. The surprise requirement is generally something that happens when HR need to open up: they have too few likely candidates and need to apply loose criteria to who they call for an interview. I agree that it is frustrating being called to an interview where you actually have no chance of getting the job and just don't know it yet, and I find it a poor HR practice. But again, let me stress, 36$/hr is ANYTHING BUT appalling.

Maybe that's alot on Austria, but in the US (especially on the west coast), that is a piss poor salary offer. A lead developer can make double that, give or take a few dollars. Mid-level on average makes at least $90k/year here. Hell, even a lead SDET makes more money than that!!! Tbh, I'm not too picky about salary at this point, but if they seriously want a lead/senior level employee, they'd better be willing to pay for one. My recruiter said the same thing.

They won't tell you why. That's just how it is, even when they give you a reason, it is likely not the right reason. Because oftentimes, the choice in the end gets made because someone was just better for that position than you, or cheaper, etc. These are all mundane reasons, and they're not really about how you did: they just did better with things off the list. Chances are the HR telling you "no" does not even agree with the decision (who got picked) so they don't have much of a point of reference for why you, specifically, didn't get the job. Also, they're not paid to make every potential employee better in the future, they are paid to hire the best one and deal with him specifically. Everyone else is collateral. They're not evil, they just don't have the time to make you a better human being...

HR isn't telling me anything. The recruiter talks directly to the interviewers and hiring managers. I don't expect any of that, but it's kinda fishy when they flat out REFUSE to say why. Most companies have the courtesy to say "we have chosen another candidate".

Strange that you should work with a recruiter though. Why don't you take gigs off from Elance and similar sites?

Never heard of it.

The quantity of people getting burned out or spinning out of the industry over the years is very high, but I don't have any figures from different industries to compare. Besides, a lot of the skillsets used in this industry are used in various industries (there are computers in everything now) so the mobility opportunity is there, which may not be the case for someone that builds, say, cars for example. On a purely "belief" level, I would tend to agree with you however that this can be a rather harsh industry and that sometimes, it feels like there are no way out (I'm not yet at liberty to discuss how I've solved this, but I may share that in mid/late February).

If you can, please do.

It most probably is. I've been in Autria (Innsbruck in the mountains and Wien on the flatlands) and this is a very nice and cozy place to live out the rest of your days, but I have no idea about employment there. Shepherd perhaps?

Dunno about shepherd, but I like the idea of living in a communist-style house, living around open fields and mountains, and singing ,,Ha Majd a Nyarunknak Vége'' while playing it on the piano during a nice summer day.

Just some thoughts:
- although you might not want to hear this now, but in the end you are responsible for your own luck (and there's no static timeline for this I'm afraid)
- the good thing is that you know yourself that you have enough programming experience to get a programming job
- it's tough to sell this to a potential employer, in a time where they have choice and can basically pick the one with both education and experience

In the end I believe that even with no Formal experience in gamedev, you can enter the industry. Try to amaze people when you apply, stand out and be confident.

Good luck and dont give up.

1. I don't believe in luck.

2. If I had enough experience for a programming job (the SDET position at Amazon was just a miracle), then I probably would have written this.

3. Yeah.

Have you ever considered breaking the 4th wall during problem solving? I'm going to assume that you're ASSUMING that what broke you is the fact the algorithm was not satisfactory, and perhaps that is what they told you, but it is also quite possible that it was lack of communication.

QFE.

Interviewers are not looking for a perfect solution right off the bat. They are trying to see *how* you approach solving problems. If you just get up there and write code, the interviewer has no data about the strategy you used to solve the problem.

Ask clarifying questions to clear up any ambiguity in the problem specification *before* you ever write a line of code on the whiteboard. Talk the interviewer through every step of your thought process - if you are headed in a direction the interviewer doesn't like, they are likely to guide you back to the preferred approach. If you find any further ambiguity while solving the problem, stop and ask more clarifying questions.

And remember, your interviewer is every bit as keen for you to succeed as you are. Interviewing candidates takes up valuable time in an engineer's schedule, and the sooner the position is filled, the sooner he can get back to the actual engineering...

90% disagree for reasons I already stated.

- Microsoft is rather large, why don't you try your luck at a smaller studio or company first? The atmosphere is usually far more friendly and personal there.

I don't see alot of startups. Even when I do, I usually never find one that's willing to work with my credentials. They are the same as large companies to me.

You seem to make it very personal and also have a hetz against Microsoft. Given your explanations it's easy to call it a sob story but you have to remember that everything is just business, nothing personal.

