Interview for QA position

Quote from KoKo5oVaR

Is there something shameful for "removed name studio", considering their current financial situation, to offer 4 months insecure underpayed jobs to attract and use motivated youngsters into believing they'll get a full time position in their famous studios ?

Except if it is for nerve personnal interests which i would totally understand, please don't make mapcore becoming this

I don't think it's shameful on their part. It's not unusual practise for QA in the industry to be on temp contracts. I have quite a few friend's in QA at various companies in the UK and they're all on temp, rolling contracts.

QA is often seen as a proving ground for people leaving university or getting in to the industry and having been through it myself before landing my first dev role I'd say it was a valuable experience. I'd recommend doing QA to anyone trying to break in to the industry.

VFX world is even worse in temp contracts ...

on the other side, temp contracts works well for certain situations

Quote from Jord

I don't think it's shameful on their part. It's not unusual practise for QA in the industry to be on temp contracts. I have quite a few friend's in QA at various companies in the UK and they're all on temp, rolling contracts.

QA is often seen as a proving ground for people leaving university or getting in to the industry and having been through it myself before landing my first dev role I'd say it was a valuable experience. I'd recommend doing QA to anyone trying to break in to the industry.

Well i tend to believe that it's not because everyone else does it that this is something alright. I'm not throwing any discredit on the QA field of course, they are indeed especially needed. I also do not contest that you would learn a lot about the development of a video game and all the different fields of a production, adding on this the contacts you would make within a company. But still you got there Jord, of course in the end you would see the experience to be positive, but what for all the others QAs who didn't find any work afterwards.

For small studios, or medium sized ones hold by the balls by their publishers, i would understand temporary rolling contracts. What i find bad though is that big companies doing financially well don't think of another type of organisation for QA work, rather than actually selling to youngsters a hope to stay and the company name to be put on their resumes in exchange of unstable, low-paid jobs nobody in the dev team want to do. But if there is still people to accept, indeed they won't have any reasons to not continue doing it.

Like Nysuatro said, i would be more for an internship in the actual field you would want to work in, because you will do the real thing, with a low salary, but actual work; as bad as it sounds (and there i'm arguing for internships ughh).

Sorry for the rant

Quote from Jord

QA is often seen as a proving ground for people leaving university or getting in to the industry and having been through it myself before landing my first dev role I'd say it was a valuable experience. I'd recommend doing QA to anyone trying to break in to the industry.

I had a talk with a ubi HR and she told me the exact opposite : they prefer to have someone dedicated to his QA job and future role, than someone who just want to apply as QA to break into industry. Of course it could be a good starting point... But imo, better start learning what job you are aiming than trying to "take" another's work.

Even for short time contract (that often means a high level QA with only repetitive tasks, than a responsabilty post), they tend to engage more the one who actually want to be a QA man, then that artist who isn't bad at QA but good at art.

I decline an unofficial intership offer at Arkane few weeks/months before they released Dishonored, i was in urgent need of monney and didn't felt like to beg my university for an intership contract... but now I regret this. Maybe if i accepted these unpleasant conditions i would have a 10000x better job than what i'm doing now, because you can't know what the future will be.

My 2 cents

Ultimately, I think we would rather have lower barriers and slightly worse conditions than super-high barriers and better conditions. It would probably be frustrating if all QA-jobs required 2-5 years of experience but were full time jobs (which is basically the standard for all design positions nowadays).

simple answer, pass

from my little experience, QA is not a great way into the industry these days, it was in the past. There are no rules however, where you come from is never the issue, it's if your any good.

Quote from 2d-chris

simple answer, pass

from my little experience, QA is not a great way into the industry these days, it was in the past. There are no rules however, where you come from is never the issue, it's if your any good.

I kind of agree, even though at CA we have quite a different story. We have some QA embedded in the actual dev team (eg there is a design QA guy sat with the designers, an animation QA who is actually doing most of the work on out cutscenes now....) and quite a large bunchof the older ones have moved onto dev roles.

Quote from KoKo5oVaR

Well i tend to believe that it's not because everyone else does it that this is something alright. I'm not throwing any discredit on the QA field of course, they are indeed especially needed. I also do not contest that you would learn a lot about the development of a video game and all the different fields of a production, adding on this the contacts you would make within a company. But still you got there Jord, of course in the end you would see the experience to be positive, but what for all the others QAs who didn't find any work afterwards.

For small studios, or medium sized ones hold by the balls by their publishers, i would understand temporary rolling contracts. What i find bad though is that big companies doing financially well don't think of another type of organisation for QA work, rather than actually selling to youngsters a hope to stay and the company name to be put on their resumes in exchange of unstable, low-paid jobs nobody in the dev team want to do. But if there is still people to accept, indeed they won't have any reasons to not continue doing it.

Like Nysuatro said, i would be more for an internship in the actual field you would want to work in, because you will do the real thing, with a low salary, but actual work; as bad as it sounds (and there i'm arguing for internships ughh).

Sorry for the rant

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Oh yeh sure. I'd completely encourage people to do level design, art, programming etc to add to their portfolio whilst working in QA. There are a lot of people in QA and fresh University graduates competing for the same limited number of roles, I'm not saying time served in QA should automatically make you a developer.

An internship would be much better experience than a QA role, but QA is still very valuable experience in terms of understanding the development pipeline and seeing it from the other side. I think it's helped me understand the role of QA better. There is a surprising amount of animosity from some developers towards QA and vice versa and I think a lot of that could stem from not understanding what eachother does on a daily basis.

But different companies have different attitudes to hiring and career progress. Having QA experience probably isn't as relevant as it used to be but I don't think it hurts.

Quote from Nerve

QA is definitely something I'd consider, it's just this time around the length of contract/salary were absolutely not worth it. I'm still going to be applying for QA jobs without a doubt, I'm just hoping I find one that's either a longer-term or permanent.

As far as I see it, it's better to be working in QA within the Industry and learning in your own time than it is to be working in a field that is completely unrelated.

It's all exposure to the process which I think will be invaluable when I get around to applying for dev/design roles.

I completely agree with every word written here, and a reason for that will be told in a few weeks.

*wink*

Yeah I can totally understand what you mean about throwing away chances here, but it's still a 2 hour trip for a 6 month QA position. If it was me I'd pass this one up as well. I've been in a similar position, when I was 19 I got offered a junior spot at dice but I was engaged then and my girlfriend refused (understandably) to move so I passed it up. Basically... dump your girlfriend and everything becomes a lot easier! Haha no I'm kidding, but don't pick something that will put a strain on your relationship unless you're both prepared for it.

WHO WAS THE STUDIO?

Two hours trip is nothing, i used to get the train at 6:30 to get to university by 9 in my first trimester.

I would go to the interview, just to see how it is like, then you can always refuse the position for reasons they will never be interested in verifying (i guess).

As relationships goes, my sister and her boyfriend kept alive theirs, and she was studying in Italy, he was in the UK. And they had met the summer just before my sis was starting university, so this went on for about two years (the second year he moved to Italy for ~12 months). They are married now. It's not ideal, but just saying that your motivation will make you move mountains.

Six months "apart" is something perfectly doable if your relationship is destined to go somewhere -- so many of my uni friends had girl/boyfriends back in their home towns in a 2-3 hours commute range.

If your current job kills your spirit and you are already single, with no other ties and have chance to go to the city you love, I would say, do it.

If your current job truly sucks the life out of you it's time to look for other opportunities regardless imho.

jesus just go already, you'll regret it if you don't