How to make badass developers run away

I just read a post (see link below) and, passing the glory bit about doing well on Steam, I see NOTHING in here that would attract a skilled developer:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/paid-launched-mmo-has-one-spot-for-one-badass-programmer.385155/

I understand that discussions around job posts are closed (maybe for the better). Still I would kindly suggest posters observe half decent standards:

- Advertising the benefits of doing 'hard work' for them.
- Showing minimum respect for the community.
- Offering better than laughable financial compensation (may not apply to the above)
- Avoiding not clearly motivated "I want a guy from [paste-your-country-name]" posts (does not apply to the above).
- Try to have a forward looking, positive attitude towards the devs you're trying to hire as they are NOT responsible for your HR blunders.
- Write concise, informative content.

Thanks for reading.

 

I think you are way off base, I think its a great post. Its very clear they aren't looking for your standard freelancer, they are looking for someone who fits their way of doing things and their seemingly brusque personalities.

A job ads purpose is to find a person who will fit the requirements, not to attract as many offers as possible. Seems they are specifically trying to filter out people that don't fit, they filtered you out (and me too)... seems they are doing a good job of it.

Looping in @DivergenceOnline in case they have something to add.

PS I will add that I didn't like the bit where they say their project is bigger and much better than everyone else's, but at least they believe in their project.

 

I think its a great post.
They clearly define their expectations, and what they are, and aren't looking for in a developer.

 

Apart from the tone of that post, which I can only describe as incredibly condescending , they are at least defining what they want and what they expect. The holier than you attitude is really off-putting though.

It would also be much better if they followed the what you will not be paid with section with a what we will pay you for section. Also, little confused by "working out bugs on your own pc" - fixing bugs is a huge part of work for a developer, are you saying that bug squashing is unpaid? Or only bugs that effect my PC ? If it is the first, count me out.

"Time spent "researching" how to do the tasks we've asked you to do." - So please define this? A lot of developing is by its very nature research - researching how to implement system (there are often many choices to get the same result)
- researching how to integrate it into the existing codebase (again many choices). Sometimes you might want to test a couple of approaches before deciding on the best way. Is this all unpaid?? Again if so, you are making me work for free so count me out.

That said, their project, their rules but as I can see this leading to a lot of free work for them, no thanks.

 

Not all game dev studios are professional outfits. These guys are very non professional. It's their studio, their advertisement reflects the studio itself. At least it's honest.

If you like a bit of professionalism in your work, stay well clear. If you are worried about @zombiegorilla's legal team, stay well clear. If you have any shred of sanity, stay clear.

But if you want to run the risk that this project goes somewhere and you actually get paid. And you like the idea of working with a couple of bozos like the current game devs, then go for it.

On a general note I typically include research time and bug fixing time in my freelance contracts. Any time I spend on google gets charged to the clients. I also don't (currently) sign on to work exclusive on projects. So the jobs not for me.

 

Well, they DID forget to mention how much they're paying.

Although this part was amusing:

I actually like that.

I think you have a very strict idea about "how things should be done", and are trying to push your standards onto others. I wouldn't do that. If those guys want semi-informal work relationship, I don't see a problem with that. As long as they aren't asking to work for free, that is.

 

The last person we hired last month, we ended up paying them more than we agreed.

The purpose is not to say "We have this evil abrasive work atmosphere so you'd better be ok with abuse, bitch!". The purpose is to scare off the hundreds, and hundreds of emails you get like that boredmormon guy above, who see your project as an entity they can bleed dry while they admit to screwing around on google at their clients' expense.

Those types, yes we can most definitely live without.

What he feels entitled to is essentially charity. It's "pay me, and not that guy from Bangladesh who works ten times harder for 1/10th the pay because... Well first off, I speak English better and second if you don't, you're an unprofessional bozo... You're so unprofessional, you bozo!"

I have it within my power to give one individual who scribbles their name in blood next to mine a very good living for many years to come, but just one. Somewhere out there, that person is hoping to get found. Just like my partner was in 2014 before I found her, who went on to join me in building what we have today. It's not perfect, but it's ours.

Now we're on Steam making a good-enough living to plan the next phase; Which is scour the internet the same way I did when I found her for that next lost-soul willing to put it on the line to turn our duo into a triad and share in the spoils. In order to find gold in the pan, first you must collect a fist-full of mud, then filter out all that which is dead-weight, and believe me, when you put up a help-wanted post on the Unity forums, you get more mud than you can possibly process. It's best to filter out as much as you can before it ever hits your inbox.

