Hey guys,
I’m applying for mid-senior level tech art positions and I’ve never had an interview as a tech-artist so I was wondering what to expect for a AAA console and PC developer.
I’m more of a tech environment artist if that makes a difference.
What are normal questions that are asked, what should I study up on, should I expect some sort of test, if so… what?
If anyone has had any experience with interviews and can give me a heads up I would really appreciate it!
Thanks for any replies!
There was some pretty good feedback over on Jon Logsdon’s twitter yesterday re: interviews… x.com
That’s definitely going to help me know what to ask during the interview, but what kind of questions to interviewers usually ask?
Whenever I have interviewed anyone, rather than asking specific questions I’ll usually try to get them to start talking about various bits of work they have previously done.
This usually gets the person to feel more comfortable and relaxed. This shows me a bit more of them and their communication/people skills. It also gives an idea of how deep their understandings are with regards to what they’re talking about.
If you’re in an interview like that my advice would be to show enjoyment in what you’re talking about. It’s always a plus to see the enthusiasm coming out of someone as they talking about what they do.
Don’t lie about what you know, and always be honest about that, if a company sees you as someone that loves what they do, they will know you’ll learn and you will not be expected to know everything. Someone who claims to know the answer to everything can be a little off putting.
Just my advice, I am sure others will have other advice!
My favorite question lately has been “Tell me what you did yesterday”. It’s usually the first question I ask on phone interviews and the one I throw in half way through the onsite interview.
I like it because it get’s the candidate out of the here and now pressure cooker, allows them to reflect and shows me if they are detail oriented, or like to think in broad brush strokes. Some folks go with a bullet list kind of response, others tell me a story. Both are 100% acceptable, it just let’s me read into their personalities a bit. And to echo Mike’s point it gets them to open up and talk.
Get ready to get reamed by some engineers =) They usually like to test how technical you really are.
Also artists will try to figure out if you’re a good cop or a bad cop
many guys I interview are juniors and English isn’t their strong point (I’m in China). I usually try to get them talk a bit about their own work and find out how much they were involved and how enthusiastic they’re about it.
Then I tell them a bit about how we do work here and what we do - I can usually tell then if people pay attention and if they’re able to follow a) my English and b) the technical terms I use.
Then it’s question time - I really like this part. I probably get most out of this about a candidate. Asking questions and showing interest is the most important for me when hiring juniors. They often don’t know in what direction they want to go (rigging ta, scripter, fx guy, etc). If a guy asks questions it shows me he is interested and curious. That’s most important for getting new guys up to speed, and it avoids hiring people who just take a nap when there’s no work to do, instead of learning stuff on their own.
At this point the interview should be more like a conversation. If it’s not then the chemistry is not right, or the guy is too shy or his English isn’t up to the level that I can safely hand him some stuff we get from clients.
Here in China we get mostly juniors or people with little experience working in western studios on AAA titles. Also there’s not too many people suitable or interested in TA roles. Most are either interested to be pure artists or pure programmers. So the interviews tend not to be too tough. I’m happy if we get people who show potential which we can train ourselves.
Because of this I mostly focus on personal attributes like if the guy is curious, can (or wants) to articulate himself and communicate, if he can think logically and structured and if he he has a good personality so I can pair him up with a mentor TA.
Having tough interviews where we ask people about the intricacies of python classes just doesn’t work. We wouldn’t be hiring anyone that way.
[QUOTE=lkruel;10725]Get ready to get reamed by some engineers =) They usually like to test how technical you really are.[/QUOTE]
Which i find funny, because i wonder really what they can honestly assess from that. God knows if it were to get flipped around and I were to ask some of the tools engineers i’ve worked with to write good Maya code, well…
But that aside, definitely be ready AND ABLE to talk in-depth about the things you’ve worked on. Usually when I ask someone to talk about tools they write, I like to have them go a bit in-depth about the implementation, not really too technical, but I like to have people walk me through design decisions. Sounds easy enough, but I’ve done at least 3 interviews in the last year where someone would tell me about a tool or process but couldn’t tell me about its design or implementation. That sorta thing makes me think that maybe you didn’t have as much to do with the development of said tool as you’re trying to get me to think you did.
Also, specific to interviewing with me, don’t make the mistake of telling me “I’ve written alot of MEL tools, so i learned Python in a few days” or something to the effect of how you learned Python in some insanely short timeslice. The difficulty level of the python questions i’ll ask you then will be inversely proportional to the amount of time you tell me it took you to learn Python…just a friendly warning;)
Well in case of my experience the question which is frequently asked is “describe yourself”, and the “goals in your life”.
Wow thanks for all the great replies, this is helping a lot.
[QUOTE=lkruel;10725]Get ready to get reamed by some engineers =)[/QUOTE]
I’ve been reamed by our engineers here a few times when requesting new tech and it’s always stressful. Any tips on how to prepare for questions engineers might ask?
