A senior developer is, quite simply, someone with significant experience in development/engineering who can turn an idea into an _implementation_ without needing any hand-holding or training wheels: they know what needs to be done to go from product design => working code => finished product without being told what classes they need to write, what techniques and approaches to use or how to write it in a clean, optimal way that a company can actually use. Seniors are, in fact, some of the people who _create_ those plans and make those decisions in the beginning and make adjustments to them when necessary ... they read books, white papers, technical articles, documentation and other resources to answer their own questions or figure out how to use a new thing they're unfamiliar with, and they don't need to stop/start a Brackeys video and Alt+Tab between their IDE, a RUclips video or StackOverflow to get working code into the project. That's not to say they never use any of those resources, of course they do, they just don't have to rely on them to write code and get stuff done. My last job with Unity was a technical lead/director position of the company's game development division ... it's essentially the "leader and decision-maker" position for all things game dev, especially the technical/engineering aspects of it but I also had to make calls on artwork and designs from a technical perspective (i.e., is this too many polygons, is this a good way to do our UV maps for these, how do skeletons need to be set up, what kind of shader do we need, etc). If things go good or bad, it's all your fault, lol, a fact you're acutely aware of at all times. It paid more than being a senior engineer, but probably not quite _enough_ to truly be worth all the extra stress for most people. I was stressed to the ceiling but also sickly enjoying it at the same time, lol, I'm a psychopath I guess. But you have 3x to 4x more responsibility than as a senior engineer who just writes code, and you still need time (which you don't have) to write the most complex and tricky parts of the code and barely have time to touch it, lol, and you have tons of meetings because everyone needs you right away ... I broke git, Unity started crashing and I can't stop it, can you tell me what I need to do next with this, etc. If you like fast-paced, difficult work it's kinda fun but it would probably drive a lot of people looney lol, I was close to it sometimes. On top of all this, you're creating and assigning tickets to people, you have to make illustrations, diagrams, charts, etc for architecture & software design, game systems, even a bit of class diagrams + written specs, and you have to regularly meet directly with upper management and executive officers, sometimes present things to investors ... phew!!! It's a LOT, it's sooo much ... if the promotion doesn't come with at least a $25K+ raise then you probably don't even want it, lol, just stick to senior engineer role ... they're gonna make you _really_ work, lol. But, like I said, it was also still a lot of fun and I learned more from it than probably any previous role or experience I ever had. I became something on an "Agile wizard" and got really good at time management, prioritization and even speaking in front of large groups of people, and it boosted all my dev and leadership skills and really showed me how much _more_ I was capable of. And it gave me confidence in leadership roles/scenarios and made me realize that, yes, I could run my own company someday. But I admit, it's nice to be in the position that I'm in now and taking a bit of a breather! 😄
@@WhitefoxSpace well, I've actually got a few things going on, but I'll tell you the thing I'm most excited about right now ... 🙂 So, I started collaborating / hanging out with some of the Microsoft engineers recently around the "WinMD" (Windows SDK Metadata) project, which I got into because I simply couldn't find _any_ suitable, modern replacement for the abandoned SharpDX project ... I'm designing a new, unique type of modern, "pure C#" game engine that's strictly for targeting the high-end, "next-gen" hardware and Windows OS platforms (desktop, XBox and PC-VR games) ... but, without any real .NET 6+ alternative to SharpDX, I just didn't have _any_ good way to build straight off the DirectX12 API in the language of my people, lol. So I've set out to _change_ that, and fix this problem, because even other C# projects out there, including some really cool and powerful open source C# game engines like Stride3D, also have this same problem, and lots of people are relying on semi-complete "shim" DLLs, lower-quality and incomplete/buggy mimicks of SharpDX or they're just gritting their teeth and using those old deprecated NuGet packs or DLLs, or they're trying to maintain their own entire fork of the dead, archived repo, which is a massive custodial chore unto itself ... So I got _really_ fed up with this, and the way it's seriously holding back the larger C# game development sector and preventing people from making stuff like competitive open source engines and modern 3D applications. C# _should be_ treated as a first-class game dev language in 2022, but it's still treated more like a glorified "scripting" language. I love Unity, but it needs more competition -- competition in software and games is healthy and necessary to drive innovation and progress! So I've been using the WinMD metadata and, with some much-appreciated help and guidance from Microsoft, I'm creating a whole new, _complete_ and high-quality set of C# projections for the DirectX 11 and 12 APIs, for .NET 6 & 7 SDKs and C# 10 and 11 language versions, which I'm hoping to