 

Ouch. Not sure I deserved that. But it definitely illustrates the point. As I said earlier, I'm not the guy for this job. Your description has done a good job of making sure I don't apply. It would be a nightmarish experience for both of us.

You are looking for a very specific person with a very specific work ethic to work in a specific environment. Your job description does a good job of explaining that. More power to you.

I didn't intend to insult with my comments. I apologise if I gave any. I probably could have worded my thoughts a little better.

This is a very apt description. Both as employer and as a freelancer.

 

No harm no foul.

 

I'm not sure I fully understand this.

Have you tried directly contacting people that you would be interested in working with? It might seem like more work at first, but I'm not actually convinced that it really is. Like you said, you put a job offer online and then get flooded with crap applications. If I was looking to hire I'd be trying to find someone competent and compatible and then ask that person directly if s/he is interested.

 

Martin_H is right. But then you will be dealing with people who will be, justifiably, demanding a good rate per hour. Probably more than a small two man operation could afford. Unless you could agree some kind of profit share.

 

Probably gleaned from some of the reviews, such as:

"First off they stole assets from Star Wars Galaxies (audio, and some graphics)"
and
"You never even removed the Teras Kasi Artist name from the brawler line in the skill tree."

 

Really?!?!?!

 

Ooooh the mystery deepens - the original thread has been deleted.

 

Put this into google: paid-launched-mmo-has-one-spot-for-one-badass-programmer.385155

Use the first drop down in the line under the link to see the cached version.

Click the 'text only version' link.

 

It says the thread doesn't exist anymore.

 

@tango209 Wow, I never knew you could do that! What other secrets does Google have lying in plain sight?

 

The dominant theme in the steam reviews is that the game is built with stolen assets from a Star Wars game. Ergo the reference to our friend from Disney.

 

This is a link to a Kickstarter campaign comments for the project.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/372333499/divergence-online/comments
Take a look at Seraph84's comments.

 

I can understand them using that description. It's similar to what I do except they are seeking a cussing cowboy programmer type. They just want to weed out the wannabes, "educated idiots" and the prim and proper (perhaps they view as stuffy) folks from the start.

 

I would be f***** perfect for this job.

but I'm not interested, because i'm a selfish ****

 

Yeah I didn't quite understand what what "zombiegorilla" thing was either until this.

There's a WHOLE drama behind the steam review business, trust me.

In reviews and/or comments on reviews, you are not allowed to:

1. Post personal info about the developers - Happened.
2. Make legal claims - X looks like Y so someone stole something - Happens repeatedly.
3. Copy-Paste contents of closed or deleted threads - Happened
4. Make personal attacks - Oh yes, happens. "Developer is a scrawny little punk child" etc
5. "Any mention of an emulator is instant deletion". Look and see how many reviews talk about emulators.

Despite the fact that we contacted steam, quoted each rule, and linked the comments directly below it that clearly violate their rules, virtually nothing has happened about it. They're still there.

If you'll notice, there's even one negative review on there that is merely three letters; "neh". Not even a review, just pointless trolling. 67% is still better than a 2:1 ratio of positive/negative, but it's sometimes hard to make your peace with the knowledge that you aren't getting the score you deserve simple because party X refuses to enforce their own rules.

Where was I.

Oh yes; The thread is back up. Unity mods sometimes delete my posts with no explanation, so I make it a point to have the original on hand to copy-paste as a new one when it happens. Pretty lame, and it's been going on for over two years, which is why I don't give Unity advertising or advocacy if I can help it.

Well, I mean that and the fact that there is still to-this-day no PBR support for this Speedtree implementation that we're so happy to advertise, yet not happy enough to finish it. I mean are you serious? Even unity 4 trees had transmission, so this isn't even an upgrade; it's a sidegrade.

 

A bit off topic, but, @CarterG81 might be interested to hear about these Steam comments that can't get removed by a developer, after this long discussion the other day(http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wh...on-developers-review-forum-corruption.383183/)

 

Way to be prepared!

Afaik many mods are volunteers who don't have any connection to UT beyond using Unity themselves and being very active on the forums. I don't know about the job forum though.

I've read your Job offer and imho it leaves too much room for interpretation. If I try really hard I can interpret pretty much everything in there as very reasonable requests. E.g. "Working out bugs on your own PC.", I could interpret that as: you don't want to pay me for a week, when all I did in that week was re-installing windows and switching out hardware because of some weird issue with my system. That's reasonable.
You could have phrased it so that misunderstandings like this "fixing bugs is a huge part of work for a developer, are you saying that bug squashing is unpaid?" won't come up. Maybe clearer communication could improve the chances of finding the right candidate for the job?

