A Survival Guide for Game Developers in a Post-Pandemic World

[Music] welcome everyone uh I appreciate you coming uh especially on a Friday at this time know people are are leaving uh and appreciate the people who are here I have a lot to cover but I gave this talk a similar talk to this in 2019 and the reason I want to give this again because a lot of the landscape is changed since 2019 in the game business and so I want to go over some other things that are that I think you need to have some other tool sets you need to look at uh when you want to uh when you get into the game industry how many people are in the game industry now excellent how many people are looking to get into the game industry okay good good um what I'm going to do in this presentation is first I've been in the Gaye business for 30 years almost 30 years now and it's been aan fantastic

Journey for me uh so everything I say here there's maybe some I wouldn't say negative but I want to have eye openening discussion with you guys or what it is like to be a game developer and how to survive in this business because it it's it's somewhat tough especially if you've seen what happened recently um I started uh uh three Studios uh and I'm now on my fourth one I I started a Sony studio uh Indy that later got into BioWare Austin and into uh Bethesda Studio battlecry then later became Bethesda game studios and then my last Studio which I'm doing now is called t- minus zero so I have a lot of experience about not only working because I work for Sony Electronic Arts and Bethesda and it gave me a great uh understanding of what the game industry is is like to work in especially as long as I have so I want to share and give back today we're just going to go over what I call the reality check just kind of give you an idea your especially people who are into this who are getting

into this business what you're getting into uh and then I'm going to talk about something I think is very relevant today is how to survive a layoff because I think that's part of it now the first 15 minutes will be dedicated to that the next big part of the presentation will be how to fit in you're either going to start working for a new company or you're uh you are at a new comp uh or you are a new person going into a uh a new studio and then how to be successful like how do grow your career while you're in the gaming industry and then we'll have a Q&A session um the reality check here in this section will be is kind of like giving everyone who's wanting to get into this business a little eye opener of what it's like to be a game developer before I go into that part of it I want to say that I had the best experience in my life being a game developer I love building games people play I like seeing people play my games I love hearing people sometimes talk about my games um

there's always there uh to deal with the community but one of the biggest things that I learned is there's nothing like this moment is when you walk out a New Yorker uh I was born in New York you walk down Time Square and see your game in lights that is an amazing amazing feeling and that's what makes it all worth it be honest with you when you see it on the Shelf hear people talk about it on the Amazon reviews talk about it in in in uh in your forums and Discord and you're part of it that's what makes this industry great that's the great highlights of this industry to me is being launching a product and I wouldn't trade it for the world but one thing I will say to you that is a true in our business is change is inevitable we are on a platform that changes all the time whether it's console mobile social VR AR whatever you want to talk

it's changing all the time so we don't have a constant base like film or video does like series we our technology behind us is changing allowing us having more incredible abilities to build great player experiences but again because of that change there's always uh when change occurs there's always things change management that you have to go through right and so you got to bit used to that this is not as stable business so if you want stability I wouldn't come to this to to be a game developer one of the biggest things about when you first come on board to a game company there is very little onboarding that goes on the very Basics onboarding goes on in most companies they kind of tell you where you're where you what you're going to do the the they give you a handbook to read they tell you you know how to log into your account from an IT perspective how to get your equipment and things like that very little training goes on in our

business very little mentoring and if the mentoring is done it's not done very very well I mean there are instances of Studios doing a better job at this but in general my experience it has been lacking career counseling is almost non-existent why I put a steering why I put a ship wheel on this it's up to you to steer yourself in this industry you have to be a self-starter if you want to be in this industry and survive you have to guide yourself and steer yourself to what you want to do what you're passionate about by the way the other thing about this industry is it's very stressful and lots of things can happen in indri that makes it stressful uh you have deadlines to meet sometimes and this has happened many times in our industry you're crunched to make those deadlines and sometimes those deadlines AR very realistic they cause trouble with your family life uh a lot of my friends who H were married are divorced

