Getting Closer
Posted in RTS From Scratch on Tue, March 25, 2008 at 05:33 PMLast week my phone interview with Insomniac went really, really well. I spoke with two gameplay programmers there (one lead and one senior) in a conference call. First they asked me some questions on me and my programming background, why I wanted to get into games, etc. Next we talked a bit about game design on the last game I beat (Crysis). Following that was the technical section, with some questions about 3D math and then some on C/C++. I felt I nailed all of the questions except for one small one (although I did get started on the right track). After that I got to ask them a bunch of questions: what they liked about Insomniac, how they enjoyed coding for the PS3, what compiler they use, etc. It was a ton of fun! They promised to get back with me in a few days via the HR department.
Fast forward to today, when I received a call from HR! They want to do an in-person interview and they are flying me out to Burbank next week. Awesome! I am really, really excited. I'll be there in their office for about 5 hours, after which I will fly back here to Las Vegas. This is such great news and I am SOOOO relieved. AWESOME!
But that's not all! Last night I heard back from one of the top engineers at Bungie who had reviewed my test. One of my solutions was non-optimal, and he gave me the chance to come up with a better solution. One of my solutions had a performance problem on large data sets, which he asked me how I could fix. Lastly, he asked a "how might you..." question about doing something differently on one of the questions. I was SOOOO relieved to hear back from Bungie, and the fact that they were giving me a chance to improve on my test must be a good sign, right? Of course!
I wrote back and two of my corrections were right on target. The third was acceptable, but couldn't be used under all circumstances, so I had a third chance to improve upon it. Luckily I solved it in the general case before I struck out, and was informed that I passed! I'm supposed to be hearing from their lead recruiter soon to talk about various options. AWESOME!
Really, both Insomniac and Bungie are incredible companies and I would be immensely privileged to work for either one. Hopefully I'll also get a chance to visit the Bungie offices in WA soon! It will be an incredibly hard decision if I get an offer from both. Anyway, I'm just so grateful that I'm making progress towards another offer!
Stay tuned for more news!
2 comments:
I'm so jealous. I would love to get a chance to program for the Cell. But it's really good to hear that it's finally working out for you.
Youre doing great mate! :)