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June 30, 2004

Just got off the phone with the UbiSoft guy ()

by fluffy at 1:25 PM
Yay, I'm being scheduled for an in-person interview!

Factoids about the job:

  • It is not technically UbiSoft, but a separate mobile gaming company which was founded by one of the brothers in the family which runs UbiSoft (and is operated in cooperation with their other gaming companies, namely UbiSoft and Gameloft), but culture-wise it's UbiSoft all the way
  • This (still-unnamed) company is small, with only 10 people right now, but there's plenty of collaboration with the (60-employee) Gameloft, whose office space they share
  • If I get the job, my first task will be to work on a launch title for the Nintendo DS. This will need to be completed by August. (Eek!)
  • The starting pay will be in the neighborhood of $50K + $5K performance bonus. That is a good salary for most of the country. It is not a good salary for New York. That's about $41K after taxes.
  • The primary development platform is Windows, but since it's all cross-platform stuff anyway there's no problem with developing under Linux. MacOS is probably out of the question since then they'd have to buy a Mac. (That's a good sign, though — it means they're not just spending money willy-nilly on equipment. Even if a suitable Mac dev system costs only $1500 or so. :)
  • Rent for the sorts of space I need starts at $700, assuming I can find a roommate or two, though at least the selection for roommates in NY is way better than in NM, and so finding someone who can tolerate my variable gender won't be nearly as difficult. However, Toby and Shooby will almost definitely have to stay behind. :(
  • Relocation expenses may or may not be covered; they will be fairly minimal though (since I'll just sell my car and come with my laptop and clothes, and have my parents ship the other stuff I need later, and I can just keep on paying the $28/month for my storage unit in perpetuity or something). They will pay for my hotel room while I look for housing.
  • As expected, the interviewer had an extremely thick French accent, but I can understand thick French accents pretty well thanks to the crowd my sister has hung with for years (and right now she's living in France with her thickly-French-accented boyfriend from Senegál, though he's about to move to San Francisco and she's going to join him when she finishes her internship at Lôreal, the point of this being that I've been exposed to thick French accents quite a bit in my lifetime)
My main concerns are
  • affording to live there
  • not getting burnt out
so I'm still going to consider the other positions I've been pursuing, even if I haven't gotten so much as a form response back on any of them. (Though, it'd have to be a really good offer to pass up on finally getting into the games industry!)

Comments

#2884 06/30/2004 01:07 pm
Yay again!

EDIT:

Toby and Shooby will almost definitely have to stay behind. Sad


Sad
#2885 MrEscargot (unregistered) 06/30/2004 01:49 pm Cool
Sounds good! Good luck with the interview.
#2886 06/30/2004 02:51 pm location
New York city? If so, be very careful as that rent estimate sounds low.
#2887 06/30/2004 02:54 pm oh
And good luck! Very Happy
#2888 06/30/2004 03:24 pm
That estimate was based on the rates I saw on craigslist for roommates. Full apartments are like $1500/month which is more than I'd be able to afford comfortably.
#2889 06/30/2004 05:21 pm ah
Gotcha. I thought you were saying $700 for your own place.
#2890 06/30/2004 05:32 pm
WOOO!!! GO FLUFFY!!!!!
#2891 06/30/2004 05:35 pm
Damnit!
#2892 06/30/2004 06:04 pm
"Dammit"? That doesn't sound good. Still, this sounds like a neat opportunity; I hope it works out! Ubisoft rocks.

Plus, I'd be able to, like, name-drop you. "The DS? Oh, yeah, I have a friend who's working on a launch title." Heehee. Smile
#2893 06/30/2004 06:12 pm
The "dammit" was just in reference to a thing going on between me and Paul (the other Paul). Smile

I'm not sure how it'll feel to have my work dissected by the armchair wannabe programmers on Slashdot and so on. But, hey, every job has its pluses and minuses. Smile
#2894 06/30/2004 07:01 pm Burn out.
End of August or beginning of August? That seems like a really short time to develop a launch Title. Maybe if the salary was a little higher.
#2895 06/30/2004 07:06 pm
End, I presume. It ships in November.
#2896 broken (unregistered) 06/30/2004 07:36 pm
Once again, congratulation! A winner will be you!

Also, let the French jokes begin! Smile
#2897 06/30/2004 07:45 pm
Sad

I like the French.

They're so easy to dominate.
#2899 06/30/2004 10:10 pm
It's not like now until the end of August is all that long a time to develop a launch title either. I would hope they've started on it by now.
#2900 06/30/2004 10:25 pm
Yeah, the impression I got was that I'd be jumping in on the end of the development cycle.
#2907 07/01/2004 11:07 am Interviews
Best advice I ever got about interviews: people obviously look for many things in an interview. But while technical issues are important, the number one thing people are thinking subconciously is "can I stand to hang out with this guy eight hours a day for the foreseeable future". Being personable, seeming relaxed and generally likable can trump technical deficiencies.

When I look back at interviews I've had, many of the ones that resulted in jobs where relaxed and felt like more of a converstation. On the other hand, I've had ones where I just felt off my game the whole time. I've never gotten a job out of one of those.

Some of it is obviously luck because sometimes you end up with an interviewer your personality clashes with.

BTW: if they're already talking money and are shelling out to fly you to an interview, it's likely that you are already on a real short list.
#2908 07/01/2004 11:17 am
Yeah, I've learned these things as well.

Annoyingly, I have to make my own travel arrangements (which they'll reimburse me for), but I'm not sure if that includes a hotel or not, and the interviewer doesn't seem to be wedded to his email. Understandably, given their current time crunch, I suppose. Smile

Another little tidbit: even though the Nintendo DS is launching in November (and so launch titles need to be ready by the end of August), the third-party developers have only gotten the prototypes recently, and it's not even the complete prototype (it only has a single screen for example). UbiSoft only received theirs yesterday!