I'd say about 70% of my people I know uh co-workers and things like that have been divorced through gain development it's just a reality things are getting better uh quality of life balance of Life work life balance is a big thing it's something that I would say every if you're going to look for a job or uh at a studio make sure that they have a good work life balance they're not constantly crunching and a lot of Studios do that even today uh it's tough it's tough on you it's tough on your family one of the things that I always found very interesting in our business is this is the food chain so to speak when anything happens us need the execs or the last to leave Engineers are the second designers and then so on QA is always at the bottom which by the way bothers me QA is so important but it's always treated as a second class citizen in a lot of companies and unfortunately

and what bothers me more than anything of this list is designers aren't treated as the number one thing a company should always try to keep maintain and pretty much do anything to not have them leave designers are the reason why games are fun they are the fun they are the engagement they are the player experience people but yet they're not seeing in the hierarchy their third tier which really blows my mind now the good news is is a lot of that is changing recently where I think Publishers and Studios realize that without a fun game you can't sell anything right so I say in the past five to six years that's kind of changed but it's still sort of still exists this way in a lot of a lot of publishing a lot of companies the other thing is I looked at forming these Studios I the uh BioWare Austin Studio we had 450 people um I got

to see a lot of rums growing these Studios from 7 people to 450 people and from 7 to 125 7 to 125 uh I've seen a lot of rums come through what I've seen is basically the lifespan of a developer is about three years at a company and generally you have 90% chance of being laid off um in five years this leads the state of Industry today after the pandemic the state of Industry today as you've seen with the massive layoffs that have happened in 23 and 24 is a market adjustment basically what happened in the studios had this huge boom during this uh pandemic hired hired hired hired crazy uh investors came in and started building Studios and hiring people away from the Publishers and so there's a resource shortage that happened during the pandemic and what happened was salaries increased

exponentially and what that caused is our burn rate go up by 40% since 2020 average that's huge and if you're looking at products that take three to five years to build that's a lot of money and so I call it pandemic bloat and so what's happening now is that's unrealistic think that sales and everything else is going to continue like that even though the game industry had a good year last year the issue is they have a massive burn rate that they have to hold so the what the easiest thing to do in a lot of companies well lay off hireing than cheaper later and so that is what's going on in the state of Industry today it's just adjusting itself it will get back to 2019 very shortly and start growing again so this is a temporary blip now because of what happened I and because of that 90% probability I really wanted to go into how to survive a layoff because again majority of anybody here the likelihood of being laid off is

very high one of the things I always talk about is be kind to yourself it is very important to not blame yourself for why you're getting laid off a lot of times it's out of your control so realize that be kind of yourself take a break chill out and figure out what your next steps are don't be a victim that's the worst thing you can do in our business by the by the way if you ever come and interview with anybody and you badmouth your former a former employer you're pretty much done guaranteed don't blame it on the always look forward by the way once you get laid off don't look P don't what happened in the past look forward and figuring out what's your next thing that you want to do what's your next Journey going to be like it's my advice the other big advice that I always tell people is take time to unpack your baggage from your because

you're a lot of people run at 100 miles an hour in another company and suddenly you're at zero you're still calculating what what happened why it happened and you have all these preconceived notions or what I call PTSD from other companies that affect you in your next company they do trust me I've been there and sometimes I have to tell myself oh I it's not going to happen that way but there's something in the back of my head where unconsciously optimistic that it will happen in a positive way but there's something in back my head that pauses me and makes me take time to make a decision where I shouldn't have to worry about that but again unpack your baggage take time to find the right job what I tell people to do is go Google glass door look at your companies you want to go to look at the bios of the people that run your company talk to people in Industry always look for

people to help you by the way don't be afraid to ask your colleagues for advice is be cautious about that and by the way it you can get very panicky trust me I've been there myself where my Runway is running out very soon you have a family you know this gets really hairy but really take your time because uh sometimes uh you don't want to get in a worst situation than you were before again look for Avenues to get help I always tell people go talk to your colleagues go talk to people you've networked in or go to GDC and network and talk to people and figure out what your next direction is going to be your next adventure update your resume keep it simple short concise have an executive summary of your skills and and little gameography that you've done in the beginning of very first thing you put on your resume so people can look at it and get quick glance at you because there's

thousands of hundreds of resumes people are looking at you want yours to stand out when you this is the most important thing when you interview people when you interview feel confident when you interview don't have uh your your posture or the way you communicate through your body language is so critical during an interview even if you're on Zoom or teams uh uh you really need to be confident be passionate this is a real important one about what they do do your research about the company you're talking to and the people you're going to be talking to they like that by the way I found lots of people who didn't who interviewed with with me and didn't understand our core values oh okay then you didn't really uh look at us very well so that kind of effort and be comfortable with being questioned by the way some people get very nervous go have