publish (as NuGet packs and an alternate zip/rar download containing all the DLLs) within the next couple months as a pre-release/preview build. Gonna make the entire repo and all the projects open source and then try to drum up some support for a new little community! This project is really aimed at the professional and "expert" graphics, game and engine developers with a passion for C#, but I'm also going to provide _extensive_ documentation, numerous sample projects and probably even make some RUclips videos to help people who want to learn real DirectX and master advanced 3D & multimedia programming in Windows. Whether you want to make your own 3D app/tool, a lightweight and fast game with few dependencies ("bare metal") or build your own powerful engine, you'll be able to do this all, once again, and have first-class access to all of the latest DirectX APIs and features _directly_ in C#! 😉 And once I've got this thing pretty stable and all my build and maintenance pipelines are setup and nicely automated, I'm gonna work on _my_ unique engine design which is specifically designed for open worlds, large RTS, FPS and RPG scenarios and for "intensive" professional and enterprise 3D applications. I will try to shut up now, because I can get too excited an write an entire essay about the architecture and design philosophy for my engine and how fundamentally different it is to the commercial "giant" engines like Unity and Unreal, haha. But this is the thing I'm working on that I'm the most excited and enthusiastic about right now! 😁
@@GameDevNerd Ok so full disclosure, I'm a game *designer* at heart so what you just said... I think I understood about 12% of it. 🤣 But, from what I *did* understand it sounds like you've really pegged an insanely well spotted flaw/gap in the market right now. C++ being more low-level than C# has always made it the more attractive language for more serious devs- nowadays as for the "Big Two" engines, you either pick Unity and are probably considered a noob or you go with unreal. I know of very few games from Unity that can be considered truly AAA. In fact, none. Escape from Tarkov is probably the best example of a large project from Unity and it's not exactly touted for its performance or quality- just that it's something people really wanted. I never gave the differences between the languages much thought, but it makes sense to me that there's a bit of discrimination towards C#, and, if according to you, there shouldn't be, I am super super excited to hear about your platform in the future. Like you yourself said, competition is absolutely vital in the market- I used to be a lawyer and I know better than most that competition is the literal foundation of a free market. It's amazing to hear of new engines, and it sounds like you've gotten in with the right people so I'm wishing you all the best and great luck going forward!
I'm an architect /senior developer in web technologies that just started using Unity. I've been in the Bambi (shaky legs) phase for the last 4 months. Not a good feeling, but SOO much fun.
Im not even a jr dev yet but I find this very helpful. It is hard to find information about the expectations and roles on a developer team when you are self taught and not in the industry yet. Thanks Jason.
This information is very clear & on point. I agree with the most of it 👍🏻😄 Seniors in any work environment are people who are able to teach and apply their knowledge. In any case they already have a personal custom, preference or at least an opinion... (and they must be paid accordingly to that adquired knowledge level); while Juniors are people who must learn on the fly (Hands On), and must be willing to primarily to share and listen and understand others points of view & Techiques, asking interesting questions and growing in the Company as best as they can. Thank you for another interesting video 😁🎮
Watching this video reminds me just how dodgy my first industry job was honestly. The studio's leadership consisted of much older guys; an artist, animator, producer and our CFO was apparently a programmer though I don't recall him ever actually discussing it beyond saying he was. They mostly hired brand new graduates who (for the most part) never had an industry job before. And they were *all* programmers and designers. Sure you hire to plug gaps in your skill-base, but then I noticed that the leadership were pretty much buying all their art assets too so I genuinely wonder if they actually knew what they were doing on any level. Anyways between the grad programmers we had a bit of a variation in skill levels, but that didn't seem to reflect what roles we got. Whoever was hired first got the senior/team lead positions and those who got hired last were given junior positions. Perhaps its because we were such a small studio trying to make two games at once, but it felt like every single one of us was given a huge amount of work and responsibility to handle essentially on our own, none of the seniors were responsible for other people and none of the juniors had a senior to report to, we just brought things up in the company-wide meetings instead. Once all the grads were familiar with each other, their skills and capabilities, I think we sort of came to a mutual unspoken agreement that the whole junior/senior/lead monikers were just flavour text. We all had the same job and got paid the same salary that wasn't even above minimum wage technically. Really hoping that I can join a *proper* studio one day. This one was a registered company and everything but it honestly felt more like some older guys trying to take advantage of the lack of experience from new graduates.
