Out of curiosity, do you think there's a difference between getting a gamedev job and general software job without a degree? I got jobs writing enterprise/DB apps without much difficulty and with no degree while being in college studying CS(actually I considerably delayed my studies because of the job-I'm just now finally getting my degree, in the age of 27(!) ), and it wasn't in some small 4-person 'companies', but relatively large with lots of clients. I guess if you asked me why I think I was preferred instead of someone who actually had a degree and were most probably quite more skilled, I would say that it was because I was considerably cheaper to hire.

But somehow game industry seems to me like this scary place where you must at least have 1-2 degrees, a dozen finished quality games, maybe some books/articles published and whatnot, in order to get your foot in the door. I had a plan to try to get a gamedev job at some country who actually has an industry; but with the current recession and all the talent out in the streets looking for a job I've pretty much abandoned it as not realistic. I don't know, general software jobs seem like one of those run-of-the-mill positions in which anybody with an ounce of programming knowledge can work, in contrast with gamedev jobs which seem more demanding. Maybe it's because there are a lot of people that want to work in the game industry? Or maybe my impressions are just incorrect, seeing as they're not based on first hand experience but hearsay.

Quote: Original post by mikeman
I got jobs writing enterprise/DB apps without much difficulty and with no degree while being in college studying CS(actually I considerably delayed my studies because of the job-I'm just now finally getting my degree, in the age of 27(!) ), and it wasn't in some small 4-person 'companies', but relatively large with lots of clients.

It's worth mentioning that there's a fairly large distinction between someone who never went to college, and someone who is simply taking a break. (Though you definitely took that to an extreme.)

Quote: But somehow game industry seems to me like this scary place where you must at least have 1-2 degrees, a dozen finished quality games, maybe some books/articles published and whatnot, in order to get your foot in the door. [...] I don't know, general software jobs seem like one of those run-of-the-mill positions in which anybody with an ounce of programming knowledge can work, in contrast with gamedev jobs which seem more demanding. Maybe it's because there are a lot of people that want to work in the game industry?

I think the problem might be that there's a lot of unqualified people who want to work in the game industry. I also suspect that game development studios, being generally small and quite busy outfits, have very little patience for training people who aren't already capable. Since the majority of college graduates really aren't that well trained for on-the-job engineering, larger companies in more forgiving industries are more inclined to taking that headache on.

That's my guess, anyway.

It's really hard to get into top-tier software development as a self-trained programmer: with few exceptions, the places that can afford to "do it right the first time" and produce quality stuff are medium-sized companies and so have an HR gauntlet to run. The only self-trained programmers I actively work with at my current job effectively got grandfathered in through acquisitions - they're capable, but I don't think a big company would really "take a risk" on them without the additional guarantee of a degree. Our field is still very young, though, and we haven't really codified much of anything.

You absolutely have to stay fresh, regardless of whether or not you have a degree. I've got other thoughts on hiring as well, but I don't want to hijack Promit's thread here.

The tighter expectations (and lower pay) of game development are absolutely tied to the supply of workers: if they don't like you, they can get rid of you and replace you with someone else who is just as eager (and maybe approximately as capable, though it hardly matters at the high level). That goes for development teams, too - really easy for a publisher to discard an external developer and switch to another one.

Is the greater supply of workers because more people want to make games than database applications? Absolutely - I'd drop what I'm doing and go into games if I thought I had a golden opportunity, but the availability of those jobs and the quality of life issues are keeping me out of the industry. I'm pretty sure it's the same for almost all of my coworkers, too.

Granted, this is pretty general: I'm sure there are plenty of game companies with lax hiring standards and lots of small software companies with hilariously anal requirements for easy work.

Incidentally, I just got a response e-mail from LionHead about a CV I had sent them, for the position of scripter(which they had advertised). Of course LionHead, and much more for the Natal project, would hire only the best of the best, so I didn't ever think that I'd actually go far; but I thought that the fact I have worked as professional programmer and had some passable demo videos would earn me at least a short phone interview. The response though was the standard 'we don't have any positions that match your skills and experience'. I wonder if it is the fact that I don't even have an undergraduate degree, which I mentioned in my cover letter and CV. It's only logical that they would filter out those without a degree automatically. Anyway...