News Game programmers are hard to find

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/03/03/game-programmers-are-hard-to-find/1

A new survey by TIGA has found that gamer programmers are very hard to find and that most game developers think the industry needs tax incentives.

 

game programmers are hard to find? well, i got turned down from 2 game programming jobs because 'it didn't seem like i wanted the job enough', so obviously they're not _that_ hard to find...
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It seems like most developers are hard to find at the moment. We are looking for a php web developer and not having much luck. Very hard to find anyone (cheeky plug, in West midlands, PM me for details if you know anyone!)

 

Well, if you want 20 years old programmers with at least 10 years of professional experience, willing to work for what a Chinese woman earns by making Nike shoes and willing to work as long as the former mentioned w/o benefits... I guess it's kinda hard.

 

Under those conditions, you could work as an engineer in Germany!

 

Trust me, I know. Born in Offenbach, lived there for 20 years, 4 years in Hamburg, then I finally made it out of there. Although Hamburg is one of the nicest cities in the world.
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Back on topic: I guess it's even harder to find a job at the moment than for companies to find new employees. Just a guess though...

 

How many of these companies want degrees?

 

This is bollocks - I've been applying for jobs in the games industry left right and centre - all of them saying "no programming vacancies"

 

The price of a being a games developer is to have no relationship, no life, no weekends, no sunlight, no sleep, no free time and not much else.

The pay is pretty crap for the hours and skill as well because the job is similar to being a fireman uk in terms of supply and demand.
Except being a fireman you get to wear a uniform and go to crazy house parties where students have set off the fire alarms just to see some men in uniforms.

Edit: Being a fireman, I would guess you can have all the things mentioned above.

 

I think firefighters also work 240ish days a year and get paid for 365.

 

a good (2:1 or higher, with demonstrable ability) bachelor's degree in computer science is the minimum these guys will consider. the demonstrable ability part is huuuugely important, however.

 

Dont forget, you cant be a nerdy coder in your bedroom at home, you will need to be able to talk to people in order to work as a team. The ability to knock out code is worthless if people can't talk to you about it... I guess that's stating the obvious.

 

i think good programmers are hard to find anywhere, in any industry - i worked in games before, but now i'm in finance, and it's nearly the same story, difference is that there's so much money in finance, they hire 4 people to do the work that could be done by just one good programmer

 

I know a few people that are talented with computers but don't have money to get that piece of paper that says you are "officially" educated in computers. There are only a few lucky people that get into a high paying industry without papers.

 

...

 

very true.

and thus those few people should work their ass off in walmart and save enough money to get a degree.

 

I love that. Anyone employing 4 programmers to do the work one that could do obviously has no practical project experience. It's the same type of person who thinks that throwing money (hence more programmers) into the pile gets work done more quickly.

 

It's actually good to have more than one programmer, so they dont end up being prima donnas, thus keeping each other in check.

 

Correct...you should have more than one.

I have one programmer for my production machine...
if anything happends to this guy we have 30 multi-million dollar machines worth of scrap

 

I meant that having 4 programmers to do the work of one doesn't reduce the time by 4, like most management types seem to believe. I won't get into the discussion of how many a company should have, as there are so many different cases, but having a mountain of them won't turn you into Microsoft. As for being primadonnas, they will only be primadonnas once in their career for one company.