Recruiting from overseas

Submitted by tachyon on
Forum
Job and Work Experience

I noticed that BlueTongue have an ad in the jobs section of the latest issue of Edge magazine (UK).

Why would an aussie company need to recruit from overseas when we have a lot of talented artists and programmers here. (or don't we?)

Submitted by Red 5 on Thu, 25/09/03 - 7:25 PMPermalink

I've seen a few Aussie developers advertise at datascope also, I don't think there's anything wrong with this... we fill overseas jobs as well, plus it's good to spread experience and techniques globaly.

Submitted by Blitz on Fri, 26/09/03 - 10:48 AMPermalink

I don't know what the position was for, but i would say there could very definitely be a lack of more experienced developers in australia. Most in experienced aussie developers already have jobs or go overseas to work it seems :P.
CYer, Blitz

Submitted by Malus on Fri, 26/09/03 - 7:14 PMPermalink

For lead positions etc you are going to need alot more experience and unfortunately most of the really experienced local people are already working.
I still believe we should be recruiting juniors from home first then OS when you can't find what you need otherwise they can't get that all important experience.

Submitted by Red 5 on Fri, 26/09/03 - 8:58 PMPermalink

I used to work for an Australian game developer a few years ago (no names) who at the time employed around 20-30 artists... all local people with a maximum of around 5 years industry experience. The trouble was no one had enough experience to be in a position where they were looked up to and considered a role model or mentor by anyone else (including the lead artists).
As far as I was concerned (and a few other artists working there) the company should have employed an industry veteran art director or lead artist.
They would have had to advertise the position overseas to fill the role and pay a substancially higher salary than employing a local, but I believe in the long run it would have greatly benefited the company.

Submitted by J I Styles on Fri, 26/09/03 - 10:00 PMPermalink

Sorry to go off an a rant, but this is an interesting topic to me - Yes, we have a largely untapped talent pool, but talent can only get you so far (sorry, the reality is there's no junior lead artist positions) - we have this talent pool, but not too many business hardened veterans with the experiance to support these higher positions. A lot of people see experiance as just the amount of time you've been warming a chair, and complain about these "minimal 2 AAA titles, 4 years" postings, but experiance is more literally the accumulative amount of shit you've had to filter through and learnt to deal with.

Talent can't sort out a dispute between a senior programmer and designer over time allocation for feature creep.

Posted by tachyon on
Forum
Job and Work Experience

I noticed that BlueTongue have an ad in the jobs section of the latest issue of Edge magazine (UK).

Why would an aussie company need to recruit from overseas when we have a lot of talented artists and programmers here. (or don't we?)

Submitted by Red 5 on Thu, 25/09/03 - 7:25 PMPermalink

I've seen a few Aussie developers advertise at datascope also, I don't think there's anything wrong with this... we fill overseas jobs as well, plus it's good to spread experience and techniques globaly.

Submitted by Blitz on Fri, 26/09/03 - 10:48 AMPermalink

I don't know what the position was for, but i would say there could very definitely be a lack of more experienced developers in australia. Most in experienced aussie developers already have jobs or go overseas to work it seems :P.
CYer, Blitz

Submitted by Malus on Fri, 26/09/03 - 7:14 PMPermalink

For lead positions etc you are going to need alot more experience and unfortunately most of the really experienced local people are already working.
I still believe we should be recruiting juniors from home first then OS when you can't find what you need otherwise they can't get that all important experience.

Submitted by Red 5 on Fri, 26/09/03 - 8:58 PMPermalink

I used to work for an Australian game developer a few years ago (no names) who at the time employed around 20-30 artists... all local people with a maximum of around 5 years industry experience. The trouble was no one had enough experience to be in a position where they were looked up to and considered a role model or mentor by anyone else (including the lead artists).
As far as I was concerned (and a few other artists working there) the company should have employed an industry veteran art director or lead artist.
They would have had to advertise the position overseas to fill the role and pay a substancially higher salary than employing a local, but I believe in the long run it would have greatly benefited the company.

Submitted by J I Styles on Fri, 26/09/03 - 10:00 PMPermalink

Sorry to go off an a rant, but this is an interesting topic to me - Yes, we have a largely untapped talent pool, but talent can only get you so far (sorry, the reality is there's no junior lead artist positions) - we have this talent pool, but not too many business hardened veterans with the experiance to support these higher positions. A lot of people see experiance as just the amount of time you've been warming a chair, and complain about these "minimal 2 AAA titles, 4 years" postings, but experiance is more literally the accumulative amount of shit you've had to filter through and learnt to deal with.

Talent can't sort out a dispute between a senior programmer and designer over time allocation for feature creep.