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[godsavant]

Taking a peek at a few Jobs listings for various development studios, I notice a ton of listings for such positions as 'Senior Programmer' or 'Chief Environmental Artist', with the qualifications to boot. These being prime leadership positions that usually entail tenure, wouldn't it make more sense for a studio to promote an existing employee to that position — one who's already familiar with the project and work environment — thereby creating a lower-tier, easier-to-fill job opening at the bottom, instead?

With the dev cycles for a typical game I understand the importance of new hires having the expertise to hit the ground running, but it seems to me that entrusting these types management roles to someone from outside the company is quite risky. Can anyone with more industry experience speak to this?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

usually they want to hire people with experience for those positions, which means hiring them *away from* other companies. it's better to get a lead programmer from a competing company than to promote one of your own programmers to lead programmer

also, often the higher level positions require skill. promoting someone without skill will get you no where; the majority of people in any career are horrible, the ones who can actually lead teams are a rare thing to find. so often they have nobody who they can promote who is capable of the job

so basically: is it really more risky to hire someone who you know can do the job (because he's done the job for other companies) than to promote someone who you are unsure can do the job?

[PompiPompi]

Yea, I realized that as well that even in big corporates where you think they know what they are doing, they are full of chaos and incompetent people.

[Dacke]

Leadership is a separate skill from programming. You can be a great programmer and a lousy/inexperienced leader at the same time.

[Xienen]

Leadership is a separate skill from programming. You can be a great programmer and a lousy/inexperienced leader at the same time.

Quite true...I also dealt with the opposite for many years...a lead programmer who could manage a project decently, but couldn't really program very well(but thought he could).  I believe this is just as lousy of a candidate for a lead programmer.  I think there's a delicate balance between competency and humbleness that a lead programmer must strike, as they should be respected by those they are leading without being so full of themselves as to not listen to their staff...on top of being an excellent project and people manager.  As was said earlier, this is truly a rare set of qualities, so hiring from outside is often the only choice.

[fentlewoodlewix]

Quite true...I also dealt with the opposite for many years...a lead programmer who could manage a project decently, but couldn't really program very well(but thought he could).  I believe this is just as lousy of a candidate for a lead programmer.  I think there's a delicate balance between competency and humbleness that a lead programmer must strike, as they should be respected by those they are leading without being so full of themselves as to not listen to their staff...on top of being an excellent project and people manager.  As was said earlier, this is truly a rare set of qualities, so hiring from outside is often the only choice.

The solution here is to create two positions, Tech Lead and Team Lead.

[Tumetsu]

Leadership is a separate skill from programming. You can be a great programmer and a lousy/inexperienced leader at the same time.

Our programming teacher at university once said something about how ironic it is how they first train us several years to become good at programming & software development. After few years of work most of us has risen to leading and management tasks, something we have almost none education. He was talking about CS degree.

[Xienen]

Our programming teacher at university once said something about how ironic it is how they first train us several years to become good at programming & software development. After few years of work most of us has risen to leading and management tasks, something we have almost none education. He was talking about CS degree.

I don't think it's accurate to say that most rise to leading/management, but it's still an interesting point.  I think that's why universities offer Software Engineering, which appears to discuss software architecture and project management along with programming.

[nyyjen]

If you only hire 'experienced leads' then how are the rest ever going to get any experience? Seems like the typical chicken and egg problem.

From my experience in the industry I would say external hires are preferred by some companies, because it is less upsetting for people within the team. Mainstream game development is highly competitive, the majority of devs are looking for a lead opportunity, because it is usually the only way for creative input. So once such an opportunity becomes available it is basically war. Everyone has reasons why only they would be perfect for the job. If you see a company hiring for a lot of lead positions, then you can typically deduct that they have an issue with studio culture and probably no clear career progression guidelines. I would stay away.

In my opinion, good companies will always first try to promote from within (even people with little or no experience) before hiring from the outside.   

[randomshade]

If you're looking for entry level jobs, your best bet may be to look at companies that you've never heard of.

Wait, what? Big Name studios working on Big Name games often require lots of experience in all of their positions across the board. There are entry level programming positions at these places from time to time, but as you've found out, that's usually the exception.

I do not have proof of this, but my experience has been that the majority of entry level programming jobs in the games industry exist in the small and medium sized companies that aren't working on AAA blockbusters. Instead these places put out licensed titles, casual/family games, ports, localizations, etc. These places struggle to bring in high caliber external talent (and often can't afford them anyway) and thus bring in fresh young folks, teach them up, and typically said folks move on to the higher level positions on bigger games at bigger companies after a few years (or quit the industry.)