a friend practice with you trust me it's worth it and by the way this is something that I always tell people is when you look at who you're going to interview with stack rank them and do the and do the first one try to do the first one you don't really care about first this awful thing to say it's it's being recorded too um but do the first one that you really don't care about first so that you don't blow the one you really want in the third lineup really is what I do practice interviewing and what I always tell people to do even if you're employed go out and and search around sometimes it's actually not a bad thing to do for opportunities especially if you know they could be someone for example if a head a recruiter comes to you and says we have this fantastic opportunity that you may not have at your current company we love to interview for it go do it it's what I tell people go do it it's worth just exploring to see number one what your value is and you know what the

opportunity is it may be uh something that you would never get at your current employer right one of the things that I think is very important they always tie this to Severance or anything else they giving you extra B besides your your normal payroll that they have to pay out by law get a labor lawyer to look at it before you sign it they give you I think 20 days or something like that to have it reviewed please take the time to do that it's well worth it a a lot of times when I do that I actually get I've been laid off twice by the way I actually get better terms so it's my advice to everyone is to do that Cobra please take Cobra if you Cobra is Insurance health insurance if you get laid off please take Cobra right away they say well you got two months the problem is is when your insurance laps at the end of the month it's done you can't use that insurance anymore even though they say exist you pretty much most uh most doctors won't accept any anything but cash until you get your uh until you get

Cobra set up so it takes it takes a couple weeks to do so I do it immediately while you still have insurance um another thing is don't get discouraged look at where you are look at where you're going don't get disc Scourge because it is tough out there right now uh and my advice is to keep a positive attitude as As you move forward because people can detect that now I'm going to talk about how to fit in let's say you got a new job let's say you're new to the industry um or you're new to a new role within a uh because as you change your role by the way uh and grow in a company you have to learn how to fit into the second tier if you have a three tier system like exec mid management and the people who do the work you may get to the second tier that's whole different ball game or the first even the going to the first tier is a different ball game

it takes a different types of sets of things to fit in so one of the things is determine the type of environment you're working in whether it's in office hybrid or uh remote they both all have different requirements for fitting in right um what I mean by that is if you're in a remote first Studio then you're going to have to put more effort into communicating than you have done before same thing with a little bit of hybrid too uh and how you present yourself how you're being more proactive so the other thing about culture is some of top down you worked at I mean everything comes from the top then some are B Bottoms Up and some are kind of in between right but the key is if it's top down then you understand if you question somebody you have to do it diplomatically right and you have to work cautiously for a political environment if it's bottoms up that's a little bit more freedom a little bit

more openness a little bit more things to talk about so you have to be careful about that from a culture point of view um there are different companies that are creative and different companies that are Tech driven now creatives are great companies creatives like blizzard uh Tech driven companies are more like epic right so depending on the type of company you are is the type of uh personality you want to fit in whether you're a tech person or a creative person and a creative person do well at tech companies right it's just that they're more Tech focused so they're they they hold Tech as a higher priority than the creative side sometimes now why is this important it's called DNA matching so if you don't do that excuse me what happens is you are swimming Upstream all the time so either you adapt or not and if you don't fit into companies there's you don't become a positive become a negative what's things will happen trust me a if

you're seen as a negative person that means you're not able because you you just don't understand how things work you're not flourishing well in that environment maybe you you just got promoted and you're not doing very well sometimes people will help you out hopefully that you work in an environment that will and so and you become a negative you don't ever want to do that because what will happen is either you adapt or you leave on your own or by uh being fired usually so this is the most important section is tips of being successful one of the biggest things I think is important uh that I have to talk about is hard skills are easy when I say this most people come in they understand what they have to do from a from a programmer from an artist they have those skill sets but one of the things that's always lacking in my opinion you always look at