I can only smile seeing these tips. I honestly don't know if these are enough to be promoted to senior dev in USA, but here in Russia these tips are only good to meet junior requirements. If you write dirty code with variable names "a, b, x, y", gibberish instead of commit notes and never communicate - you'll get fired no matter if you're senior, middle or junior. To get to senior role - you have to be good at architecture, you need to write code that meets SOLID, you need to know how to use DI properly and know what patterns to use (that's all on top of everything Jason said).
I went from a senior ios engineer to game dev! I call myself an intermediate, but it’s probably worst XD Eventually i will be senior game developer, but it will take years! I work on games in my free time as well so i’m trying to speed run to professional!
Definitely liked the premise of this video, but I do happen to think game development is a somewhat different beast compared to a typical software developer. I think a lot of senior developers in the industry try to force SOLID paradigms when making games. Not necessarily a bad move, but making games is so much more than following best software practices. Playmaker, is one of those tools I like to harp on about, because it just gives you what you need to quickly bang out a prototype - without worrying about any OOP patterns. To me, this is what it is all about. Defining a 'Senior game developer" is a tough one too, because I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone to be expert in the many, many disciplines involved in making games - and that includes the art making process. Anyway, appreciate your thoughts on the subject. Great job.
I'm a junior unity3d developer where I work... I am the only developer on the project and team. I would love to work on a team/project with other developers and also have some seniors to work alongside so I can learn from. It's also fun to be apart of a dev team! Learning on my own developing my skills feels slow and I imagine if I had some seniors to bounce off with could really help me accel and bring a greater contribution. Do you have any tips on how someone like myself could expand into the team I envision to be apart of - or - how might I better develop my coding skills as a unity3d developer? I feel like the experience I am getting at my current role is good enough to get another junior role somewhere else, but since I am not working along seniors and unaware of higher architecture designs I have a limiting thought that applying for a mid-tier position might difficult to come by.
In addition to commit messages, don't forget to try to write clean, self-documenting code. Git blame makes it abundantly obvious who did it. Making sure your software passes tests before you push to the remote is one good way to ensure people aren't using git blame to throw spears at you. If your code breaks the trunk, look out!
So I got the email you sent about video requests, and I'd like to suggest a new up to date video on Timeline, perhaps specially on extending it via creating your own tracks and behaviors; I swear I've only ever found ONE vid on this in all of RUclips, and I'd love to see how you'd approach custom Timeline tracks!
Interesting vid! The audio doesn't seem to be in sync with your mouth, though. I tried reloading and it was still like that, so I don't think it's on my end, unless I'm wrong.
I feel like I'm having an identity crisis of what "level" of programmer I am. I'm 22 and self taught Unity and C# since I was 14. I got my first game programmer job at a smallish studio (about 20 people) as a part time Jr systems programmer while I attended college for game design early 2021. I went full time early April this year and the Jr was removed from my official job title. Around mid July one of the senior programmers left the studio. They were originally going to be the sole programmer for a pc/comsole game project that had started development that month. Since we were down a programmer I got put on the project to fill the position. It's not a terribly complex game, just a lot of moving parts, but I've pretty much programmed the entire thing. My title on the project is lead programmer but my official job title is still says intermediate. I pretty much went from the responsibilities of a part time Jr programmer to programming an entire game in the span of 2 months. What am I? I don't have the years of professional experience of a senior programmer but have the responsibilities of one. I've been looking at jumping ship since the pay is not that great but I don't know what my experience would classify me as. My ego is not inflated enough me me to call myself a senior, but I am unsure where I stand between Jr and intermediate. As you said most jobs are for senior roles, would I even have a shot applying for them? I know I am capable of the responsibility, but I feel like my resume would get thrown in the bin because most of my experience is from hobby projects.