Again, this isn't the absolute truth of the situation, but I believe it is more commonly correct than not.

[Muz]

It's not so much about trying to find people to do the job, but trying to find better people. Most will probably just keep turning down applicants, unless they find someone truly exceptional.

If they actually have someone in the team that they believe is qualified for the job, they'll certainly promote them, because you do want to reward smart, loyal employees and after knowing them for a year or more, you should be able to gauge if they're ready for management.

Sometimes you don't actually want them in management because it's a waste of their skills. I've seen a few companies recently that actually pay fresh graduates much higher than upper middle management. Mainly because upper mid management is not actually expected to do anything, they're just there for the bureaucratic task of asking people to do stuff and handling paperwork. Some are not there to guide, but to delegate.

[Garthy]

You can ask an external applicant to bring with them x years of existing experience with that level of role. The internal applicant being promoted will have to learn.

You can expect an internal applicant to bring with them x years of experience with your specific environment. The external applicant, regardless of experience, will have to learn.

If you hire externally too often, your employees will realise that they can only be promoted via horizontal shifts between organisations.

It depends on what is more important to the company in question.

IMHO.

[PompiPompi]

Just because it's a "senior position" don't think you are not going to be a code monkey pushed around for every management's little whim.
I think the "senior position" is ment to lure software engineers with more experience and competence. But they are still gonna make you work as hard as they can make you, for the least money they can pay you.
The reason they don't promote internal workers is that most programmers never become competent, even those with years of experience.
The incompetent programmers either become management, or stay in a static position in the company for a long time.
I think it is possible to be promoted inside the company as a software engineer, but usually this promotion leads to an advisor status. Someone who don't really code much himself but actually advise and shares his vast knowledge and experience.
A "senior position" is still a position of someone who needs to sit and code a lot and he is still replaceable.
So "senior position" is part of standard corporate propoganda. Corporates like to tell you how lucky you are for working for them, and how lucrative is your job, but that's BS.
Most people in the company are replaceable, and as such, they know they can leverage that to push you around playing into your fears of losing your job.

[Muz]

If you hire externally too often, your employees will realise that they can only be promoted via horizontal shifts between organisations.

Funny, that's exactly how the working culture is where I live. Though good companies realize it quickly and give significant raises (like 30% a year) to loyal skilled employees. Programming skill is way harder to find than management skill.

Corporates like to tell you how lucky you are for working for them, and how lucrative is your job, but that's BS.

Lol, I dunno. From what I've seen, a lot of companies are actually trying to get a lot of their dead weight to resign, but can't, so they promote them into useless/harmless positions with low pay, hoping that those people feel underappreciated enough to quit. Most of the time those people actually do a decent enough job to be able to sue companies for firing them. It's a little passive-aggressive.

[EdgeOfProphecy]

Taking a peek at a few Jobs listings for various development studios, I notice a ton of listings for such positions as 'Senior Programmer' or 'Chief Environmental Artist', with the qualifications to boot. These being prime leadership positions that usually entail tenure, wouldn't it make more sense for a studio to promote an existing employee to that position — one who's already familiar with the project and work environment — thereby creating a lower-tier, easier-to-fill job opening at the bottom, instead?

With the dev cycles for a typical game I understand the importance of new hires having the expertise to hit the ground running, but it seems to me that entrusting these types management roles to someone from outside the company is quite risky. Can anyone with more industry experience speak to this?

The "always looking for senior/lead developer" problem is an interesting one.  Honestly, I think the big problem is that there simply aren't that many people in the world who can do those jobs well.  It's tough to find really excellent programmers, for two reasons.

Problem one is that the skill of a programmer does not scale linearly, unlike other professions.  Meaning, the difference between an excellent programmer and a good programmer is gigantic.  It's not like the excellent programmer is 2x or 3x better, but more like 10x or 20x better, and can simply solve problems that less skilled programmers cannot.  Having 5 mediocre programmers on staff is way, way worse than having 1 really good one.

Problem two is that there is not a strong correlation between time spent programming and how good someone is at programming.  A lot of people muddle their way through programming and never really get better at it, others can be very dedicated and improve their skills, but they're rarer.  Given this, it's tough to train people up internally to become better programmers.  Certainly not impossible, but a bigger gamble than one might think.

I've also heard that some larger sectors of the industry suffer from a kind of brain drain, where they can't entice or keep really highly skilled developers.  The game development industry competes with the conventional software development industry, which can pay exceedingly well, and that tends to attract a lot of top engineering talent.  I imagine the indie market, with its allure of greater creative freedom and ownership of a company, also pulls people away from bigger companies.