My personal rollercoaster of job hunting and growth in the games industry | Pocket Gamer.biz

This article was originally published on LinkedIn and has been republished and edited with permission of the author, Olle Pridiuksson, founder of Gamedev Camp.

Doomscrolling LinkedIn in your first week of 2024? Jobless and sad? I’ve been there too.

I’ve been officially jobless since about 2019, despite 10 years of experience (at the time) and a stellar portfolio at Unity and Activision Blizzard. Since more than 11,000 people in the games industry have involuntarily become unemployed in 2023, I want to share my experience as an example of what not to do after losing your job.

Disclaimer: Since 2019 I have enjoyed well-paid contract gigs. In 2022 I raised an angel round to found Gamedev Camp and am quite happy where I am now. But to get here I needed to fail a metric ton of job interviews, I fell into a depression, lost my girl, my home, my friends, and restarted my life pretty much. Quite a detour!

During the first months of becoming jobless in 2019, I:

1. Started a newsletter to share my priceless life wisdom – because obviously the world couldn’t wait to know my life philosophy and I expected all recruiters to fall for it and headhunt me instantly.
2. Felt super lonely, since apparently humans have day jobs and don’t have that many time slots for socialisomg despite me having all this time and energy.
3. Set up all kinds of LinkedIn filters and tags so that I’m on top of every possible relevant job position in the region.
4. Applied to multiple positions, including those that required relocation, to see how the market prices me.
5. Felt very smart and cool about myself.

Now, I think that it is the fifth point that hindered me the most back then. See, as a hired employee, I’d have to work in a team – exactly what HRs and recruiters are tasked to evaluate.

While I focused on myself being the coolest ever instead, putting my bets on charisma and leadership skills, the hiring people could have felt that I lacked hard skills and wasn’t a good fit for the team. Rock stars usually don’t get hired, they grow inside the organisation.

Same message, a different angle:

I felt like (rightfully so) a super-experienced professional that the employers should race to get. Problem was, it wasn’t exactly the time when my particular expertise was in high demand. I could have repackaged myself to look hot for the market or I could have focused on what I was immediately best at and looked only for ideal job opportunities where they were. I did something in-between instead.

In 2023 and 2024 I see that utilitarian and low-key professionals have a higher chance of winning job opportunities. It makes sense if you think about it.

Action list I needed when I was jobless:

1. Stop being self-centric douche ‘rock star’ – The best starting point is to stop talking about yourself all the time. Talk to people outside of your professional bubble, be curious about them.
2. Find one thing that you’re best at and are passionate about. A good start could be to participate in team projects where your peers are unfamiliar to you, so you have to constantly make decisions about what is important to you, what ideas of yours are worth pushing forward, and how to best explain yourself without the pressure of your authority.
3. Allow yourself three to four months to build the new you. I was spending so much time on sending my CV around and applying for jobs, that it built anxiety that led to nervousness, very bad vibes and negative job results, followed by depression. Don’t be like me – allow yourself to be unemployed for several months and use the time to practically figure out your story and build the portfolio that backs it.

This is not a postmortem or a self-beating of post

It is a reflection on the 201,000 views Reddit thread that I started in r/gamedev.

Experienced people literally drown in anxiety and desperation instead of doing what is obvious to any junior – take a bit of time to build your portfolio and work for free for a bit with people outside of your bubble. I recognised myself from back in 2019 and decided to write this blog post.

I can even imagine a dialogue with the past version of me like this:

Current me: Look, the market is shit, your portfolio is under NDA and your huge experience is probably not relevant for the jobs market anymore – come to Gamedev Camp, build a small game with a team and you’ll be outplay your competition very quickly.

Past me: No! I can do it all by myself, and I will.

Don’t be me, be better. Happy New Year!