[QUOTE=djTomServo;10729]
Also, specific to interviewing with me, don’t make the mistake of telling me “I’ve written alot of MEL tools, so i learned Python in a few days” or something to the effect of how you learned Python in some insanely short timeslice. The difficulty level of the python questions i’ll ask you then will be inversely proportional to the amount of time you tell me it took you to learn Python…just a friendly warning;)[/QUOTE]
Is there any way you can give some specific examples about Python questions you asked? I’m just starting to learn it now so figuring out what direction to take my studies will help a lot.
[QUOTE=JaySpec;10735]
Is there any way you can give some specific examples about Python questions you asked? I’m just starting to learn it now so figuring out what direction to take my studies will help a lot.[/QUOTE]
I suspect what Seth is suggesting here is that Python is quick and easy to learn the basics, but it can scale up to as comlplex as you can imagine and there are so many areas it covers it is impossible to be really good at everything in Python. In other words, its probably best to be humble and say that you’ve been working in Python for awhile and feel like you might be a ‘novice’, or wherever you think you are.
If you look up Python code online, there is some stuff that is so crazy complicated/powerful/awesome that it is clear it has been written by experienced engineers. You don’t want to make the mistake of claiming you are at that level. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, after 10 years of MEL, and I’d consider myself only intermediate (relatively advanced experience in our little Tech-Art pond, but in the outside world, still quite a novice).
As far as Python areas to get into:
Classes
Logging
SQL
XML
Unittests
pickle/serialization
Decorators
Profiling
These areas are small steps beyond “the basics”.
Yeah what Jason said. I don’t ask people to write code, i mean i figure by the time you get to the onsite interview, you know how to write code (and hopefully you’ve submitted samples for review). Just for fun I might ask some bit of deep standard library knowledge, or i may have you talk me through a tool and every so often i might stop you and ask for some implementation details, and i’ll see how “pythonic” your answer is, that sort of thing. Basically, learn Python as a language, not as a scripting interface to a DCC app and you’ll probaby be in the right ballpark. At times, when I’m feeling particularly evil, i’ve been known to ask people to solve method resolution order problems, or i’ll toss out some simple trick questions about GIL, you know, things like that. I’ll ask something that might appear to be super complicated, but if you know where to look for the trick, it’s an easy question.
[QUOTE=JaySpec;10735]
Is there any way you can give some specific examples about Python questions you asked? I’m just starting to learn it now so figuring out what direction to take my studies will help a lot.[/QUOTE]
Some other things that are beyond basics of Python is reflection, and also explaining in your own words how python parameters are passed through methods (i.e. pass by reference, pass by value, pass by object, etc. – a lot of people get confused with this)
Also a tip is that the people I discuss with (as interviewers) are more interested in the aptitude to learn, but you should know the basics of the language. If you can’t tell me the difference between mutable/immutable, dictionary/list/set/tuple…then that’s a problem.
great thread so far… 
How do you guys go about interviewing generalists? We have a good demand for those guys to fill “art-IT-support” type roles. Duties usually range from installing plugins/scripts, training artists, documenting, enforcing standards, helping with modeling/animation/rigging/rendering/exporting issues.
How do you go about interviewing specialists? i.e. you interview someone who is supposed to bring a new skill to your team which you yourself are not that familiar with yet. As outsourcer we want our TA team as versatile as possible, yet it’s impossible for an interviewer to be an expert in everything and judge a candidate. How you guys handle this?
[QUOTE=JaySpec;10735]
I’ve been reamed by our engineers here a few times when requesting new tech and it’s always stressful. Any tips on how to prepare for questions engineers might ask?
[/QUOTE]
Honestly, at some point there’s no way to win here. I’ve been asked questions from specific PS3 graphics pipeline questions to how to use different shader functions like cross products.
They’ll just keep drilling until you get a question wrong and then look at you and feel superior. At some point you just need to toss it up and say “That’s something I’d ask one of my graphics engineers”. I think they just want to get a feel of how technical you really are, they’re not trying to hire an engineer, but they want to see where do you fall in the engineering/artist spectrum.
In short, it all depends what position they are trying to fill, pipeline debugger guy, problem solving artist, or maya tools programmer.
One thing that I did learn in this recent round of interviews is that large companies want specialists and small companies want generalist. So if you don’t like being pidgeon-holed look for a small company. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but if you’re going to a company with an established engine and pipelines, odds are they want a crazy good specialist that’s only going to work on X and be a total badass on that.
From what I gather about you, your experience, etc.- prepare to have your world rocked. You know what sort of TA you want to be. So does every person interviewing you (or worse, not care!). So you’ll get all sorts of questions, that are or are not relevant. You’re applying for a mid-level to senior role. That makes it even worse because you’ll be expected to have whatever specific skills the interviewer wants.
It would be very difficult for me to recommend anyone apply for a senior or higher TA spot if they’ve only worked one place as a TA. The exception would be if you have been very involved in the community and know how other studios operate. The TA role at every job is different, and without knowing what’s out there and how different teams operate, how do you know how you fare overall as a TA?
This is important because the less-senior the role, the more you can play up the ‘I’d ask questions and learn’ angle. Which is a great angle in an interview where it’s appropriate. If you’re applying for a senior role, I expect you to have answers.