Ah, I see. After I've written my question I suspected that was what you meant, but I wasn't entirely sure. I hope those allegations in the reviews are unfounded.


Edit:

Just found this, I like it!

 

yeah jonny is right, I wouldnt work with that guy for a million bucks and maybe he will find someone who would work with him but at least in his post you know what kind of person he is

 

Thanks!

It does leave a good amount up to interpretation. No argument there. "Standard policy" would definitely be to give perfect outlines of what is to be expected, but in my experience nothing ever goes as-planned, especially when making a game, especially especially when making a game like this. Some people thrive in making something their own, some cannot fathom such an unorthodox way of doing things. We've just developed out own methodology of "notice something needs done, do it immediately without thought or conversation" and it works for us. If you find the right people who swim at that speed, as i did last year, you can make some amazing amazing progress not held down by traditional guidelines. Throw regular people in that pond however and not only will they drown, but they'll consider themselves to have been royally given a raw deal. Again, part of the reason for our up-frontedness, to avoid those events. It's better for everyone.

 

Did someone call?

Spoiler

If this is TLDR for you, just read the main points in BOLD,

and skip all the spoiler tags!

Just to clarify, they are not Steam Discussion posts, but Steam Review comments.

A developer only has the authority to delete posts / ban users in the Steam Discussion forum. They have no control over the Steam Review, except to report the Steam Review for violations of rules.

Spoiler

Here I address the five complaints.

First off, I am not saying anything about the person making the claim. They could be 100% clean, truthful, and all complaints legitimate. I default to protecting the consumer, just to provide some "devils advocate" balance (we're in a dev forum, after all). Without any evidence, we can't say. It also doesn't matter at all, because who cares? But since I was called...

The claim here is:

1. Doxxing users should not be tolerated. Everyone agrees with this, so there is no argument. Any attempts at DOXXing any user (whether review or developer) should follow an immediate deletion of the content followed by a quick investigation by Steam & any other authorities.
2. By saying "X looks like Y" the user is not making a legal claim or an accusation of theft or intellectual copyright infringement. So unless this is different than we'd assume, I see no problem here. If these are false accusations, the developer is fully allowed to report the review & then post a comment stating the facts.
3. This is a very good thing! This is the user fighting back against the developer's censorship. It's all they can do to fight censorship, and censorship is very bad for the consumer. Good for them! We have internet caching of websites for this very reason: Censorship.
   
4. Take this with a hefty grain of salt. The reason I created my thread was BECAUSE these developers go off & go crazy over extremely petty insults, misguided sense of humors, vapid generalizations, hilarious implications, or even imaginary offenses that don't actually exist. What other users reading this cares about personal attacks? These reviews are not directed at the developer, nor are they intended to read them. Must I constantly remind people that reviews are meant to be read by other users? That is the OPPOSITE target of the developer. Besides, most reviews are horrible jokes that have no actual review in them. The number of "Funny" reviews is so absurd, Steam was forced to put in a "Funny" option after "Helpful" and "Not Helpful" because it would be impossible to stop the joke reviews / culture. Remember sometimes the developer deserves the accusations thrown at them (Titov of WAR Z notoriety being called a scam artist / scumbag is pretty accurate, and helpful to the community.) or the developer exaggerates due to their thin skin (One slight generalization of a group of developers, and a single dev can take such great offense that he goes clinically insane. It's pretty childish sometimes when you have a thin skinned developer being insulted on their own product on the internet of all places. This is the internet. A developer raging over petty insults...just no. Just don't.)
   
   
   
5. No idea what he is talking about "emulators".

If you think Steam should delete useless reviews, joke-reviews, etc.... then you have no idea what you're actually asking.

Spoiler

You're asking for 99% of all reviews to be deleted, heavily moderate all future reviews, and for Steam to hire an entire team to handle community management. (Which I would love, seeing as how they could easily afford it. But they won't, because that cuts into their endless pursuit of corporate profit.)

In reality, you're basically asking for a total abolition of user reviews.

Spoiler

Users are average people. Average people are not cultured, thoughtful critics. That's what critics are (and even critics aren't cultured, thoughtful individuals... so really you're just asking for an elite few to write reviews for free). When you allow user reviews, you get what you get, and what you get is usually pretty horrible.

As with most of these claims, you'd have to see the actual reviews/comments he is claiming violate Steam's rules on reviews.