I did all these things as a new developer. I still was let go. This destroyed my self-esteem for a good while because I internalized it as my own failure. It took me a while to realize the companies you work for can just be bad.
Your first jobs can really make or break a career. I used to be a lawyer, but the first places I worked at were so corrupt and immoral that I gave up law as a career entirely.
I had the same experience unfortunately. My first company was very dodgy, a bunch of older senior/leads who hired nothing but new graduates to do basically all the work for them. The studio lead had his friend "volunteer" to be our producer (given the cost of living and how nicely these guys were living, I'm certain the volunteer was being paid under the table) and the guy had absolutely no fucking clue about any tech industry to begin with let alone games... he was just hired as producer because he was good at yelling at people to do their job. I had a pretty bad depressive episode at the time and explained that to my boss, so he knew why I was being a bit quieter than usual in team meetings. But then the producer called me up after hours on Friday to try and give me a "pep talk", asking if I was competent, which only served to make me feel *more* incompetent. Then told me to prove to the company how good I am by working through the weekend. Monday rolls around and before we even had a chance to do the team meeting so I could show my work, I got a call telling me I was being let go. I spent a reeeaaal long time questioning my own abilities there because of that prick. Thankfully the other grads were constantly praising me for my work and a few messaged me after I left saying to not give up because I could do really well. Like you said; sometimes you just get really bad companies. Sometimes they're scummy, sometimes they're just poorly managed. A good company will hire you if they believe you have talent and the senior is meant to help you unlock that talent.
@@cyqry crazy, that's almost identical to what happened to me in Law. New companies that realized it's 99% admin, just hired a bunch of admin people to do all the work, paying them absolute peanuts and living in literal mansions.
@@WhitefoxSpace I'm not so sure how much they were being paid but I know the CFO was literally on holiday to the Caribbean during work, didn't tell us or anything he just *went* because he could for a few days. The studio lead didn't seem to splash out as hard, but he was able to provide for a family with multiple kids and not look like he was stretching his pay to do so...given this was within the past few years and it was his fulltime profession he definitely was getting paid better than the rest of us. All the grads were pretty much paid barely enough to make it paycheck to paycheck though. While I think skill should get paid more, especially if you're doing a proper senior position compared to proper junior, it was pretty clear that these guys were absolutely taking advantage of grads, getting them to do all the hard work while taking all the pay for themselves. It was awful.
@@cyqry yeah I hear ya. And it's such a hard conversation with people because they always go "yeah well duh seniors are paid more" but there's a line where my fellow colleagues and myself were being paid literally 2% of the boss' salary and did literally ALL of the work. That's just... Yeah. And I wish I could say the free market would sort him out but it won't. He's just grown since because cheap labor is gonna keep staying cheap for him and newly grads are desperate for work so he's got an infinite supply. People who are smart enough to leave are readily replaced the next year.
As gamedev has many aspect, it is not expectable to know everything, every tech, every part even from seniors. But shall be highly advanced, expert at specific areas. (IMHO) There is near to graphic developer able to develop shaders, and other ones know gameflow, and data handling in game.
A senior developer is, quite simply, someone with significant experience in development/engineering who can turn an idea into an _implementation_ without needing any hand-holding or training wheels: they know what needs to be done to go from product design => working code => finished product without being told what classes they need to write, what techniques and approaches to use or how to write it in a clean, optimal way that a company can actually use. Seniors are, in fact, some of the people who _create_ those plans and make those decisions in the beginning and make adjustments to them when necessary ... they read books, white papers, technical articles, documentation and other resources to answer their own questions or figure out how to use a new thing they're unfamiliar with, and they don't need to stop/start a Brackeys video and Alt+Tab between their IDE, a RUclips video or StackOverflow to get working code into the project. That's not to say they never use any of those resources, of course they do, they just don't have to rely on them to write code and get stuff done.
