How I got my FIRST JOB in the GAMES INDUSTRY

so it's absolutely crazy to think that if if it wasn't for that minor detail I would not have gotten this job at all [Music] heads up guys my name is the chana welcome back to the couch of relaxing conversations for another storytime with China today I thought that I would tell you this story of how I got my first job in the games industry and what was pretty much my first full-time job my first real job in general and this video is really gonna be a good sequel or I guess technically a prequel to the last video I made which is why I left that job so we all know how the prequels are so to get the full picture of how I got this job in the first place we kind of have to go back to the beginning of my time at university so the year was 2014 that's wrong so the year was 2013 I just finished high school the year before and I had decided to do a software engineering degree at a university and this was the first year of me actually starting that degree at this point I basically had decided that I wanted to work in the games industry I was a lot more interested in the actual software engineering kind of programming aspect of that I didn't want to do any kind of games degree because I knew that from what I had seen in open days those were a lot more about like how to use unity there were essentially all inclusive kind of courses where you did like a little bit of programming like 3d modeling aren't related stuff game design I wasn't really interested in any of that I was interested specifically in the technology and I guess the technical aspects behind games so I figured that doing a software engineering degree and then maybe like specializing or majoring in some sort of games related thing would be a better way to go because that was more or less the kind of stuff that I was interested in learning and the job that I essentially wanted so I started the software engineering degree at the beginning of 2013 so you can study the course and then the year before your last provided that you had good enough grades you could choose to do either like a six month or a 12 month industry placement basically like you could go and work for a company in the industry that you were studying in for six or twelve months and most of them were around twelve months or a year and then the following year you'd come back to university and complete that final year and then graduate and in a lot of these cases because you had already spent time working at a company for like a year you could potentially get hired back by that company since you've already got experience with them and provided you do a good job of course they would want to offer you a full-time position and that year of work experience would be like completely paid and everything and I just thought that like that to me was so attractive because even though I guess technically prolongs your caused by a year the fact that you actually get real-world experience and you can put that on your resume as like one year of work experience that to me was so much more valuable than just going to university completing a degree and then you know trying to find a job with no experience because of course everyone wants to hire someone with experience so a quick recap I was doing a four year degree and then what would happen is the fourth year of that degree I wouldn't be doing the degree I would do the work experience that was my plan and then I'd come back on the fifth year to finish my degree and everything was looking good however about halfway through that first semester me and a couple of friends that I had made were basically seeing that what that specific course was and because it was like specifically like a Bachelor of engineering I think software engineering being like the major because it was a Bachelor of engineering part of the course was the fact that it would actually give you an engineering license and in order to make that happen they obviously had to have to teach you engineering in general and so that first year was mostly made up of engineering units there was some introduction like to programming unit but a lot of the units or subjects and this university they were called units a lot of the units there were to do with engineering nothing to do with programming whatsoever so for example in that first semester I had done like an engineering maths unit I had done a like electronic systems unit and that electronic systems unit was basically all about like drawing circuit diagrams like putting resistors down trying to do the math to figure out like how much of everything you'd need drawing PCBs I mean there were some fun parts to that that I enjoyed like the practical things when we got like the soldiering irons out and we actually built stuff that was fun but for the most part sitting in a classroom during circuit diagrams or doing PCB designs in some PCB software on the computer that was just not really at all related to what I wanted to do and it's also important to remember that because of all of this I was also going to be at uni for an extra year and then I also have to pay for that extra year and so me and these friends decided that this was not something we wanted to do maybe we can change into a degree that is a little bit more in line with what we care about and what we want to do which is like programming and so we found this other degree to this University offered which was like a Bachelor of Science professional software development being I guess the major I'm not sure like if it was specifically the major or if it like a narrow focus anyway and this degree was a three year degree so it was one year less which that's important to note by the way the fact that that one was a four year and a three year degree remember that because we're gonna come back to that and so everything was approved and we were all able to switch into this new degree but there was a bit of a caveat and that was the fact that some of the subjects that we had done were not exactly the same obviously as the first year subjects of that other degree and specifically some of them were able to be carried across so the engineering maths degree that I did I was able to basically get that credited towards another Univ study which was in the new degree which was I think it was called like I don't know some really basic math thing about