people how did that person get to where they are when he really doesn't know how to do this certain thing very well right is because they have very good soft skills and soft skills believe it or not and when you get evaluated and and not just hard skills but soft skills are actually important especially for in today's world where if remote or hybrid situation exists it's really how you communicate how you uh proceed forward how if you're a self-starter all this stuff is very important and and more valuable uh of course hard skills are important they assume you have that it's valuable in a sense of growing right this is how you grow in a company if you're really good at what you do that's fantastic but if you have fantastic soft skills on top of that you grow much faster than an organization that I found out now what does it mean by that you'll be dealing with a lot of different personalities in our uh in the workplace

we have a very creative industry with very creative quirky people uh you will work with many different types from people who have large egos to people who uh are are very introverted to uh people who are not introverted extroverted so you have to learn how to get along with your with your your teammates right and so one of the biggest things and soft skills that I talk about all the time is called emotional intelligence it is really critical as you've seen here to be self-aware of who you are how you treat people understanding that when you screw up you understand when you screw up and that when you talk to someone you can see it through their lens right and so we'll talk a little bit about each one of these sections that I break off when I talk about emotional intelligence because this to me is really important if you want to be successful in your

career at a game company if you have really good emotional intelligence really I've seen people accelerate very quickly adaptability is one of them right um accepting change don't complain about it here it is figure out how you're moving forward you understand this is this is a good example is a lot of times design when you're designing a game you pivot because certain things don't work the way you want some of the things that you worked on get thrown out put on the floor just like any good uh film that gets edited you're ton on the floor right and so you have to be willing to accept that your baby is on the floor now and they're moving on and so that's important to have that that ability to understand that things do change in our business being collaborative so not being a lone wolf is really important don't be in your shell I'm introverted a

little bit believe it or not I am and I had to pull myself out of that and collaboration is about Communications it's about working with others well work with your people well and again because you have different quirkiness in our industry of people you're working with you have to learn how to meet halfway you have to learn how to see through their lens you have to learn how to work with them and that could be challenging at times some people can rub you the wrong way just because their scene is embrace it and sometimes when I get to abrace a person I talk to them hopefully they become self-aware if they don't then that's where your manager comes in right and you talk to them about that it's important right for your team your team is dysfunctional your game won't do well I I dealt with a lot of very talented people that have large Egos and

are not self-aware those are very destructive people and they're really hard to deal with you will have those people when you're in working for a company one time or another humility is good being self-aware is awesome I don't mind someone with a big ego if they are self-aware meaning that they understand oh you're right I did that that wasn't great okay I'll change my behavior meaning that gives them the ability to change your behavior so if you're that way Humble Pie is awesome as I say in this business if you have that ability and not become uh you know your ego stroked and have it have people received you as a large ego that's not a good thing in our business confidence is good by the way and I try that's why my next slide is confidence is good it's always good to be confidence to high confidence but you have to balance that out sometimes right accept that other people have really good ideas everyone can contribute

that's really important this is the one I think that's most important for me is Communications and Communications is the ability to understand listen and hear and be able to talk to this individual and communicate correspond with this person in a very very compassionate and concise manner right so being concise is really really important I I've seen people Meander all over the place we all know them we all probably work with them they can't ever get to the point and you lose people's attention and so what the most important thing I can recommend everyone is learning how to be concise learning how to focus because if you do that people will really appreciate that and see that and

you will grow in your company one of the other big things um that I think is important is this non-verbal Communications that we talked about I talked a little bit about they speak loudly you can see people when they're pissed on teams you can see people slump down you can see people not pay attention because they're multitasking um because you see their eyes going all over the place and you know they're M multitasking right everyone does um this non-verbal Communications will hit you hard and so it's very important to learn how to neutralize that form of body language to become a positive and by the way trust me I've I have been in many meetings where I've experienced what I call WTF moments and and I wanted to reach out and slap someone really hard with my

hand and I didn't I just held it in neutralized it it's like anything it's like you never are when you're angry want to send an IM or an email until you calm down right so it's really important for body language while you're talking especially if you are hosting the meeting to make sure that you neutralize that as much as possible that helps a lot that's a soft skill it's really important especially because again you work with a very opinionated graen developers are very opinionated and so you need to understand how to see their through their lands and how to neutralize your body language one of the biggest things I will tell you is um I've had um different types of managers I've had introverted managers I have extroverted managers extroverted managers are easy to work with because they're they're always coming at you can always they'll always talk to you that always come and ask you how you're doing introverted