My last job with Unity was a technical lead/director position of the company's game development division ... it's essentially the "leader and decision-maker" position for all things game dev, especially the technical/engineering aspects of it but I also had to make calls on artwork and designs from a technical perspective (i.e., is this too many polygons, is this a good way to do our UV maps for these, how do skeletons need to be set up, what kind of shader do we need, etc). If things go good or bad, it's all your fault, lol, a fact you're acutely aware of at all times. It paid more than being a senior engineer, but probably not quite _enough_ to truly be worth all the extra stress for most people. I was stressed to the ceiling but also sickly enjoying it at the same time, lol, I'm a psychopath I guess. But you have 3x to 4x more responsibility than as a senior engineer who just writes code, and you still need time (which you don't have) to write the most complex and tricky parts of the code and barely have time to touch it, lol, and you have tons of meetings because everyone needs you right away ... I broke git, Unity started crashing and I can't stop it, can you tell me what I need to do next with this, etc. If you like fast-paced, difficult work it's kinda fun but it would probably drive a lot of people looney lol, I was close to it sometimes.
On top of all this, you're creating and assigning tickets to people, you have to make illustrations, diagrams, charts, etc for architecture & software design, game systems, even a bit of class diagrams + written specs, and you have to regularly meet directly with upper management and executive officers, sometimes present things to investors ... phew!!! It's a LOT, it's sooo much ... if the promotion doesn't come with at least a $25K+ raise then you probably don't even want it, lol, just stick to senior engineer role ... they're gonna make you _really_ work, lol. But, like I said, it was also still a lot of fun and I learned more from it than probably any previous role or experience I ever had. I became something on an "Agile wizard" and got really good at time management, prioritization and even speaking in front of large groups of people, and it boosted all my dev and leadership skills and really showed me how much _more_ I was capable of. And it gave me confidence in leadership roles/scenarios and made me realize that, yes, I could run my own company someday. But I admit, it's nice to be in the position that I'm in now and taking a bit of a breather! 😄
Asking for everyone: what are you busy with atm?
What do you do today?
Incredibly valuable insight!
@@WhitefoxSpace well, I've actually got a few things going on, but I'll tell you the thing I'm most excited about right now ... 🙂
So, I started collaborating / hanging out with some of the Microsoft engineers recently around the "WinMD" (Windows SDK Metadata) project, which I got into because I simply couldn't find _any_ suitable, modern replacement for the abandoned SharpDX project ... I'm designing a new, unique type of modern, "pure C#" game engine that's strictly for targeting the high-end, "next-gen" hardware and Windows OS platforms (desktop, XBox and PC-VR games) ... but, without any real .NET 6+ alternative to SharpDX, I just didn't have _any_ good way to build straight off the DirectX12 API in the language of my people, lol. So I've set out to _change_ that, and fix this problem, because even other C# projects out there, including some really cool and powerful open source C# game engines like Stride3D, also have this same problem, and lots of people are relying on semi-complete "shim" DLLs, lower-quality and incomplete/buggy mimicks of SharpDX or they're just gritting their teeth and using those old deprecated NuGet packs or DLLs, or they're trying to maintain their own entire fork of the dead, archived repo, which is a massive custodial chore unto itself ...
So I got _really_ fed up with this, and the way it's seriously holding back the larger C# game development sector and preventing people from making stuff like competitive open source engines and modern 3D applications. C# _should be_ treated as a first-class game dev language in 2022, but it's still treated more like a glorified "scripting" language. I love Unity, but it needs more competition -- competition in software and games is healthy and necessary to drive innovation and progress! So I've been using the WinMD metadata and, with some much-appreciated help and guidance from Microsoft, I'm creating a whole new, _complete_ and high-quality set of C# projections for the DirectX 11 and 12 APIs, for .NET 6 & 7 SDKs and C# 10 and 11 language versions, which I'm hoping to publish (as NuGet packs and an alternate zip/rar download containing all the DLLs) within the next couple months as a pre-release/preview build. Gonna make the entire repo and all the projects open source and then try to drum up some support for a new little community!