like bullying's and like truth tables and just like completely just easy stuff that everyone knew without actually even having to study it but I remember even that was like a bit of a fight like I had to be like look engineering maths like clearly way more advanced yes it didn't cover truth tables but come on like everyone knows what that is please credit me towards this unit and finally they agreed but the electronic systems degree which was about PCBs and like circuit diagrams and resistors and all of that stuff I couldn't get that transferred at all into the new degree so because of that I withdrew from that subject I still finished my engineering maths and all the other units which were basically I think the same in both of these degrees and I ended that first semester having completed three units instead of four because I would drew from electronic systems I didn't need it that's also an important detail so long story short second half of 2013 was great I was in this new to curry I loved it my friends loved it we did like some like various programming subjects there were still some things that weren't like the most fun things in the world but we weren't really doing engineering specifically anymore like we weren't doing I think engineering maths B or the second part of that which would have been in that semester it was more in line with what we were doing and we were happy because we'd basically be finishing a year earlier we wouldn't get the engineering license but we didn't really want that or care about that it was great so then in comes 2014 and that was the second year I guess of these of this three year degree now because this was now a three year degree that work experience year gets pushed up a year it gets brought forward so instead of it being the fourth year and then the 50 I'll come back and finish uni it was the third year now and then the fourth year I'd come back and finished so in other words it would have been in 2015 the year summer of grade actually moved moved out of my parents place that year I just turned 19 I was living in an apartment I was actually work wise I was making videos for machinima and that's how I was basically paying the bills I'm sure a lot of you don't even know about that but in 2014 I think it doesn't 13 even I made a series called lapses for machinima drama was like a little minecraft machinima fortunately all that stuff is gone because machinima doesn't exist anymore that was quite a cool little series had like millions of views it was really fun to produce then later I made some call duty videos for missionary spawn anyway good times is all I can say from that the first semester of uni was really enjoyable I think I did like a daughter structures and patterns you know which was about C++ that was my first real exposure to C++ and I loved it I was doing a lot of programming in my spare time as well and because of that because I was trying to build games and you know do all this stuff one of my lecturers ended up pointing me towards another kind of lecturer in the university who is essentially in charge of Alder like game related units and just in general in charge of game dev related stuff at this university and me and him ended up becoming pretty good friends like we'd go out to lunch together I'd constantly come to his office like probably once every week at least just to show him what I was working on get his advice on things because this was someone obviously who was a lot more qualified and had a lot more experience than me and just being able to basically have a mentor like that and you know talk about all this stuff I was hang-on was really cool because i was doing a lot of stuff in my spare time and i was trying to learn as much as possible that was really important I think the fact that I had that kind of friendship with him that was really important to me getting a job because what happened after that is I went to Europe during like the winter holidays he s like June July and so after I returned from Europe it was really time to start applying to all of these different jobs and I remember the first thing that happened was literally that first week at uni that was back he called me into his office and he was like look not really supposed to be telling you this but one of the companies who wants to take in students for next year is EI and they have a studio here in Melbourne and they want three interns and I think you'd be really good for that position and I was like wow that's pretty cool because first of all that rate I think the companies you usually what would happen is these companies would basically contact this university or the university will contact them and be like hey we have students do you want them or they'd be like we want some interns and then they'd be like this long list of companies and then you know I think in a few weeks a few weeks into that semester you'd start applying to all these companies with like your resume and your cover letter and all that stuff and this was like a few weeks even prior to that so I already kind of had a heads up and I was like cool this sounds like exactly what I would want and then when the kind of the list of companies came out and they were probably like 10 to 20 companies on that list so there were quite a few when that came out I saw very quickly that this whole like ei situation was by far just the best thing out of all of that and the reason was they were about 20 companies a lot of them had nothing to do with games and in fact I think EA was the only games company on that list but furthermore there was only one company I think that was actually in the city EA was kind of on the outskirts of the city I live close to the city and then a lot of the other companies most of them all of them really were were like a 40-minute to one hour drive from me and when I looked up the address for this for this EA studio it was it was literally walking distance from my place so there was one place that was kind of in the city which would have been about maybe like a half an hour commute there was EA which was like walking distance from my place walking distance I mean about a half an hour walk so not like completely close but still about a half an hour walk and when I started working there I ended up riding my skateboard a lot of the times to work which is like 15 to 20 minutes away so