managers by the way are people that uh don't come to you all the time don't give you a really good uh counseling or mentoring right these are the people you want to try to pull out introverted People Are Awesome they just don't want to confront they introverted people don't like situations where stress and conflict can occur and so best way to deal with introverted people is to to to IM them is to uh go out one-on-one with them try to get to know them um but these are the type of people you will be dealing with now I've dealt with managers that are extremely rational really precise very data driven very much let's get to the problem I've also dealt with the opposite when you uh as a as a a person whether you're in management track or individual contributor if you're very emotional people don't want to talk to

you people pull back from you now there's passion passion is great there's emotion which is different um and so it's really important to make sure passion is good but when you come very upset or very emotional it really pulls and then you don't think well when you're emotional people see that it doesn't reflect well on you right if you're dealing with a manager manager type that's very emotional I have what I always try to do is to diffuse it with asking a question why do you say that what what are you trying to get out what's your goal right that diffuses it uh and then it pulls that person back from being emotional sometimes uh sometimes they're very pissed because you missed a deadline uh things aren't working out well on your team you ask for advice right you try to pull you try to turn that negative feeling that emotional person has into a positive and that takes some diplomacy by the way to do I've had a very emotional bosses that

made my life a living hell at companies before and sometimes you they they to get to the point where you you can't deal with it anymore it's not worth the mental health by the way if you're dealing with a manager that's very emotional and very aggressive towards you that's almost harassment and so I always pull back and say this is not worth it and look elsewhere uh but I always before I do that always kind of work and not a quitter I always try to work rational People Are Awesome uh they're the best managers I've ever worked with but again there's also a point of being too rational where they don't have the empathy sides of things I've dealt with before and that's where you kind of help with that right because sometimes people are very short with you and you take that personally don't that's someone very logical very very much to the point it's not personal a lot of times right so that that's something you have to realize in the game business you will deal

with self-management self-management is is what I talked about earlier it's about self-control and self-regulation right that's what self-management is um it's a it's a your ability to regulate your emotions it's really important to have self-management there will be many times in indry where I almost wanted like a wanted to scream where I've seen things like happened that I I I still can't believe happened in front of me in this game's business I I still say did that person really just say that yeah and I'm just blown away but I I have to control myself there are people in a team meeting in a company meeting who don't have very good self-management and ask those difficult questions that he didn't he or she didn't want to be asked and you can see immediately putting that person on the spot like that person has

just had their expiration date moved up um is what happens when you're in that situation um but it's really important to regulate that and again regulate it in a productive way ask questions diffuse it right let's talk about that let you know the one way to diffuse that it's your moderator moderating a teens meeting let's talk about that offline great Point Let's just move that offline out of the meeting that's that's very helpful again self-management is very important to have as an emotional IQ part of the emotional IQ part of being successful in our social awareness boy this is really good um the ability this is where the the the really uh the um The Logical manager you know goes into where I told you about sometimes they don't have social awareness the empathy part right it's

really important to empathize with others in your group your co-workers or whatever um again understanding diverse backgrounds understanding people's preferences and not letting it get to you I've had many situations where people were put in they felt like they're being harassed because of their their decisions they made in in life right and that again having an you will have many you will face this in our industry we're an entertainment industry and so you'll face diversity in our industry and the best way it is make it sure it's a comfortable environment for everyone and be part of that culture not a boys club culture that's what you don't want to do we have way too many white males in our business it's time to accept diversity in our business relationship management is a really important one as well now what is

relationship management uh you know basically it's your ability to build long-term longlasting relationships with your co-workers I still talk to people I work with 20 25 years ago now it's only a handful because most people got sane and went outside the games business but I still talk to people because I form that longlasting relationship with them networking here is part of that right go out meet people uh I sit at U for example mels and I meet something interesting every breakfast that I sit alone in mels someone comes up we start talking and it's like holy crap I didn't know I work with that group too and so you have a conversation now you have a friend right I met so many good people like that in indry over the years at GDC just by going to a bar or sitting at at Mel's in a diner and they sit by you and you just talk that is really important