This project is really aimed at the professional and "expert" graphics, game and engine developers with a passion for C#, but I'm also going to provide _extensive_ documentation, numerous sample projects and probably even make some RUclips videos to help people who want to learn real DirectX and master advanced 3D & multimedia programming in Windows. Whether you want to make your own 3D app/tool, a lightweight and fast game with few dependencies ("bare metal") or build your own powerful engine, you'll be able to do this all, once again, and have first-class access to all of the latest DirectX APIs and features _directly_ in C#! 😉
And once I've got this thing pretty stable and all my build and maintenance pipelines are setup and nicely automated, I'm gonna work on _my_ unique engine design which is specifically designed for open worlds, large RTS, FPS and RPG scenarios and for "intensive" professional and enterprise 3D applications. I will try to shut up now, because I can get too excited an write an entire essay about the architecture and design philosophy for my engine and how fundamentally different it is to the commercial "giant" engines like Unity and Unreal, haha. But this is the thing I'm working on that I'm the most excited and enthusiastic about right now! 😁
@@GameDevNerd Ok so full disclosure, I'm a game *designer* at heart so what you just said... I think I understood about 12% of it. 🤣
But, from what I *did* understand it sounds like you've really pegged an insanely well spotted flaw/gap in the market right now.
C++ being more low-level than C# has always made it the more attractive language for more serious devs- nowadays as for the "Big Two" engines, you either pick Unity and are probably considered a noob or you go with unreal.
I know of very few games from Unity that can be considered truly AAA. In fact, none. Escape from Tarkov is probably the best example of a large project from Unity and it's not exactly touted for its performance or quality- just that it's something people really wanted.
I never gave the differences between the languages much thought, but it makes sense to me that there's a bit of discrimination towards C#, and, if according to you, there shouldn't be, I am super super excited to hear about your platform in the future. Like you yourself said, competition is absolutely vital in the market- I used to be a lawyer and I know better than most that competition is the literal foundation of a free market. It's amazing to hear of new engines, and it sounds like you've gotten in with the right people so I'm wishing you all the best and great luck going forward!
I'm an architect /senior developer in web technologies that just started using Unity. I've been in the Bambi (shaky legs) phase for the last 4 months. Not a good feeling, but SOO much fun.
Keep going, mate!
Being a senior game engineer myself, you got it right to the point. I agree with you on everything. 👍
Im not even a jr dev yet but I find this very helpful. It is hard to find information about the expectations and roles on a developer team when you are self taught and not in the industry yet. Thanks Jason.
agreed helps with my pending imposter sydrome
I like the new lighting and seems you have a new camera? Nice!
This information is very clear & on point.
I agree with the most of it 👍🏻😄
Seniors in any work environment are people who are able to teach and apply their knowledge. In any case they already have a personal custom, preference or at least an opinion... (and they must be paid accordingly to that adquired knowledge level); while Juniors are people who must learn on the fly (Hands On), and must be willing to primarily to share and listen and understand others points of view & Techiques, asking interesting questions and growing in the Company as best as they can.
Thank you for another interesting video 😁🎮
Seniority = Experience + independence + accountability.
Watching this video reminds me just how dodgy my first industry job was honestly.
The studio's leadership consisted of much older guys; an artist, animator, producer and our CFO was apparently a programmer though I don't recall him ever actually discussing it beyond saying he was. They mostly hired brand new graduates who (for the most part) never had an industry job before. And they were *all* programmers and designers. Sure you hire to plug gaps in your skill-base, but then I noticed that the leadership were pretty much buying all their art assets too so I genuinely wonder if they actually knew what they were doing on any level.
Anyways between the grad programmers we had a bit of a variation in skill levels, but that didn't seem to reflect what roles we got. Whoever was hired first got the senior/team lead positions and those who got hired last were given junior positions. Perhaps its because we were such a small studio trying to make two games at once, but it felt like every single one of us was given a huge amount of work and responsibility to handle essentially on our own, none of the seniors were responsible for other people and none of the juniors had a senior to report to, we just brought things up in the company-wide meetings instead.