Maybe you should try and seek out startup companies?

Companies that can't expect to get the veterans right off the bat, companies that doesn't have the infrastructure of a giant, and so forth. This could benefit you a lot to break into the industry. Otherwise you would have to look at options, as mentioned earlier, like making your own company and start that way.

No, this isn't about Microsoft, although they do have a very consistent track record of paying employees less than what they should be paid, and quickly eliminating those that don't work up to par. The majority of my interviews have been at Microsoft, and I just apply anywhere I can. It's like throwing a dart at a map, while hoping you don't land in the ocean.

I see little to no difference with startups, as the bars for getting in appear to be just as high.

My blunt and honest opinion:

You would be best served by seeking professional development in the form of interview skills.

Yeah.

Without OpenSource the whole IT would be the most boring thing.

Yeah.

If you want long periods of unemployment, hop over to the ( hardware ) tech side of the fence.

There are thousands of us fighting over a handful of jobs that only last 2 - 10 weeks .

?

Tbh, I never want to work for a game company ever again (unless I'm running it of course)

Awesome! We are on the same boat now!

General tech industry interviews are more annoying than game industry btw, and you have experienced some of those at Microsoft. They want people with a particular set of skills with X years of recent experience. One example is this one company that builds game engines using Java. I have worked on Java professionally for like 6-7 years, but I wasn't using Java in the last two years. They flat out rejected me. Like, flat out rejected my resume! They didn't even want to call me in for an interview.

Here's some insights about these employers:

People are picky, but they don't really know how unqualified they actually are to be picky. This is why you see job description with bazillion requirements. They don't know what they want, they vaguely know what kind of person they are looking for, but they can't make a decision. So they just throw in the most impossible qualifications. They want the best, likable, person they can find who's willing to take the bait.

If you are applying at a hot startup company (e.g. Twitter back before it went IPO), this can get worse as ego will bloat their little heads thinking they are a hot piece of a company. You gotta be as "cool" as them. The definition of cool is up to whatever they feel at the time they interviewed you.

If you are applying at a company that's as behemoth as Microsoft or Google, then you are at the mercy of whichever department interviewed you. Their expected set of skills might be different than that of your resume. Expect the worse. I have had an artist interviewed and rejected me. A fucking artist who didn't even ask me any technical questions rejected me. Obviously he didn't like me. What could I do?

Employers buy skills, they don't buy potential. They buy what you can present at your resume and interview. Even if you have done your best to present yourself, sometimes people expect different "type" of person. I have interviewed many qualified candidates, but my coworkers didn't like them. They vibed you. "Can I get along working with this guy?", "Oh he talked to much", "Oh he is too opinionated". "I don't like his hobbies". "I like cats and he said he loved dogs. I don't like dog people", "Oh he doesn't have a Facebook account. He's got something to hide."

Whatever random crap that's going on in their heads. You can't control these.

The best thing you can do is to do your best presenting yourself. If they don't like you, then fuck them, you move on. End of relationship. Did you know one of cofounders of What's App applied for a job at Facebook and Twitter but got rejected? Technically unqualified? Hardly. Whoever interviewed him at Facebook and Twitter didn't like him.

Accept the fact that there are millions of personalities out there. Job interviews aren't just about a set of skills, it's also a match.com. If they personally don't like you, they will come up with lame reasons, within legal boundaries, why to reject you, which I am sure you have grown tired of.

yeah.

Once, I was told to write X in Java using X framework, one that I was not familiar with, so they moved on, and they eventually asked me to do something else I was not familiar with, or wasn't told about on the job description. So then he was like "Okay, I've got nothing else. Do you have any questions for me?" I wanted to say "No, because I already know I'm not getting the job", but I didn't want to be rude either.

I'm at least reasonably certain that it was your reaction to this, as much as (or more than) your experience or knowledge, that cost you that one.

This is something I'd like to home in on a little, because it's quite interesting. From the way you describe it, your response was something along the lines of "no, I don't know X framework, next!"; right? Can you see what's bad about that? Can you see how that's not going to encourage any prospective employer? How about next time you try something like "well I don't know X framework, but let's give it a try, anybody got a manual or cheat-sheet?" Can you see how that's so much better? Right away you're giving the impression that you're willing to take on work, to learn new skills, which you completely failed at first time around.

That doesn't mean jack s@#% to employers. If you don't know it right then and there, they are not going to let you learn as you go, especially when they want X years of proven experience. Trust me, I've tried it, and they'll let you know themselves.