even at work by the way looking at building relationships with your co-workers are are important again one other thing about relationship management is trust this is why you see this big graphic here someone helping someone out you always do the trust thing where you stand behind someone and ask them to fall backwards right implicit trust is important understand you're trus in your co-workers to do your job if you're a manager trust but verify don't over manage someone micromanage someone right these are this is a very important that part of the relationship management is very important in my opinion uh as you grow into let's say an individual conv to a manager one of the hardest thing for a manager to do who was an individual contributor is to let go really hard to do but you have to trust the people around you to do your job that's key if you don't trust your people that they will not not make decisions for you they will no longer

make decisions they will no longer take responsibility they they'll have you make all the decisions it's something you don't want to do it's a team effort to build these things it's very important to have that ability why is this important well it's real easy because when you get reviewed they look at your hard skills how you're doing how you meet your um that's very very important how you get your work done right but one of the things if you want to grow in a company because they expect that at your level you're getting hired or promoted at your level that's what they expect the hard SCH what they want to see also is how you're fitting in how are how you play well with others right um and it's it affects your rating and if people who aren't that way guess what happens they get targeted every layoff that major companies have like Sony or a bunge or anything they're stack ranked you're stack ranked with others so when they do layoffs that's what happens so if you're not high in that layoff

scheme in that stack ranking schem and they have to let go of certain people you will likely be targeted so it's something to always think about uh why the soft skills I mentioned are important because you're going to have a lot of these moments trust me on this I've had many of them and continue to have them uh I don't and again one of the things about working in this business I expect one a year or a couple more couple of year to happen right it's just it just that we're in an entertainment business it's crazy business and always I I I find myself in the am I in the Twilight Zone or does something just happen I thought would never happen but it it does um which you know again it's about managing stress it's about managing emotion uh managing yourself being kind to yourself right understanding when to take a break there are people people I know who don't want to go home and work all the time I push

them home I make them go leave work I make them stop thinking about it it's not good for your mental health mental health is your mental health in this business is important it's up to you guys to treat it that way because this industry can be tough and so mental health is something always keep on your mind it's important to you it's important to you to succeed don't get caught up into I call an emotional death spiral it's not worth it it really isn't Life's too short why why how I do this I always I Don't Look Backwards I look forwards when something happens to me I say okay it's happened now how do I move forward how do I get out of it how how do I move forward out of this situation because looking forward helps you set the next adventure that you're going on

right it's a great way to focus on moving this way versus always thinking about what they did to you in the past you can get consumed by that it's very very easy to do and result of this you'll be a happy employee you grow if you take these soft skills I talked to you about you grow in your in in your career in the gaming industry you'll fit in and you may not be targeted for the first round of layoffs if there if it's not closing a studio down that's a different situation these are some good books I recommend people look at and read um there there's lots of very good uh soft skill books out there I don't really focus on the hard skills I assume everyone has them um if they're doing their jobs right that's what I recommend you you look at

um this this will be pres this will be on the Vault by the way later so you can get that uh it's being recorded as well so I'm going to go into uh giveing some time to ask some questions so who wants to ask questions anybody good turn on hold on he's getting it a second there you go hello thank you uh thank you for the talk really good talk uh you said a lot about soft skills yes uh I'm really happy about it because uh I agree with you is a very important thing I've worked with hard people and it's really hard to uh manage when you work with uh bad soft skills teammates but I have a question uh in as someone who has already interviewed people and I think you have been through lots of

interviews too uh how do you show off soft skills uh when you're trying to get to a company because like we don't have many opportunities to do so it's just like an interview a coding test and something like that how do you show off the soft skills well you show off your soft skills in interviewing right uh and you talk about uh you know they'll give a lot of times depending on if you're being a manager or an individual contributor will ask you questions well how do you deal with this situation right I do scenarios what my job is not to test the hard skills my job is to see if they'll fit in right at my level so they'll I'll ask a lot of questions to try to figure out what your soft skills are right how you handle something that's important all right yeah but but you're right there's no references are a good one right uh that's that's where it'll come through all right thank you sure hey I was wondering um so you talked