Once all the grads were familiar with each other, their skills and capabilities, I think we sort of came to a mutual unspoken agreement that the whole junior/senior/lead monikers were just flavour text. We all had the same job and got paid the same salary that wasn't even above minimum wage technically.
Really hoping that I can join a *proper* studio one day. This one was a registered company and everything but it honestly felt more like some older guys trying to take advantage of the lack of experience from new graduates.
Can you make netcode tutorial please
The beard is epic! Oh and yes great talk too 😉
I can only smile seeing these tips. I honestly don't know if these are enough to be promoted to senior dev in USA, but here in Russia these tips are only good to meet junior requirements. If you write dirty code with variable names "a, b, x, y", gibberish instead of commit notes and never communicate - you'll get fired no matter if you're senior, middle or junior. To get to senior role - you have to be good at architecture, you need to write code that meets SOLID, you need to know how to use DI properly and know what patterns to use (that's all on top of everything Jason said).
Here you'll get move to another team or department so you can't sue anyone, until layoffs hit
Hey Jason, what's your thoughts on UniTask - Task-based async programming?
Cysharp/UniTask
Im sad I bought the ultimate game dev bungle just before you and Thomas collaborated. Missed out on so much more content and value
I went from a senior ios engineer to game dev! I call myself an intermediate, but it’s probably worst XD
Eventually i will be senior game developer, but it will take years!
I work on games in my free time as well so i’m trying to speed run to professional!
Definitely liked the premise of this video, but I do happen to think game development is a somewhat different beast compared to a typical software developer. I think a lot of senior developers in the industry try to force SOLID paradigms when making games. Not necessarily a bad move, but making games is so much more than following best software practices.
Playmaker, is one of those tools I like to harp on about, because it just gives you what you need to quickly bang out a prototype - without worrying about any OOP patterns. To me, this is what it is all about.
Defining a 'Senior game developer" is a tough one too, because I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone to be expert in the many, many disciplines involved in making games - and that includes the art making process.
Anyway, appreciate your thoughts on the subject. Great job.
I'm a junior unity3d developer where I work... I am the only developer on the project and team. I would love to work on a team/project with other developers and also have some seniors to work alongside so I can learn from. It's also fun to be apart of a dev team! Learning on my own developing my skills feels slow and I imagine if I had some seniors to bounce off with could really help me accel and bring a greater contribution. Do you have any tips on how someone like myself could expand into the team I envision to be apart of - or - how might I better develop my coding skills as a unity3d developer?
I feel like the experience I am getting at my current role is good enough to get another junior role somewhere else, but since I am not working along seniors and unaware of higher architecture designs I have a limiting thought that applying for a mid-tier position might difficult to come by.
In addition to commit messages, don't forget to try to write clean, self-documenting code. Git blame makes it abundantly obvious who did it. Making sure your software passes tests before you push to the remote is one good way to ensure people aren't using git blame to throw spears at you. If your code breaks the trunk, look out!
What happened to the bg?
So I got the email you sent about video requests, and I'd like to suggest a new up to date video on Timeline, perhaps specially on extending it via creating your own tracks and behaviors; I swear I've only ever found ONE vid on this in all of RUclips, and I'd love to see how you'd approach custom Timeline tracks!
Well said Jason! I'd say the beard helps too ;)
Interesting vid! The audio doesn't seem to be in sync with your mouth, though. I tried reloading and it was still like that, so I don't think it's on my end, unless I'm wrong.
Least favourite commit note “WIP”….