On 1 hand I completely see where you're coming from, however, my experience has been (mostly) the opposite.

I avoided the games industry (despite it being a passion of mine) to focus purely on the business side of things, and skills that are considered valuable. I've worked for large companies in high positions (Just under CTO), and startups as large positions (CTO), and currently work in a very critical area (HIPAA data involved).

Simply put, you need to minimize the QA work on your resume, and add your personal projects to it. I have a few years of experience I simply leave off my resume because it's less impressive than the other parts of it.

I've had my fair share of interviews that have gone like you described, where I appy for a senior C# / SQL role, and they just ask me 2 hours of questions about PHP/Java. Simply put, you usually get that crap at larger companies. Smaller companies are usually much better with stuff like that.

Make another copy of your resume with your QA jobs cut in 1/2. Add in fluff around what you want to do (High performance C# optimization/ILE level debugging). Apply to a smaller company in your area, and you should do much better finding a job.

The only bad experience I had with a smaller company was the founder hiring me to make an application for people who were illiterate to order food at a foreign hotel chain. I completed it in 6 days (30 minutes +- the estimate I gave the owner). He thanked me for my work, the customer said they loved it, and then the owner told me he didn't think I was right for the company, and he wanted someone else for the next project. Thinking back on it, they never even gave me my final pay check.

I guess that could work. I still don't see any difference with smaller companies and startups. They are just as demanding with hiring.

*****

As a few of you have already pointed it, building your own startup may be a better idea. While I shouldn't have to make such a lame excuse, but it takes money to make money. At amazon, I was so consumed by the work that I didn't have much time for it. I've already gotten the ball rolling for myself on the startup, but I can barely afford the basics such as the office space. I can't afford to hire anyone, buy new equipment (most of what I need I do have already), licenses for certain stuff, marketing, etc. So, I'm not sure how I'm going to make it, but I'd rather put my all into this then be mocked by other companies who treat me like garbage in one way or another.

Shogun.

You seem to make it very personal and also have a hetz against Microsoft. Given your explanations it's easy to call it a sob story but you have to remember that everything is just business, nothing personal.

Maybe you should try and seek out startup companies?

Companies that can't expect to get the veterans right off the bat, companies that doesn't have the infrastructure of a giant, and so forth. This could benefit you a lot to break into the industry. Otherwise you would have to look at options, as mentioned earlier, like making your own company and start that way.

I see little to no difference with startups, as the bars for getting in appear to be just as high.

With this statement you are sort of proving that you have become very biased and jaded.

The world is not so black and white. Try look around on Elance (as mentioned earlier), the Unity Forums, the Unreal Engine Forums, the Gamedev Forums, the IndieDB forums, and the list goes on. You have so many possible job positions and the industry is hurting for programmers (as it always is!). Programmers are usually in high demand, as we tend to find an ocean of differing artists (we had to look for 6 months ourselves to get a programmer).

You also have another option. Try get your hands on for example, Unity or Unreal Engine (both very accessible and pretty easy to get into) and then start building prototype games that centers around one single mechanic or few very simple mechanics. Start gaining knowledge on how these engines work (like for Unreal Engine you get access to ALL source code. Everything!) and then try and extend their frameworks and prove that you are as good a programmer as you say you are. Then build a portfolio of these examples and start seeking out Indie Studios as you are much more likely to get in. Even if you just have to send an unmotivated application.

The world is not so black and white

You're god dang right I'm biased and jaded!!! And I think I have every right to be so. Hence the recent and appropriate avatar change to reflect it.

If they're hurting for programmers so dammed bad, then why haven't they hired me yet? And quite frankly, as I stated earlier, I never want to work for a game company ever again. I'll go ahead and try Elance, since I've never heard of it. Almost everything on CL.org is a bust anyway.

I'll take your advice on other frameworks, but for non gaming frameworks, like Cordova, Ionic, AngularJS, Gulp, Selenium Webdriver, and other things related to web dev. Although I really hate trying to cram in knowledge for the sake of appeasing someone else. I applied for a smaller company that's more at the startup level like you all said, but I have my doubts. I'm sorry, but I'm just not convinced. For me, everything is the god dang same!

Not trying to play the race card, but I am black, and the world is white. So, in a literal sense, it is black and white. And it's still f-ed up.

It's easy to be overly optimistic when you have a job already, have no major obstacles getting one, or have lots of experience to help you find another. At one point, this becomes unavoidable.

Shogun.