about layoffs and you talked about in the game industry and I know for a lot of people here if we're not in the game industry we're still going to be in the tech industry you said there's a 90% chance of getting laid off in your first five years getting laid off at least once is that just in the gaming sphere or is that applied to the entire tech industry no that's that's my experience in the gaming career just looking at all the rums I've looked at the average lifespan is three years okay thank you yeah anybody else anybody else go sorry uh hi thanks for the talk I a bit later the question is is it possible um kind of to anticipate and predict like not this the recent layoffs which is like market conditions but you know like you're working in the company you're doing like the job you're getting feedback and like you're feeling that you're doing it all right but maybe there is like some red flags on the like management level how they do presentations what they talking about like either like a way to kind of feel that like the compan is going in the wrong direction and ACT earlier awesome

question so he's asking is there any way to kind of be the canary in the in the coal mine so to speak and basically predicting when something is going to happen one of the things I look for when when I see is when I see a road Shore coming in with lot of uh upper level execs coming to look at your company look at your project and they and they talk about you know how good things are but they they said we don't we see you as family there's no family here by the way um that's a red flag to me when they talk about not doing any layoffs it's a red flag to me that you can never promise someone not doing red but if you look at where insurance starts to get cut like you get worse Insurance than you have or they don't do any more forro your benefits start getting worse that's a real big sign uh that things are not doing well um you know there are just little subtle things you have to look for like I do right how you see do you see the uh your the management always stressed or always having a bunch of closed door meetings right that's usually a good indicator too by the way

do you advise to ask any question like when you start seeing something like this do you advise to ask like your manager or director or someone some hard questions at this time you you you can uh but the problem is a lot of them really can't answer if they answer the questions in a way that you feel like they are not quite answering the questions that's a good one too that's a real good one so they don't come direct answers but they try to camouflage what's going on or make it feel great then you that's a red flag thank you so I was just wondering um okay let's say you have a role or you just got hired into a role and you talked a lot about you know the likelihood of being laid off do you recommend applying while you're employed just at other companies up their opportunities and if so how long into a new role would you say you would wait before you start doing that because they in a new role I would I'm

not a quitter personally I don't really like leaving companies in alerts especially they invested time in me and things like that I'm pretty dedicated like that but when I see things like okay insurance is there a lot of closed door meetings when I ask those hard questions they're trying to avoid the answers to it right that to me is an indicator that my spotty senses go up and say I may be employed soon unemployed right so I'm going to start looking now now if someone calls you out of the blue like like a a recruiter and offers an opportunity that you have that's amazing right that that you would that yes you started this job maybe a year ago and there's an amazing opportunity then that's up to you to decide what you want to do but never here's what I'm going to say don't hurt your employer right ask for hey I'm looking at this other opportunity it's really great um you know at that point you you better have um serious ability to have an offer letter

to do that right but um I just just be frank that you don't want to leave an Al Lurch right so you offer to have a start date that's more extended so you can help them make a transition so don't burn your Bridges is one again there's one degree separation in our business by the way I found that out myself uh when I applied somewhere else and that person was working there I said oh great oh I know I night didn't get in so so yeah it's just really be very careful about that thank you yeah uh what are some ways to build up relationship when you're working remotely with that's awesome question so one of the things I always like to do and uh if you're remote working remotely and there's a a depending on how they're distributed like how many where the employees are you may be on to go to somewhere and do something social like I would actually if they're closer to take to take a road trip um I always ask them

maybe you want to do quarterly get togethers right with with different people um if there are people in your town that work with the same company I always try to socialize that way as well um one thing that I always say is we get on Discord and play games together um go do um you know go to uh have a social space on Discord and with the other groups and talk about your interest right or even have an interest set out in Discord or slack um and and just try to bond that way right outside of work or even in work right uh that's what I would do um I I encourage quarterly especially for fully remote Studios so that people can look to get to know each other because that's trust building because it's hard to build trust when you don't see somebody right or don't interact with them enough right that that's the one of the downsides of remote only in my opinion is that anybody

else you have couple couple more minutes yes how do you relate a soft skill to promotion um uh so a lot of times people will have job Matrix and if they done it right it should have hard skills and soft skills that you need to have especially if you're on a management track versus an individual contributor track individual contributor track won't have as many of of those uh soft skills but the management track will and so they should be able to tie your review to that right that's they should be able to do that or ask for again like I told you there's not much out there to help steer you in your career guidance in a lot of companies it just isn't based on my experience yeah

well okay I'll go again a little early thank you [Music]