We know - if it wasn’t work in progress then we would see the PR for review 🙄
I feel like I'm having an identity crisis of what "level" of programmer I am. I'm 22 and self taught Unity and C# since I was 14. I got my first game programmer job at a smallish studio (about 20 people) as a part time Jr systems programmer while I attended college for game design early 2021. I went full time early April this year and the Jr was removed from my official job title. Around mid July one of the senior programmers left the studio. They were originally going to be the sole programmer for a pc/comsole game project that had started development that month. Since we were down a programmer I got put on the project to fill the position. It's not a terribly complex game, just a lot of moving parts, but I've pretty much programmed the entire thing. My title on the project is lead programmer but my official job title is still says intermediate. I pretty much went from the responsibilities of a part time Jr programmer to programming an entire game in the span of 2 months. What am I? I don't have the years of professional experience of a senior programmer but have the responsibilities of one. I've been looking at jumping ship since the pay is not that great but I don't know what my experience would classify me as. My ego is not inflated enough me me to call myself a senior, but I am unsure where I stand between Jr and intermediate. As you said most jobs are for senior roles, would I even have a shot applying for them? I know I am capable of the responsibility, but I feel like my resume would get thrown in the bin because most of my experience is from hobby projects.
You are a good guy!
I did all these things as a new developer. I still was let go. This destroyed my self-esteem for a good while because I internalized it as my own failure.
It took me a while to realize the companies you work for can just be bad.
Your first jobs can really make or break a career. I used to be a lawyer, but the first places I worked at were so corrupt and immoral that I gave up law as a career entirely.
I had the same experience unfortunately.
My first company was very dodgy, a bunch of older senior/leads who hired nothing but new graduates to do basically all the work for them. The studio lead had his friend "volunteer" to be our producer (given the cost of living and how nicely these guys were living, I'm certain the volunteer was being paid under the table) and the guy had absolutely no fucking clue about any tech industry to begin with let alone games... he was just hired as producer because he was good at yelling at people to do their job.
I had a pretty bad depressive episode at the time and explained that to my boss, so he knew why I was being a bit quieter than usual in team meetings. But then the producer called me up after hours on Friday to try and give me a "pep talk", asking if I was competent, which only served to make me feel *more* incompetent. Then told me to prove to the company how good I am by working through the weekend. Monday rolls around and before we even had a chance to do the team meeting so I could show my work, I got a call telling me I was being let go.
I spent a reeeaaal long time questioning my own abilities there because of that prick. Thankfully the other grads were constantly praising me for my work and a few messaged me after I left saying to not give up because I could do really well.
Like you said; sometimes you just get really bad companies. Sometimes they're scummy, sometimes they're just poorly managed. A good company will hire you if they believe you have talent and the senior is meant to help you unlock that talent.
@@cyqry crazy, that's almost identical to what happened to me in Law. New companies that realized it's 99% admin, just hired a bunch of admin people to do all the work, paying them absolute peanuts and living in literal mansions.
@@WhitefoxSpace I'm not so sure how much they were being paid but I know the CFO was literally on holiday to the Caribbean during work, didn't tell us or anything he just *went* because he could for a few days.
The studio lead didn't seem to splash out as hard, but he was able to provide for a family with multiple kids and not look like he was stretching his pay to do so...given this was within the past few years and it was his fulltime profession he definitely was getting paid better than the rest of us.
All the grads were pretty much paid barely enough to make it paycheck to paycheck though.
While I think skill should get paid more, especially if you're doing a proper senior position compared to proper junior, it was pretty clear that these guys were absolutely taking advantage of grads, getting them to do all the hard work while taking all the pay for themselves. It was awful.
@@cyqry yeah I hear ya. And it's such a hard conversation with people because they always go "yeah well duh seniors are paid more" but there's a line where my fellow colleagues and myself were being paid literally 2% of the boss' salary and did literally ALL of the work. That's just... Yeah. And I wish I could say the free market would sort him out but it won't. He's just grown since because cheap labor is gonna keep staying cheap for him and newly grads are desperate for work so he's got an infinite supply. People who are smart enough to leave are readily replaced the next year.
As gamedev has many aspect, it is not expectable to know everything, every tech, every part even from seniors. But shall be highly advanced, expert at specific areas. (IMHO)
There is near to graphic developer able to develop shaders, and other ones know gameflow, and data handling in game.
The worst commit note I've ever written: .
I swear entry level game dev jobs don’t exist haha I can’t find any at least
The note ...
Shotgun update
Proudly gave up game dev 2022, so glad this saga is over. What a nightmare shit pay job to do, reaping rewards elsewhere
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