it was just in a really good location and when I saw it that and when I realized just how close it was to my place and how great that would be compared to like a 40 to 60 minute drive just way out of the city to try and get to these companies I was like I need this job like I absolutely I don't even want to apply anywhere else and in fact I don't think I did apply anywhere else which was like clearly obviously not the right thing to do but I was just so set on this that I was like I could not imagine working anywhere else you know I think one of the companies was like Zendesk which is like kind of like a a helpdesk like online web app slash web site a few of the other ones were to do with like school systems or like and some kind of engineering work maybe the point is none of it was games related a lot of it sounded really boring and I mean uh like obviously I would have still done it because I would need programming experience and I'm sure it wouldn't be as bad as it sounds but for me at that point in time I was like you know what if this does not work out I'm just gonna do I'm just gonna keep doing YouTube and finish my degree I don't want to work anymore anywhere else I need this specific job and so of course I applied I wrote my resume we had a unit I think based on teaching us how to do that and then I also wrote a cover letter I emailed that to like the the kind of work experience department in this university who'd then emailed it to AAA and I think two hours later I got a direct email from AAA being like hey like you know we've we've read your resume and in my resume I had like my youtube channel and the fact that I was obviously interested in programming and I was kind of teaching that and doing all that stuff and in my cover letter I explained as well what I what I like doing and how I was really interested in like building game engines and all of this stuff and so I got the email back from EA about two hours later and they were like you know we want to have an interview like as soon as possible and also we have an event coming up that's kind of like a little bit exclusive that was like in someplace in that like the I think the 50th floor of some building in the city you know come along to that as well if you're interested and so I was I was like wow this is incredible well you know let's have an interview like I don't know we set up an interview like three days later but there was one problem and there was one complication and that is the fact that I technically didn't qualify for this work experience based on this University's criteria and the reason for that was as I mentioned before I had switched degrees and I had done three units of study in that first semester of my first year instead of four and one of the requirements for this work experience program I think you needed like a credit average and mine was quite a bit above that and then you also needed to have completed 12 units now this was semester two in my second year so I'd done three semesters which if you did full semesters that would have been 4 times 3 which is 12 units that would have been perfect but I hadn't done one unit because I couldn't I mean I switched degrees and it was just it was it was not relevant so I had 11 units and I needed 12 and so the university I think ended up sending me an email being like actually I'm sorry you don't qualify for this and I was like that's that's insane like this is this is perfect they want to interview me this is great and so I went to my gay like head of game development friend and I was like this is you know this sucks can you do anything about this and he was like let me see what I can do I'll make a call then the next day I get a phone call being like it's all good I straightened it out you're good to go and I was like thank you and so I had that interview I think the next day a TA and I was that was in like October 2014 so I was I was 19 which is pretty pretty crazy to think about and I was basically I had like a 15 minute interview with HR and they just asked me about like where I see myself in five years you know what kind of person I am what my hobbies are all that stuff and then came the technical director of the whole studio along with his like righthand and I'm just looking at this right hold on let me this is why it's better to close all of your windows and film in a completely controlled lighting environment because anyway whatever and they gave me like a two-hour technical interview like it went on for sir maybe was like an hour and a half I think maybe the full interview with HR was like two hours or something like that but for an hour and a half we bait they asked me so many questions about various data structures about like you know shaders in OpenGL and like about graphics programming and a lot of the stuff that I I guess it claimed to have done in my videos or in my cover letter or in one way or another it was I mean I I definitely didn't answer a lot of their questions correctly but I guess they were more interested in my kind of line of thinking and how I thought through these problems even if I didn't know and of course they revealed later they would have just kept going until I basically had said that there's no way that I knew any of this because the point was for me to festival not pretend that I knew stuff that I didn't and just admit to not knowing something but also have a go at actually solving the problem to the best of my ability which of course is it's pretty standard for an interview although I don't think I I probably didn't know that at the time and then I remembered the last kind of half hour of that was damn being like alright what do you want to know about us and I had so many questions I mean I had done a bit of research on the studio I saw some of the games they made I asked them a bunch of questions about that I asked them what it was like to work there what their favorite things to work on were you know all of that stuff we just chatted for half an hour and I remember we would be sitting there in silence and I'd be like you know I almost I was like trying to think of something to say because I was like I don't want them to leave now like this is a great conversation and I felt like leading up to the interview I was quite nervous but then as soon as I sat down I was just like well this is fun this is fun you know I'm gonna try