Spoiler

If Steam has not acted, it is because they are either backlogged, being very lazy / don't care to enforce their own rules, or they disagree that it violates the rules (which honestly, is my first guess, although Steam is notorious for having horrible customer service. If you notice on my thread which you linked, the very final example post is a developer claiming a legitimate review of "I can't play the game, but I'd pay you if I could." is somehow toxic / bad / blackmailing. It proves my point entirely and validates my OP that developers exaggerate with imaginary offense, swininging the banhammer on legitimate reviews / comments. I loved that it was the final post before lock, since anyone outside the circlejerk will see the irony in the final "evidence" proving my point entirely. So I would not be surprised if a lot of these claims of "rule violations" were exaggerated, as they almost always tend to be due to the fact all developer have an extreme personal bias for their own product. Why make things BETTER when you could leave it exactly the same and profit more instead? Pfft, they're only your consumers & content providers, who cares? What are they gonna do? NOT put their games on Steam? Hahahahaha!)

If the problems are legitimate, such as the case of a DOXXing, then your problem lies with Steam. The answer isn't to allow developers more power for censorship. It's for Steam to do its damn job and enforce the rules they claim to hold.

Spoiler

If Steam found the reviews don't violate their rules, then perhaps the developer is the epitome of my forum complaint. Trying to censor legitimate reviews due to being led by personal bias (emotion/offense, not justice/ethics).

Either way, it's what you get when you post a game on a platform like Steam, run by a group who truly don't care about you or their consumers.

Spoiler

All they care about is that profit motive. If they actually cared, they could use any of those billions of dollars to improve their system in an infinite number of ways. (If you want a good example of a good company that makes millions/billions but DOES care, look at RIOT. They hire professional psychologists & probably entire teams just to deal with the toxicity of their community. And they're successful at it! You can't deny the fact Steam truly doesn't care about anyone but themselves.)

That's why the answer is...

Spoiler

to have some kind of public website, system, or content provider... or support a more ethical company... or just support something (anything) better... Something that protects both users & developers, without censorship, without abuse of power, and without taking a ridiculous percentage of each sale for next to nothing other than this possible myth of increased exposure/revenue

....which doesn't seem to even exist anymore anyway)

Just something to think about. If you want more protections as a developer, and Steam isn't protecting you like they should, then maybe Steam isn't the best place for you.

 

It's also quite a phenomenon that 199 out of 200 programmer applicants can't even program.

You'd definitely want to try to weed out as many of those as you possible can. I can't imagine the horror of having to hire a programmer, without actually being a programmer (you'd have a 0.5% chance of hiring someone who can program. And even when you know who to hire, it's apparently a horrible experience still.)

Fizz Buzz

 

Does anyone have a link to the OP's original link? I can't seem to get the google cache.

Also, I think I just found a fantastic way to take my thorough writing style (TLDR posts) and turn them into a more bite-sized, manageable chunk for the reader/community. Pretty nifty.

 

rofl, you got $19k on Kickstarter? Nice!

I could make in total what you have in that video in 2 weeks, literally. Damn, I need to make me a Kickstarter campaign for some free monies....

 

It may be because they've found who they've looked for, even if it wasn't me. I've applied, as I really liked their no BS approach and wanted to make something greater than me, but I guess @DivergenceOnline wasn't interested as I haven't received a reply to my e-mail sent yesterday. Happens.

~~Dariusz "Darkhog" G. Jagielski

 

SO are you stealing SWG assests/textures/text or not? There are a fair few reviews saying that you are and I have a hard time believing they are all "out to get" you. You just brushed this off like it is nothing but anyone wanting to work for you better know the truth.

 

Even if the "programmer" can make code that compiles, this is what it looks like 75% of the time:

int[] numbers = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,...(abbreviated because I am not typing all the way to 100 just to prove a point)};
foreach (int element in numbers)
{
if(element %3==0&&element %5==0){//mynumber is divisible by three
System.Console.WriteLine("FizzBuzz");}else if(element %3==0){//mynumber is divisible by three
System.Console.WriteLine("Fizz");}else if(element %5==0){//mynumber is not a Perfect Number
System.Console.WriteLine("Buzz");}else{//mynumber is not a Perfect Number
System.Console.WriteLine(element);}
}

*I made this example by googling each part of the algorithm and copy+pasting code from the top google result. Formatting included.

I was just ranting to a fellow programmer yesterday actually.
I have seen CamelCase, under_score, Hungarian notation, implicit, and explicitly typed variables all in the same code file.

 

Could be wrong but I got the impression from the job description that basically if you even think about such things then you are not who he is looking for. He wants people who are focused on one thing: getting stuff done. That is your job. He will take care of the other stuff

 

I've been trying to find my own mindless slave robot too, but noone is answering my Craigslist ad.