and enjoy this and I wasn't nervous at all during the interview and I'm like that a lot generally leading up to an event or leading up to something I'll be quite nervous but then when it's actually happening you know it's it's totally fine I play music a lot and it's pretty much the same as what I'm getting ready for a performance or something like that it's like it's quiet it's quite nerve-wracking but then when you're actually up there on stage performing it's totally fine and I mean it's the same here you've just got to actually take in the moment and enjoy it to the max because soon it's gonna be over and then you'll be like why didn't I enjoy myself more and I think that's excellent advice for an interview because it's a lot of fun to actually be in a situation like that and also quite a unique experience that you of course don't get every day and so long story short after that technical interview I again had some time with HR they asked me how it went and it was just great and I think that was on like the Friday and then the event they had invited me to was on the following Thursday and I actually ended up seeing the technical director of like that studio who had done the interview with me along with my friend from the front like the head of games development stuff at my university he was there as well at the event we ended up kind of being in a circle talking and and he asked him kind of in front of me so I had the interview with younger and it was like well I approved him so it's you know I guess HR and all that stuff and then the following day I remember getting a phone call while I was like Nicole was volunteering at the help desk at the programming help desk at University as cheesy as that might sound but I remember getting a phone call and they were like it was from it was HR from the EA studio and they were like hey you know just wanted to say that uh you know we loved you and we want to offer you a contract so we're going to send that over and the technical director did that interviewed you actually wants you on his team which is like a game engine team so we'll put you on that first we'll see how that goes in there you know maybe we'll move you around and we'll kind of find a place for you but ultimately like congratulations will email you the contract and yeah so that was I remember that was quite an amazing feeling I was particularly excited that I was not only working at this studio but I was working on the technical directors team because I knew that well he worked on the game engine team and his team was in charge of building the game engine that this studio used for all of their games so I was super excited about that and yeah and I think that the thing that always gets me with this is that if I had not changed degrees if I had stayed in that software engineering degree then I would never have gone this internship because this internship was taking place during it was during 2015 but if I had done a four-year degree instead of a three-year degree my work experience here would have been 2016 and with that internship specifically so ei wanted three interns they ended up hiring two they wanted and and one of them I think later became a designer or something like it wasn't even didn't even stay as a software engineer so they basically got just me as a software engineer out of that and then it since then I think they have never done a software engineering internship I think four years down the road or three years down the road they did like a game design internship or something but especially this core technology team never had done an internship after that and ei that es you do as a hauled into an internship so it's absolutely crazy to think that if if it wasn't for that minor detail I would not have gotten this job at all and of course not only that but the fact that I was friends with that lecturer and he knew me and he knew I was good for this job he was able to make that phone call to kind of rewrite the rules of this university had and actually get me accepted as well and I think that's like really kind of humbling to think about the fact that that it's you know literally like the Stars just had to align to make this happen and I'm so thankful for that and that internship was absolutely fantastic within like my first day at that internship and I might make a video talking about what what working at EA and specifically what that internship experience was like few guys interested leave a comment below that felt like day one I had already pushed code to like the master branch of their code repository and I think within two weeks I was like in charge of developing like the level editor and adding new features and stuff so in terms of how they treated me in that actual internship experience it was absolutely amazing and I talked a little bit about like how much I enjoyed working at EA and how good that experience was in my while at EA video I know a lot of comments said that they thought I was like lying or just painting EA in a good light I'm not sure exactly why I would do that I don't work for them anymore they're definitely not paying me anything but I do want to mention that of course I live in Australia in Melbourne and I'm sure that the experience of working for AAA in Melbourne is very different from working for EA in the US because well first of all we have different laws we have different like we have different employee and employment laws so that's gonna make a big difference and then also in general the Australian culture is completely different from the US so again my experience was fantastic and I would I would work there again for sure but you know if you don't like to experience in the US then that's cool so just keep that in mind I'm specifically talking about ei in Australia anyway hope you guys enjoyed this story time with Jonah if you did please do not forget to hit that like button it really helps the channel out thank you all for watching I will see you next time on this couch of relaxing conversations with another story goodbye [Music]

Channel: The Cherno

Views: 45,854

Keywords: cherno, yan chernikov, ea, electronic arts, frostbite, why cherno quit ea, why i left my job at ea, cherno quit, games industry, first job, how to get a job in the games industry, game studio

Id: ZLpy1U-VBO8

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020